My sister Clare was eight years older than me, equal parts sister and legend. She saw the Beatles! She was in Los Angeles during the Watts riots! She lived in Hawaii! She lived in Germany!
That age gap didn’t spare me from the experience that is all too common in Catholic schools when the older sibling is a brilliant student. First day of class, nun sees my name, an eyebrow pokes up and she looks at me expectedly. I shake my head. “Yes, I’m a Liebert. No, I’m not that Liebert.”
Clare kind of stretched our family’s horizons as well. Other than visiting cousins in northern Michigan and class trips to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, we really hadn’t left Wisconsin much the whole time I was growing up. So, when Clare accepted a scholarship to Bradley University in Peoria, the family trip to drop her off her freshman year represented unchartered territory. Fast forward four years, she graduated and married Mike, who was in the Air Force, and their first assignment was in Florida. Our family trip to visit them was our first drive through the south. And, as midwest traditions dictate, we all got massive sunburns! Later, my folks visited when Clare and Mike were stationed in Germany and my dad even established some business contacts with German companies.
Their son James was born in Omaha in 1980. I’m not sure he was ever diagnosed with hyperthymesia, but he had to work hard not to remember what he had for lunch twelve Tuesdays ago. He also could, when given a date, immediately tell you what day of the week it was. One of my favorite memories is sitting in their living room in Virginia, paging through one of those Lillian Vernon catalogs (talk about a bygone era!) It advertised a perpetual calendar, and the ad showed a specific date. I asked James what day of the week it was and he told me. I had to tell him he was wrong. He just gave me a “do I stutter” look. So, we looked it up. The Lillian Vernon catalog had it wrong!
When James was diagnosed with autism, the doctors told Clare and Mike that he’d probably never learn to ride a bike. But he did learn to ride a bike. And drive a car; and graduate from community college; and hold down a job for over fifteen years. That’s a credit to the type of person he was, but also a credit to Clare. James didn’t learn the way other people did, and not at the pace other people did, so Clare effectively home schooled him all the way through community college.
Life went on for the family. James and Mike were history buffs so they took advantage of living in Norfolk to visit battlefields up and down the Eastern seaboard. I’m not sure there exists a Revolutionary or Civil War battlefield they didn’t visit. As James got more self-assured, they added trips to the UK and Ireland as well.
It was no surprise when James had to have his gall bladder removed. It’s a time-honored rite of passage in my family. But when they removed his gall bladder, they discovered cancer. Gall bladder cancer is insidious in that it doesn’t show any symptoms until it’s pretty advanced. James’ cancer was inoperable. He passed away in May 2018. Mike and Clare had lost their only son.
They turned their grief into action and established a scholarship to help deserving special needs kids continue their educations (you can read about it here.)
Almost simultaneous with James’ cancer, Clare was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer, especially when found in later stages, has a high remission rate. You might never ring the bell with late-stage ovarian cancer.
The cancer ebbed and flowed. Mike and Clare continued to travel when they could. But, truth be told, having cancer is a full-time job. Starting chemotherapy cycles; going in for the treatment; recovering from said treatment; getting tests to measure your current cancer status (in Clare’s case a bio-marker protein CA 125); meeting with the oncology team to determine the next course of action.
Chemo is an effective tool against cancer, but it’s a harsh mistress. So much poison. When Clare went in for session 47 of her most recent chemo treatment, the attending nurse mentioned that was the highest session count she had ever come across. Not a distinction one would aspire to. Clare handled it with the gentility that seems to come naturally to women who lived most of their adult life in the south.
Eventually Clare’s body started to rebel, probably due to a combination of the cancer growing stronger and the effect of years of chemotherapy. Clare passed away on July 13, 2026, eight years after the original diagnosis.
Clare was a prodigious walker, loved word games, did needlework (I have one of hers hanging over my fireplace as we speak), was a member of a long, long running book club, sang in the Virginia Choral Society, and was a great cook and baker (us siblings had a Christmas cookie exchange program in what really was an elaborate ploy to ensure Clare would send us her cookies!) For years Clare entered this quirky analog contest called “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” that involved a physical road atlas and some intentionally obscure directions (Ken Jennings wrote about it here.) I tried it once and, nope, it was beyond me! She was one of one.
It’s a strange sensation when somebody you love dies. You miss them in a million ways, but you can feel their presence in a million ways too.
That’s because they are there, inside you, part of your very essence. And she’s there inside everyone else that loved her as well, in their essence. I take some solace in that. The world is a better place with as much of Clare in it as is possible.
So, anyway, just a few words on my sister Clare.
