This Time of Life

DL SEA-ATL 12-Feb-2020 – it’s getting to be a more and more difficult time of life: in my email this morning was a notification that Jennifer’s and my dear friend, Judie Romeo, died.

Judie was loud, opinionated, and, I suspect, could be difficult to work with. She was, recently, on the wrong side of the backhand of the new Center for Wooden Boats (CWB).

Judie was there at there beginning, saw her self as special within CWB and its history, and by the end had become an anachronistic reminder of days gone by in an organization that is becoming more corporate to support a mission in keeping with both its geographic position in the maturing city of Seattle and its financial needs to support its long term mission statement and real estate holdings.

Except for the gap teeth, the thirty-something Judie pictured on her obit, looks nothing like the seventy-plus woman Jennifer and I would hug at third Friday events or drop in on when I was near South Lake Union or see for coffee, lunch and dinner here and there around Seattle.

I don’t know if Judie was as pleased to see everyone as much as she seemed to be when she saw Jennifer and me, but it was a special feeling to be valued as much as Judie seemed to value us.

I met Judie the first year I volunteered at CWB. Some major letter printing and envelope stuffing was underway. Judie was very precise on how she wanted it done. I could see a way to use some list processing technology to make the work faster and simpler, but correctly realized that such confusion would not be welcomed. But there was that something. I knew she thought I was attractive, and while I would work as instructed, she couldn’t buffalo me, nor would I push back against seemingly arbitrary decisons.

At CWB, Judie belonged to the generation that was sunsetting. Her peers were people almost a generation ahead of me and fading. Judie’s queen bee position was not recognized by the people two generations behind her; Judie’s values of showmanship were no longer valued.

She portrayed her life as a difficult time. She had little money and was dependent on an artificially low rent

But she had been somebody once. Someone who facilitated people of importance through marketing visits and brand strengthening in the public and private sectors. She implied she was not a lonely woman in those days, which meant male friends of various relationships.

Judie had a long term relationship of twenty- plus years, which included trips up the inside passage, but no marriage. I`m not certain Judie ever mentioned the man’s name, but I always wondered how Judie ended up broke.

Judie wanted to be in a romantic relationship, but she seemed to suffer like Tony Curtis who declared that the idea of someone his own age was ridiculous. She also knew attracting someone twenty or thirty years her junior was unlikely, but she tried. She confided in me about a much younger man she was telephoning with back east. They were friends but she hoped that it would morph into something. Time passed and she stopped mentioning him.

Judie ran the third Friday talks at CWB. We’d see her there when we were in town. When Hilary was with us, Judie would pay special attention to her. Hilary would be brighten and become her best gracious self. Judie would praise Jennifer and me, and express concern for us.

In the last year, we discussed a third-Friday presentation on sailing with Alzheimer’s.

There was nothing special about the last time we saw Judie, a few days before we left for Hawaii. She was having some health issues linked mostly to her weight. Where we once, at her initiation, discussed her weight, she was now deaf to any mention of it.

She wasn’t on my people-to-see list when we came back to Port Townsend this time; we planned and only did come into Seattle once.

Before we pushed back from the gate, Jennifer was next to me in seat 22A. She was speaking to me as my email downloaded. Judie’s name passed by in a subject that said something about memory or memoriam or remembrance. I said, fuck. Jennifer’s eyes turned angry at being interrupted. I said fuck again and one more time. Jennifer’s anger at being interrupted paused but did not end. I paused for a moment because words wouldn’t come, then ‘’Judie Romeo is dead.’’

The email notice said she died peacefully at home. To me it said she died alone.