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Saturday,
June 3, 2006
Sometimes, life punches you in the gut
I woke up this morning feeling pretty darned good. I had a cleaning plan laid out for the weekend, the weather was beautiful, I'd gotten a full eight hours of sleep -- everything was in its place in a way only a lovely June morning could manage.
And then I checked my email, and found out that my friend Adrianne St. George died Thursday evening. I maintain her husband's costume company website, and I have a sick feeling he was trying to contact me via my large-file mail account, but that's been up and down for the last couple of days (he finally sent an email to my main account this morning).
I don't even know how to describe how I feel, apart from the fact that I've been crying on and off all day. Adrianne was an amazing woman; she lived in an honest-to-God castle in western Illinois with her husband Alan (overlooking the Princessippi River, as she put it) and their life's work was recreating the glory days of the American aristocracy from the turn of last century. She was an incredible hostess, a devout lover of dogs (almost all of her herd of Pekinese, called the Furbabies, were rescues, and she founded the local chapter of the ASPCA), a talented singer and actress before degenerative joint disease required her to retire from public life, a witty, warm, amazingly intelligent woman, and the love of her husband's life. She was also part of a wild, hilarious mailing list I belong to (her screen name was "The Pink Princess," and she more than lived up to it), and we're pretty much in shock at her passing.
Alan asked me to put up her obituary and funeral notice at her website. Let me tell you, the last thing a webmistress ever expects to do is put up an "In memoriam" page for a friend. But it had to be done, and the picture Alan chose, from their wedding day, was absolutely lovely. She looked so happy.
Godspeed, Pinky. And God, we're going to miss you.