Bianca and the Tree.

Dear Ones.

Hi, My friend Bianca just died.

She was one of my best friends in New Zealand, and the reason I moved to Waiheke.

I spent all day today writing this.I didn’t want to wait, and I don’t want to send this to a copyeditor.

I would like you to read it.

I wrote fast, imperfectly and typo-riddled as usual. Sorry, not sorry.

The funeral is on Waiheke, on Wednesday. I’m going to miss it.

I’m thinking constantly about my friends on the island. I love you all so much.

I am homesick.

……………

It isn’t my job to write obituaries, and yet, I am now four obituaries behind.

New Years.

That week, Lee (my dear friend, Cloud Club landlord, and Art Dad) died of cancer. Two days before that, Susi Newborn, my adopted New Zealand grandma-type, and sometimes housemate, died suddenly of pneumonia. Later that same week, my dear Aunt Katherine died. I’d just held her in my arms a few weeks before.

I have been trying to write pieces for all three of them. I have been putting it off. I have been overwhelmed. I have been raising my kid, keeping my house, dealing with other catastophes.

But then, this week, Bianca died.

Bianca Scarlett was one of my best friends and safety-havens on Waiheke Island. Susi was another.

They’re both gone now.

But Susi was in her early seventies. Bianca was almost exactly my age. Bianca had (I cannot type had, I cannot type had) only a few years older than Ash. Lupe.

Bianca was the woman who ushered me onto Waiheke Island, where I lived for two years of the pandemic, finding safe harbor away from the madness of Covid in America. She wasn’t the reason I first came, but she was the reason I moved there. And while I was living there, she became one of my closest friends.

This is Bianca.