It's been a year since I've seen her. I shared an office with her for a few years. She was my confidante, and I was hers. We shared many things: laughs, tears, advice, all the way down the list starting with business projects and ending with recipes. Her name was Brona and I miss her each day.
It's been a year since I've seen her, you see, because in about two more weeks, it will be the one-year anniversary of her death. And while we've all had no choice for our lives but to go on in spite of her marked absence, I don't have personal closure. I've accepted her death, but I always have the naggy feeling that so many things were left undone.
She was born into a life of communism...and would receive her liberation from that communist way of life in her teenage years (if I am not mistaken about the timeline.) And, if I have this right, she became a US citizen circa the year 2000.
If I had to think of a single word to describe her I would go with the word "complex." She made things harder than they had to be. She wanted what she wanted and that was that! She was a perfectionist, often to her detriment. She was conflicted, and she was shy. But what she lacked in confidence she made up for with her gentle heart and her simple passions. When she come from behind her veil, so to speak, she had a fire burning there. And she gave me such smiles, you see, because she was downright adorable sometimes! Like the way she said the word "alphabetize" with the accents in all the wrong places... or how despite her mastery of the English language, she sometimes missed the little nuances, such as phrasing like "tickled pink..."
Anyhow, besides watching a dear friend receive last rites last July, I think of her always on July 4th specifically. Isn't it odd that Independence Day would remind me of an immigrant? Well, one July 4th, a group of us went to see a fireworks display. You know the kind...you spend a lot of time finding parking, you sweat and walk and walk and walk til you plant yourself somewhere.
So we all did that. We found an opening in the crowd and there we began our decent...come to find, to Brona's dismay. "Why are you stopping here?" She wanted to know. SHE wanted to be, no she DEMANDED to be right under the very center where the fireworks could be viewed...directly beneath them. Not to the south a little. Not at an angle but DIRECTLY beneath the display....close to where the orchestra speakers were located (where you couldn't hear yourself think...mind you.) I thought this odd. She would not stay with the rest of the group and we were kind of fond of resting where we were. She and her husband Mark ventured forth. I didn't think much of it; Brona was gonna do what Brona was gonna do. It was not until later after the fireworks that we were reunited with them.
As we left the fireworks show, all of us together, she asked me to walk with her separately. Her eyes filled with tears and she told me, "To you this is just another fireworks show. I suppose you've seen these every year since you were born, but I haven't. This is important to me, to be independent. To be free. To be in America. To be DIRECTLY under the fireworks when it starts and to be there until it ends."
I recall not knowing what to say for a moment. So I took her hand and held it for a short bit...I can't say why but sometimes I held her hand off and on through life when there were no words. The last time I saw her in the hospital on life-support, in fact, I held her hand once more.
As I write this, my throat is sore from holding back tears because oh! what I would give to trek across the entire crowd in 100+ degree heat, just to stand in the middle with her now!
But I'll tell you what, she certainly is free and will be forever more. And the view of those fireworks from (directly) ABOVE this time, are, I am convinced, nothing short of spectacular.
Enjoy your independence.
Happy Birthday America.
