Dear Abigail (Abby) McGrath:

Carry On!

Dear Abby:

We were girls together at Bard College and we met in the springtime of our lives. I am talking to you Ms. Abigail (Abby) McGrath. We had plans--and now you've just up and gone, dead of liver cancer at 84.

Abby: You were one of a kind. You did everything, knew everyone, had a distinguished Harlem Renaissance lineage--your mother was a poet and your aunt a famous novelist. And you? You were an actor, a director, a dancer, a "bouncer" at Max's Kansas City, a kooky but brilliant off-Broadway theater person, a mother, a quintessential survivor.

We met for tea in my neighborhood and discussed--what? Great Art? Our work? Nah, we discussed symptoms and laughed at our physical limitations which never stopped us, not one bit. You joked about your feet. I one-upped you with stories of my own. But together, we remembered Jeanne Lee, the most talented of jazz singers, our Bard College classmate and Ran Blake, her dedicated accompanist—also a classmate; actress Barbara Colby, on the verge of stardom, who was shot dead in Los Angeles; and my roommate, Mary, (and now I cannot remember her last name), who died in a car accident after our first semester and who has haunted me ever since. Gone, all gone. You were surprised that I knew Jay Clayton, another great jazz singer who died last year. But why? Girl: I also got around.

Abby: I deeply regret that I could not accept your invitation to be a writer in residence or to deliver a lecture for your "baby," Renaissance House, in the Oaks Bluff section of Martha's Vinyard. What a good and generous idea, to offer writing spots and writing salons to gifted and aspiring writers. Well, I did faithfully read what you had publicly read every Fourth of July, that famous work by Frederick Douglas "What To The Slave is the Fourth of July?"

Abby: I was hoping to have a long overdue discussion with you about racism and about Israel. I thought that the two of us could really share some raw truths--but whenever we made a date, one of us was ill, or out of town. Damn!

Abby: In good conscience, I cannot envision you resting in peace, not anywhere, not even in the Great Beyond, you would still find a way to keep going in your spunky, incredible way.

Carry on dear Abby! And may your sons find comfort in your legacy.