I can’t let today go by without remembering Claire Milmore MacDonald. Today would have been her seventy-fifth birthday.

She passed away in November from pancreatic cancer–a disease she valiantly fought for more than two years.

We first met when we were in the choir at St. Jerome’s Church in North Weymouth, Massachusetts. Both she and I knew right away that the choir director didn’t like us. Claire was the feisty redhead who attracted boys like a moth to a flame, and I was the chubby, red-faced kid who sang all the time. The choir director knew I was a good singer, but, because I couldn’t read music, she never let me sing a solo. In fact, she told me time and time again that I’d never be able to sing a solo in “her” church until I learned to read music. Claire looked at me and rolled her eyes back.

From then on in, we were best buddies.

We went through elementary school, junior high, and high school together. She was picked for the advanced placement classes because she excelled at math. That was the only criterion to be chosen for that track. On the other hand, I wasn’t good at math, but if the school had looked at my English and social studies grades, that might have put me in her AP classes.

We were asked to sing a few Peter, Paul and Mary songs (actually written by Bob Dylan) during intermission at a statewide drama competition at the John Hancock Building in Boston. (Take that, nasty choir director!) As a result, we met a few guys who attended Boston College High School. They liked the same music we did, as well as the Red Sox and Celtics. That meant we, along with our other friend, Charlotte, spent time with them after school and on weekends until we graduated from high school in 1966.

Claire went off to the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Charlotte took a job at the First National Bank of Boston, and I headed to Boston University to study journalism. The guys headed off in all different directions. We lost touch with them.

But Claire, Charlotte, and I kept in touch throughout the years. Claire moved to Hawaii to marry the love of her life. She invited me to be in her wedding. Charlotte never got married. I had to drop out of college because my parents ran out of money. I finished my college degree at night while working full-time. I was married and went on my merry way.

In between, we went to folk music festivals and concerts, rooming together in some pretty sketchy apartments in the Boston area. They moved; we moved. Claire and her husband moved back to Massachusetts from Hawaii, and we were all at least a little closer. We met, we talked on the phone, we attended high school reunions, kept in touch via Facebook and social media.

One of the things that happened to Claire while she was in Hawaii almost led to tragedy. She was SCUBA diving and was separated from her diving buddies. She spent eighteen hours in the water, lost at sea, miles adrift, alone, not knowing if she would survive. She wrote me a letter with all the details, which I converted to an article for our hometown newspaper.

She and her husband had moved back to Massachusetts. He was a marine biologist, and he got a job with the Stellwagen Ocean Preserve; she returned to her work–the same as she had in Hawaii–as a vocational rehabilitation adjustment counselor. She did great work.

During her 60s, Claire climbed mountains. Real mountains. All of New Hampshire’s 4000-foot peaks, as well as heights in Nepal’s Himalayas, the Patagonian Andes of Argentina and Chile, as well as Europe’s Mont Blanc and the Canadian Rockies.

Then Claire got sick. Really, really sick.

Doctors didn’t know what it was at first, but then the horrible diagnosis: pancreatic cancer.

Claire and her husband had their children later in life. She was forty when she had her first and forty-two when she had her second. Both of their daughters are talented and successful.

The last time I spoke to her on the phone, she said she was planning her own funeral. What does one say to that? She and I discussed what she might want at her remembrance service. Claire wasn’t religious, no matter what we had done in the fourth-grade choir. She was a member of a Unitarian Congregation in her town.

I had one last chance to see her before she died. She was in her living room, in a hospital bed, with her elderly long-haired dachshund curled up next to her frail body. She was on high doses of pain medicine. Her husband leaned in and told her that I was there. She reached her arms out to hug me. I sat next to her for about an hour, reminiscing about things we’d done when we were young, how many miles we’d traveled, our children and what they’re doing, things like that. When she began fading out, her husband said she was worn out.

I left and made the four-hour trip home. I knew it was the last time I’d see her alive.

When the family planned her memorial service, they asked if I would sing for her. What to sing, what to sing? Nothing too morbid. I dug deep into the songbook of our younger lives and decided on “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound,” by Tom Paxton: “It’s a long and dusty road, a hard and heavy load, the folks I meet ain’t always kind, some are bad, some are good, some have done the best they could, some have tried to ease my troubled mind…And I can’t help but wonder where I’m bound, where I’m bound…Can’t help but wonder where I’m bound…”

When we first met, we didn’t know the answer to that question. Never did in high school or college, either. Still don’t, not even now that Claire is gone. All I know is that I want to be among the ones “that have done the best they could.” Claire did.