cordilleran
Well-Known Member
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- Feb 13, 2008
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I learned that a good friend of mine died four days ago. Linda Zayas lived a block from where I live and I frequently spent an joyful evening eating homemade tacos. A fiercely independent Chicana, she grew up in east L.A. and experienced in her 52 years what many in this forum might call the School of Hard Knocks. Drugs, abusive spouses, one bad break after another, she managed to rise above it all with a steely burnished grace that can only be defined by the intense fire of life's crucible. She never had a bad word to offer and would frequently break into song with a professional grade operatic voice that would cause the angels of heaven to pause in wonderment. We clicked due to some unspoken acknowledgment of similar experiences. She served as the unofficial ambassador of hope for every customer passing through her line at a local discount grocery store. Eleven weeks ago, I helped arrange a flight so that she could be with her brother receiving a life-assuring kidney transplant. It seems another sister in this close-knit Hispanic family felt she could live with only one kidney thus providing one of her own. Strange thing. A few days before I booked her flight, a customer, a person she had not seen before or afterward, gave Linda a $100 bill without knowing anything about her financial need saying to her "God wants me to give this to you". The money provided just enough cash for a round-trip ticket to L.A. and back to Walla Walla. Hours before her death as we chatted amicably through a purchase she mentioned to a couple of customers in her line that if they wanted to know about anything, I was the one to talk to. I chided her, reminding her that as a student of life I was ignorant of the most fundamental knowedge, but still willing to learn. At 11:45 P.M., Thursday May 28, her car failed to negotiate a curve just three blocks from her home. Her auto tore out a fire hydrant and a chain-link fence surrounding a local Catholic school's athletic field. She was ejected thirty feet from the car and died instantly. I don't deal with loss graciously. I've lost far too much, it seems, for me to be anything other than a chronic depressive. I am saddened by the rapidity that the unexpected wields its sure and unyielding scythe. Death takes the best and leaves the flotsam behind to drift recklessly in an uncertain heaving sea. But I am also encouraged that this gracious survivor lives on in the hearts and minds of those she so indelibly touched. I am one of those special recipients. Again, beside myself, I am the lone sentinel -- sadder but all the more wiser. I sincerely believe that Linda's unvanquished zest for life and love paid me a visit a couple of night's ago at a time I did not know of her passing. I live in a Victorian without doorbells. As such Linda would make here presence known by strumming her well-manicured fingernails against my living room's front windowpane. This I heard without question. I went to the front door expecting to see her bubbly countenance but no one was on the large wooden porch. My elderly mother related to me a similar experience upon her door the night before around 1 o'clock in the morning. Talking with her son but a few scant hours earlier today, he related a similar experience; a similar summon of fingernails rapping out a lively tatoo as had several others whom he had talked to who were near and dear to this special lady. She wanted more in life and in her violent death received it. I will conduct a well-lubricated wake in her honor tonight. I hope she pays me one last cherished visit. She leaves behind the madness of this feckless world to join in heavenly revelry.
