I must admit I have been struggling for a subject for a new posting related to the City. I have been looking all around this city for a pertinent observation about which to write. I thought about writing on my experience walking ten blocks behind a Muslim woman in a full burkha. As I followed her, I had her perspective on the deep, frightened stares she got from every person of every creed that passed her. Even another Muslim woman wearing only her scarf stared like the burkha woman had a bomb. I am not a fan of the burkha, but it must be very difficult to face those kinds of stares when all you want to do is walk down the street.
I thought about writing about the warming Spring in the city, and how the restaurants and bars have flung open their doors, pulled out their outdoor seating, and how the City is actually turning green in color.
I thought about writing about how so many people ask you for recommendations on where to eat and what to do when visiting the City, and how I wish I had the resources to try out all the places that I recommended.
I thought about writing about how Google is preparing for Pride, and how happy I am that Google is an official sponsor of New York's festivities, including financing an incredible float in the Pride Parade.
But all I can think about is that back home, in her room in Alabama, my cousin is dying. Mary Ann is one of my 25+ first cousins who grew up in Alabama with me. Along with Eliza and Everett, both also close to my age, at least a dozen of us used to play together almost every weekend. We would play card games like spoons and hearts. We would run around the play house behind Mama Rete's house, even in the dead heat of the summer. We would play hopscotch for hours, and run with sparklers on the Fourth until we fell down tired. We slipped on the slip-and-slide and chased each other through Mama Rete's giant yard. We would play so much that we would have to be pulled away late on Sunday night to go home, trying our best to convince our parents to stay "only fifteen more minutes."
Mary Ann and I grew apart after I left for college and she stayed behind in Alabama to start a family. I must admit we lost touch, and when I would see her at our reunions, the conversations felt sadly distant. Where we once lit each other's sparklers, we now lived entirely different lives.
My Mother and some of my other cousins are now sitting with Mary Ann around the clock as she enters what are her final hours. She is dying of the same cancer that killed her Mother at Mary Ann's age. One of my cousins is sending daily email updates on her condition, and on the parade of family and friends coming in Mary Ann's room to say an impossibly difficult good-bye. The emails are difficult to read. Mary Ann will be one of my first cousins to pass, and that makes me more aware than ever of the passage of time, the frailty of life, and the need to make sure we live it to the fullest.
I am grateful that Mary Ann is my cousin, and that we shared so many lazy, wonderful, laughing and innocent childhood days together.
I pray she finds comfort in the place where I know she is going.
So, even in the midst of this bustling City, bursting forth with Spring and Pride, and even though I am so many miles away from Mary Ann's room in Alabama, I am feeling a lot more lonely this week.
God bless and be with you, Mary Ann.
