Mary Kay Kare

[calimac]

This is Mary Kay in happier times, about ten years ago I think. I'd like to remember that, because life was not always good to Mary Kay, most grievously to her when her beloved husband Jordin died unexpectedly after heart surgery four years ago. Since that time she had felt utterly bereft and was often incommunicato, to the distress and frustration of her friends, which is essentially why it wasn't realized immediately that she had died very recently of a blood infection. The news was passed on through a couple of hands and I don't know any more than that.

Mary Kay was from Oklahoma, and though she remained in touch with her family, she tended to describe home and family alike as something she was glad to escape from. A career as a catalog librarian was part of that escape; she worked for several years in quality control for OCLC (known to the general public as the proprietors of WorldCat) in Ohio. But as with a lot of us in that field, her career stalled when posts ran out and she fell out of the current swim. I was able to get her an interview for an open post once at a library where I was working, but it didn't get any further than that.

It was fandom which really caused Mary Kay to blossom. She was a conrunner, she was a smof, she was a Hugo administrator, she was an apahack, she was a filker, she was active in our local Mythopoeic Society discussion group, she was like many fans a loving cat-owner. She met Jordin at a Worldcon, and they were a devoted couple ever after. The only catch was that Jordin's work required him to spend a lot of time in Seattle, and Mary Kay was very sensitive to weather and could not handle the overcast climate. They tried a number of solutions - part-time here, part-time there; living separated part of the time; before finally being able to settle in San Jose several years back.

Mary Kay at her best was intelligent and invigorating and a great person for conversations about books and cats. I wish we could have done more to alleviate the depression and the self-deprecation that loomed over her so much, darkening even the earlier years and getting worse over time. But she could be hard to reach, both in terms of establishing conversation and in pursuing the conversation you're having. I'm sorry things didn't work out better for her.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Dammit! I hadn't heard. Thank you for posting this news.

I knew her casually, mostly from seeing her at conventions -- mainly WisCon lately, because I haven't gone to many other conventions. I even had dinner with a group that included Mary Kay and Jordin, the one year he went before he died.

[ckd]

I also hadn't heard. Thank you for passing on the news and sharing your reflections and memories.

[oursin]

Oh no. I knew her initially from Wiscon. More recently I'd been seeing her occasional posts on Twitter, but these were sporadic enough I hadn't particularly registered any absence.

Oh no!

[(Anonymous)]

Damn. Damn. Damn.

[voidampersand]

Oh no. I've always appreciated Mary Kay's intelligence and level-headedness. She had a reserve but she also had a great sense of fun that would come out, especially with Jordin. There is so much that she overcame. I was glad to have Mary Kay back in the Bay Area and was hoping to see her around more, but then the pandemic, now this. Where's that playwright? The script wasn't supposed to go this way.

[athenais]

That's a wonderful picture of her. She was a very good friend at one time, though our ways had drifted apart in recent years for the reasons you outline. I will miss her. Vale, MKK.