If you’ve ever received news that a loved one has died, you know the floaty-but-functional weird space that happens, just prior to it
really sinking in. My friend Virginia, whom I’ve really only known as Ginny, was a friend I met about 1979. She was 17 and I was 19, and we were both at a
Sudden Fun (who may still have been
the Liars then) concert out at the movie-theater-turned-nightclub in Rodeo, CA (China Club?). She was a sometimes-roadie, and may have been working for one of the bands. We became good friends instantly, and I asked her to help out on my next project, the Jetsetters, which I had just talked to Paul Alarab about starting. Anyway, that’s how we met. There are years of history, we were flat-mates even, in San Francisco, on Folsom above the Ramrod. Ringold Alley was in the back.
I had no idea she was so close to going. She kicked HIV’s ass for years, and I guess I figured she’d continue to kick ass and stay around forever.
She sent me an email on April 12
th, & I think she’d be ok with me posting it here:
So.. I have been diagnosed with Lymphoma, I have cancer everywhere, except my LUNGS! I feel like I should start smoking again!
I have (am) putting all the pictures, buttons, etc. in a couple of trunks. They will be in my grandma's tool shed (used to be the car port) with your name written all over it. I want you to have our memories...I have really missed you, I don't know if I ever told you how much you helped me, I was such an insecure girl. ... I was blessed with some really true friends, I love you very much, and I am sorry that I let time get away, I should have spent a lot more time with you over the years!
now I have 2 months, and let me tell you there is nothing nice about the mutation they call cancer, I wanted you to know I will turn 45... I seem to remember a discussion we had about how old we would be when we died...I believe we estimated much lower! I better quit rambling, and send this.
So I replied to her on the 13th that I wanted to come home (to SF) to see her, and then she was gone on the 19th.
Wowser. Ginny.
She was a wild one – then she was from wild stock.
Our grandparents knew each other from the 30s on. Ginny’s grandparents were Hon and Archie Brown, and my grandmother knew Archie’s brother Bimbo from Berkeley, and she used to attend Labor Movement meetings with them. My grandmother ran for Berkeley City Council on the Communist ticket in the late 20s (early 30s?), and later found religion in the 50s, and must have had a jolt when I introduced her to my friend Ginny, Archie Brown’s granddaughter, in 1980..
I am depriving you by not continuing to write about her, and our adventures- but I tell ya I just better do it later.
