Joan Karen Maze

Joan Maze passed peacefully in her sleep on the morning of Wednesday, April 24. She spent her final days in the excellent care of Waverly Gardens in North Oaks, Minnesota, surrounded by her children and making jokes until the very end.

Joan was born in Chicago during the Great Depression and lived a long and full life. She was born without her hearing, until she had what at the time was an innovative surgery when she was 18. But she enjoyed music and was a classically trained opera singer with a mezzo-soprano voice featuring plenty of vibrato.

She loved the voices of Luciano Pavarotti and Renee Fleming, but anything by a composer more than 200 years old suited her just fine. Joan had little patience for modern pop and rock music, though she had a certain fondness for some classic country artists.

Joan raised four children without the assistance, financial or otherwise, from their father. Throughout her life she persisted, writing, painting and singing, all the while insisting that she would one day make it big despite financial challenges brought on by the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

She wrote almost constantly, preferring mysteries along the lines of Agatha Christie. She worked for decades to get her own book published, working for nearly 50 years before finally getting one of her mysteries published. And when she did, she only worked harder to keep going. She vowed to start writing again until her last days.

Joan was an avid painter, a lover of oil paints and nature scenes. She would have painted your backyard, but she would put a deer in the middle of it for more interest. Or perhaps a birdbath.

She loved life. "I want to live forever." She did her best, living until the ripe age of 90. Perhaps her most endearing trait was her ability to laugh. She often laughed at herself, at her height, her weight, her age or anything else.

She was preceded in death by her daughter, Valerie. She is survived by three other children, Greta Miller, Angie (Doug) Skayer and Jonathan (Haila), along with grandchildren Alicia (Doug) Rebhan, Jill (Andrew) Whitney, Jennifer (Jon) Berends, David Miller, Meghan Maze, Owen and Liam, and great-grandchildren, Jayden, Tessa, Maverick, Lily, Arthur and Milly.

In lieu of flowers, send donations to DARTS in West St. Paul, Minnesota.