Fairy Godmother

I always thought Lynnie was an angel.

She would arrive like a breath of wind into our house and read to me when my parents went out.
Then she would disappear again.

I didn’t realize until later that her title was Babysitter. My mom was a deeply involved, enthusiastic, stay-at-home craft-creator and my dad spent most of his not-at-work time vacuuming with us attached to him like koalas or running in circles with the sprinklers, the hose, the hula hoop, and the baseball paraphernalia.

Anyone that was invited into our sweetly loving and exuberant home was an extension of us:
our extended family members; Bernard: the mailman who my mom befriended very early on (and who once came to Thanksgiving); Norma, a wise (and wise-cracking) old lady full of life and a zest for storytelling (who’d technically begun as a client of my moms and stayed much much longer as the long lost relation she was)— and Lynnie, a glowing soul whose effervescence was as palpable as her tangibility was not.

Before we even moved away from my childhood home, and indeed to the other side of the country, Lynnie vanished. I thought surely my mom would know where she had gone, but even my parents had no idea.
Just one day she was no longer in our lives.

My 8 year old self did not find this as odd as many might have thought.
I had always thought she was floaty and sparkly— full of spirit and love and imaginative thoughts.
This event in my life solidified my hypothesis: Lynnie was an angel.

As I grew up and spoke to my mom about her strange disappearance, I became more and more convinced that she’d been a dear, kindly angel that had graced us with her presence and had been then called away on another mission. I was awed and grateful for the time she had spent with us.

When I turned 23, I moved to New York City alone, frightened but determined— and beyond exhilarated to live in the bright, loud city and become an actress.
Suddenly, I received a message.
Lynnie, my Lynnie, the angel who had gone away, lived in New York and she wanted to take me to a Broadway show.

The big-hearted, sweet soul that had found hers and become her life partner generously sent us to the front row of Kinky Boots, one of the most joy-filled and inspiring musicals I’ve ever seen.

And just like that, she was back in my life.

Over the course of my six years in New York, we spent hours lunching, strolling, having tea, baking cookies, hugging, laughing, and basking in each other’s company. We had long talks about the world as we know it— and the world as Lynnie knows it. Her bright blue eyes were as otherworldly and magical as her thoughts. I sat for hours listening to her mystical experiences, experiences which I had not a single doubt were as real and magnificent (if not more) than the ‘real’ world. Amidst all this, I rechristened her Godmother. I wrote her name on all kinds of forms in sheer delight thinking, of course, ‘fairy’ as I wrote Godmother.

In occasional lulls of silence we would sit together taking in the sunshine, caressing the scenery with our eyes. When my sisters arrived in the city we began to all go out together. She taught us meditations and manifestations. She bought us mittens and hats. She reminded us that her friend, the homeless man on the corner of 42nd and Lexington, would be happy to receive a wave and a hello from Lynnie if we happened to be passing that way. She told us that the world was shifting. There were dimensions that were constantly moving around her. If I half-closed my eyes I could sense them, like she was a prism and a continual rainbow was dancing around her physical body.

When the cancer came back and her body began to weaken, she would croak out at us, still vibrant and jovial, that when she got through this she would have something profound to give to the world and we would have a feasting celebration like none other.

None of us were worried. She was an angel. A spirit from another realm and we trusted what she said. So, while we brought her treats from the bakery, helped move furniture, sent video messages and, on one special occasion, wheeled her to the restaurant next door to her apartment for a big lunch, we knew in our hearts as she went through surgeries and canceled plans, that on the other side was a lifetime of love and food and revelry with Lynnie.

But Lynnie died on May 3rd.

I found out in the midst of a global epidemic but I was far from it. I was with my love in a gorgeous, if chilly, faraway wood by a lake.
It felt poignant. Tears streamed down my face as I looked out into the expanse of the earth. The lake sparkled. Enormous mountains, gorgeous, glorious loomed with their snow caps across from us. The woods were quiet and soft, the sand on the beach sifted like a million minuscule crabs were building in a workshop beneath the world. I felt the sting of her physical loss fling around me but it refused to wrap.
What wrapped around me instead was the incredible beauty of the natural world, the sweetness of creation and sheer aliveness— none of which had ended with her.
I could still feel her. She was a lilac-colored butterfly, she was a crest on the water. She was every leaf on the trees. She had not left me.

Finding Lynnie again in New York had always been a gift I am glad to say I never took for granted. Every moment I looked at her, I thought thank you for this extra time. It was always extra time.
At 8, I thought I’d never see her again. But then, there she was, right by my side, right when I’d needed her most.

It is profound to know that you will never encounter someone’s physical presence again, to know you will miss them keenly and feel a surge of sadness that your love will pour out in their direction and they will not feel it— and also to know with even more certainty and richness that a spirit never dies but sweeps on, happily, in the sparkling enthusiasm and magnitude of the world.

with the most divine plummyness and open-hearted gratitude
to my (fairy) Godmother Lynnie

I send out joy and confetti,

Alexa