My friend (and my running mate Paul Engleman’s beloved wife)
[and my younger friends Joe and Lucie’s beloved mother]
Barb Carney died last Monday night.
She was (still is) poetry, more than prose.
Dappled more than sunny or shaded.
Like the garden that she wrapped around her home.
Philosophically eclectic, spiritually consistent, essentially vigilant.
Gentle. Steely. A little world-weary. Still curious. And always prepared for the very next thing you said to be funny as hell.
I could go on, and I hope others will.
But you gotta be careful, writing about Barb:
I once told her I was considering writing a diary of my wife’s cancer treatment
And she said as strongly as she ever said anything to me, “Please don’t!”
She also thought Joan Didion’s book about her spouse’s death, The Year of Magical Thinking
Was endlessly self-indulgent.
So I’d rather offer a single observation, to remember Barb
(and Barb knows what I’m about to say next because we joked about it):
When Barb offered you coffee
After dinner at their house—
And she always did—
you felt loved in a way
that you vaguely understood
that you hadn’t felt loved in a while.
Or maybe ever, before.
Barb had as good an understanding
Of what we are doing on this planet—
(Kurt Vonnegut said it was to “help each other
get through this thing, whatever it is”)—
As anyone I’ve known.
And she loved this song.
Let’s hum along.
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