I heard the news from  my brother  on a Tuesday night. I thought I would wait until the sad passed a bit before I would write and then the following Tuesday Mom was diagnosed with cancer after succesfully coming home from 3 and half weeks of surgery and isolation in Covid 19 stricken Hong Kong where we were not able to see her or to telephone but had to wait for calls every few days from the staff caring for her.
But the sad has not lessened much and that struggle, that acknowledgement of the black dog and determination to get through the poop storm and get to the giggles again, the ability to use the frustration and not drown in it, that is something I learned from watching Aunt Gay and Mom and Nana. I will be forever grateful to them.
When I was a young woman and my first marriage and my life had fallen apart and I was determined to go back to school and find a new path, it was Aunt Gay who wrote a reference for me and simultaneously gave me a straight talk about some of my more egregious character defects and what I might do about them. Salty and sweet she was always and it was damned effective.
Later in life, after I had lived in Hong Kong for years and found the love of my life here, we came to visit Aunt Gay for a day in Columbus and she made my husband Hoyin so welcome and feel so much a part of our family. She took us on a tour of OSU and arrranged for a tour of the Architecture Faculty and to meet with the Dean, as Hoyin is the Head of the Architecture Conservation and Preservation Division at HKU, and it was a special treat. We had a fabulous lunch together and a lot of laughs.  We always hoped that she might be able to visit us here because she would have loved Hong Kong and its exciting differentness but at that point in her life I think the idea of 26 hours or more on planes and in airports was less than thrilling.

I miss her as I miss all of my extended family and friends because we are so very far away but knowing that there will not be one more chance to hear that crack of laughter that was so her, or catch that glint in her eye that meant she was ticked off at someone or some situation she disapproved of, to know that we will never hear her stories of Nana and Dad and the family again? That is a hard, sharp pain under the breast bone and an aching throb behind the eyes.
But this too shall pass and the loss will be replaced with the warmth of many happy memories and the glow of gratitude to have known her.

Dear Gay,

I love you so much. Just thinking about you makes my eyes fill with tears. You had such a joyful smile and infectious laugh. You were sharp and driven and passionate about books, politics, and writing poetry. External factors or your relationships to others: mother, sister, (ex-)wife, grandmother were not all that defined who you were. You built your own career, raised your children on your own, divorced when divorce was never an option for women, got your PhD and kicked butt leading your team in HR at Ohio State University. You touched the lives of countless people in ways I cannot even imagine.

You were a third grandmother to me. Did I ever tell you as much? Did I ever tell you how much you meant to me? I worry that I did not. That I went my whole 26 years of existence without telling you, and now it’s too late.

You taught me by example how to live a life of grace. How to live a life of adventure and love and joy and learning. How fitting to commemorate you and your life with the written word as you yourself wrote with such purpose. You were compelled to write, to create, to publish. After your ninety years on Earth you have left a physical memory of your soul. Your essence left an indelible presence on pages and pages. Pages that you could hold in your hands. Could caress the pads of your fingers along their edges and against their margins. 

I aspire to do the same - to write - so that, 64 years from now I can look back on my written soul, my creative heart, expressed for all to see. Much as I will cherish your book of poetry, so I hope generations who follow me will read it and experience my writing and learn from it. Perhaps what I write will make people stop to think, to pause to soak in the gravity or beauty of my stories as yours made me pause in recognition of how well you captured the human experience in the written word.

My love always, 

Your granddaughter, Sarah

On two occasions I spent rich time with Gay because my friend Kit wanted us to meet and talk.  The first time, Gay gave me a book of her poems, written about her fellow inhabitants at Westminster Thurber.  As I read and reread those poems, I realized what an extraordinary observer of human nature and behavior Gay was.  I also knew how much I'd like to talk with her about her work as a poet.  So I invited her and Kit for tea.  I'd marked about ten poems I was particularly moved by and, as we settled into my telling Gay just which lines spoke to me, which depictions made me laugh out loud, which connections surely meant so much to her, which co-inhabitants she thought were truly too full of themselves for words though she found just the right ones to describe them, which lines wouldn't let me go even after I'd closed the book, Gay let herself take all that praise and enjoyment in.  She promised she'd get a copy of any other collections she might write to me so we could talk more.  

We never got that follow-up conversation because shortly after our tea together, Gay stopped flying to Minneapolis.  Now she has flown elsewhere where she surely will find other poets writing other poems, some perhaps about her and her long, rich, radical life.  I'm honored and delighted to have known her even just a little.