Whoop Ai Ay!

So when you're planning a Winter Solstice tribute to your dear friend at a certain venue, remember to check the days they're open.
Okay?

I got all dressed up. Red petticoats (yes! really!) and red cowgirl boots (not kidding you) and make-up and everything and then I decided to check the hours the museum would be open. The website said they were closed on Mondays and I thought, wearing my red petticoats and cowgirl boots, that surely that could not be true during the holiday season so I called and well, yes, NO! they are not open on Mondays. Not even to women looking to re-establish a Holy Rite Of The Church Of The Batshit Crazy, not even women wearing the Sacred Glitter Pin of The Red Shoes of Dorothy.



So I took off my cowgirl boots and my red petticoats and I had wonderful conversations with two of my daughters on the phone and that is that.

It is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year. And starting tomorrow, the days will begin to grow longer and this is how life is on this planet. The planet we live on and the planet where life begins and adventures are to be had, and then life ends. I still have a hard time believing that Lynn's life has ended. Honestly, there have been few people in my life whose lives seemed so BIG, so very-well-lived as hers.

I could write an entire book about her. She was the poster child for growing up in the sixties and being affected by the Viet Nam War and being the daughter of a father who believed sincerely that his happiness eclipsed the well-being of his family of a wife and five children. Oh my god- she went through it all, that girl did. From being married to a drug dealer to being the girlfriend of a married Mafia Guy. And her heart- Oh. Her heart.

I could go on for days but I won't. I'll just say that Lynn was something. She never, no matter how hard her life was, stopped seeing the best in everything. She believed in everything. She loved James Taylor and the Beatles and Bob Dylan. She gave birth to a son. She raised him the best she could.

She was a Cadillac of a Woman.

She was my friend and my children's Aunt Lynn.

This is how she looked, the last time we went to Lemoyne:

We knew it was her last time.

And she went downhill from there.

Here she is in her bed when she was in the nursing home.



The nursing home. My friend Lynn, that beautiful soul, was in a nursing home. And they loved her there. When she died, (she died, she did) two of the people who worked there came here the night of her wake and made music and the woman and I danced in my hallway to Somewhere Over The Rainbow because Lynn loved the Wizard of Oz more than anyone I ever knew. Shayla danced with us and let me tell you something- if I ever had a religious experience, that was it. We shuffled slowly and held out our hands to each other to grasp onto as Israel Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole sang us into peace over Lynn's death. We danced. And we cried.

And a few weeks later, we threw Lynn's ashes into the sky and I told her, "Go, honey. Go on. Be free and released."

And I have no doubt she is. Hell- if anyone could dance on to glory, it was that girl.

I'm missing her tonight. I miss her every day. But I am missing her tonight. And I've thought of her all day.

This morning, when Owen was here and Jessie was holding him and he was entranced by her breasts, I thought about how she would have laughed.




She was with me when I had Jessie in my own home, making egg salad and decorating the house with paper-cut-outs and cheering me on as I gave birth to my last baby.

Look: There was never a moment of Lynn's life when she didn't see the best in what was in front of her. Never. Not once. Even though her life was hard as hell.

And if she were still here, my Lynn, she would asked all of us to dance a dance, to light a candle, to drink the last bit of rum from bottle and close our eyes and say, "Yum. Rum."

She would have cuddled the babies and she would have stepped on the sail boat to travel into the sunrise and she would have said, I love you.

Because she was not stingy in any way. Not with her words, her dances, her dreams, her hugs, her wishes.

I'm thinking of her tonight and I'm sharing her with you.

My Lynn. Who never let the last dregs of anything pass unappreciated.

I am not standing in a gazebo but I am toasting her. And I am dancing in my hallway, all alone but she is with me.

Oh Lynn. Rest in peace and thank you for everything.
Love....
Your Friend,
Mary