Our Twinkling Star

We’ve lost our twinkling star. It came (at last, we thought with some relief even as we mourned, because the last few years were so difficult for her and her family), but it came at last, a few weeks short of her hundred and first birthday.

We think and talk about the amazing person we knew, and all the things she did in the thirteen years that we’ve known her. She’d wanted to be a comedian when she was in her teens — that would have been around 1935 — and loved hamming it up for us, and we loved her for that humor.

She also loved ice cream, and family. If you wanted to fire up that twinkle in her eyes, just ask her if she’d like to have some ice cream.

She marched in parades for social justice and equality. She put her name on petitions for change. We thought about all the change and upheaval she saw in her hundred years, the wars that she witnessed, and the others that she lost through death, and wondered if upheaval isn’t our natural state.

She was such a cool, friendly, and happy person, but this is life. You meet people, and eventually one of you goes away, leaving the other to remember and wonder.