Landry, Joan

Joan Landry, 62, of Fort Myers, Florida, died Tuesday, December 17, 2013 at Dove West Palliative Nursing Care Center in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

She was born June 6, 1951 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was raised by her father Raymond Caruso and adopted mother Ruthanne (Pond) Caruso.

She married Thomas Michael Landry on October 11, 1970. They resided in Roselle, N.J. and later in Port Monmouth, N.J. as they started to raise their young family. Widowed in 1982, she moved to Fort Myers, Florida with life partner Mark Hayes in 1986.

She worked for many years in Fort Meyers, as a housemother for Our Mothers Home, a facility for pregnant teens and their newborns. She cared greatly for her charges and thought of them as her own children and grandchildren.

Survivors include her parents, Raymond and Ruthanne Caruso; daughters, Kim (James) Landry-Ayres of Eau Claire, Wisconsin and Tara (Erik) Hansen of Montrose, Colorado; a son Thomas Michael (Lara) Landry Jr.; a grandson Cooper Hayes Landry and a granddaughter Barrett Elissa Landry of Trussville, Alabama; brother Daniel Caruso of Cranford, N.J., brothers and sister-in-laws, Mark (Lisa) Caruso of Toms River, N.J., Todd (Heidi) Caruso of Robbinsville, N.J., sister Kim (Gary) Belton of Brookside, N.J.; many nieces and nephews and many lifelong friends all around the country.

She was preceded in death by her husband Thomas Michael Landry and her life partner Mark Hayes.

Words really cant describe our mom and the loss that we are feeling now in her absence on this Earth. She had a heart the size of the Universe. She was so loving, compassionate, selfless, and courageous. A beautiful human being inside and out: her Angel blue eyes and her mischievous smile will be imprinted in our minds until the end of time. We will miss her warmth, her all-knowing-mothers intuition, her loving embrace and her contagious laugh. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a best friend and confidante.

She loved music and dancing and telling stories. Her joy of bargain shopping was priceless and her passion for cooking would feed a soul for eons.

Although we are all grateful she is no longer tethered to her ailing physical body, and honored to have had the time we had with her in this Lifetime, we are feeling very shell-shocked and grief-stricken by the void that occurs when one realizes you will have to wait the rest of your own lifetime to be with her again. We pray we all have inherited just a little bit of her AMAZINGNESS to carry us through. Goodbye mom, we LOVE you with all of OUR hearts