I Miss Ingrid

Last April, one of my dearest friends and no doubt the one of the rarest of souls to grace this planet died of cancer.

Not a day goes by when she doesn’t enter my subconscious—she’s with me everywhere.

My grief over this loss comes in waves. Some days I just remember a part of her that would have said in her Swedish accent—“Don’t give it another goddamn thought, Susie” or “Sweetheart, don’t let it bother you” or something provocative just to elicit a response in that inner Gropius prude.

Other times, like the last few days, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of loss. I miss her incredibly. The WORLD misses her. I think of circumstances with our coinciding circles and how different they would be with the gift of her energy, laughter, ability to make everyone feel both acknowledged and humble at the same time.

Honestly, there was no one who didn’t love Ingrid. She was that once-in-a-lifetime kind of person. She could live in the present like no one's business. She could turn an ass into an angel in a matter of minutes. She knew who she was but she was always up for learning more.

We are blessed now to have a continued relationship with Stig, her husband. He’s doing okay, missing her deeply, but carrying on with life just as she would want him to. An 87 year old, her senior by almost 20 years, he comes in to volunteer for me to keep himself busy. He works on Excel spreadsheets entering data. How amazing! I love the smile on his face when we stop by his house with a cheesecake.

With all of her orchids on the patio, the kitchen she just remodeled with the butcher block counter tops, her Siamese cat Coco—it’s so strange to see Ingrid’s home without her in it.

Today I drove past the entrance to her neighborhood. A red shouldered hawk was sitting up on the light post. Is it the same one we’d always admire when I dropped her off those hundreds of times after work?

The pond on the corner of Whitfield and Lockwood Ridge is as lovely as ever. We both loved to soak in its colors, expanding grasses—scanning for alligators and wading birds. That corner is forever marked “Ingrid.” Many things are marked this way.