Losing still

The doorbell rang when I was in the shower. Rick came to tell me Babette and another woman were there.

Babette owned the local green grocer. She never came to the house. Dressed in pjs with my hair wrapped in a towel, I knew instantly from their expressions something was wrong.

"Barbara est morte," Babette said.

I first met Barbara in the late 1970s. It was a hot day and I was sitting with a friend on our stoop of a brownstone-type house on Wigglesworth Street in Boston. This couple that were moving in a couple of doors down were carrying case after case of books. Anyone with that number of books we wanted to know. They had designed cases so when they moved the cases could be set up immediately with the books still in them.

It was the start of a long friendship in three neighbourhoods in two countries. We saw each other through all the things that life had to offer from her guarding my two dogs for 30 days before they could join me overseas, to her talking me through my mother's dying to my helping her with her move to and from Africa, and my supporting her emotionally through her various adventures.

The most recent was turning her into Dorothy of Wizard of Oz fame  complete with pigtails so she could sing "Over the Rainbow" at the show. To make a 78 year old a teenager was a challenge but we did it in between laughing so hard that we had to stop to continue. Such fun.

She was not a woman to live a classic life although she started out as a traditional, conservative American woman.

With three daughters and a bad marriage she put herself through university until she earned a doctorate. As an anthropologist she saw things differently and words like "cultural clothing" "Curse on my underware" became natural. She opened intellectual doors for me.

To my daughter she was a role model that one did not have to follow a traditional path.

Her attempts to become a one-woman peace corp bringing money to African women artists did not develop as she wished but she did help some women, many women as much as she could. If she had any frustration in life it was that she couldn't help as many people as she wanted.

She was the doyenne of the Argelès gospel choir. Even in her 70s she began cello lessons and took up the piano. She loved music.

Yesterday I wrote in a blog that I was tired of losing people. There have too many too close together.

Mostly she was a family member of choice that I loved deeply. No,  won't use the past tense. Because she's gone does not mean that the love has gone away.

Rick expresses his pain and tribute http://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.fr/2014/11/the-phases-of-death.html