Gone With The Wind

There are people who reach into your life and change it utterly, like whirlwinds. And then there are people who are not whirlwinds, but who bend your life gently, like a breeze, by the simple fact of their presence, and lead you where you didn't know you needed or wanted to be.

Rita Faith Bova (nee Manning) was no whirlwind. She was one of those people who diverted streams by being who she was, and without her, I'd be a completely different person today than I am, and a much lesser one. So today, don't look to me for comedy, or madcap silliness, or schtick. Which is not to say today was free of comedy and madcap silliness and schtick. Quite the opposite - frustratingly unable to share the same physical space as the rest of those whose lives she touched and rippled and helped to form, we've come to Dover, with which she felt a connection despite never having had the freedom to come and visit. I'd planned to have a bouquet of flowers waiting for d when we arrived yesterday, but bless 'em, the staff had had what they called 'a blonde moment' and hadn't got them. They arrived this morning, and included one small, perfect pink rose (which resonated because Rita was a fantastic rose-gardener), and some Hawaiian ginger, which took d back to a time when Rita had been most alive, and most herself - a little more than two decades ago, my girl took her mom to Hawaii. It was just the two of them, and the stories of that trip are plenty madcap. It was a time when d was able to give her mom a window, to escape the hardships of the everyday, have fun and be most genuinely alive. So to get the Hawaiian resonance today felt like a special gift.

The day was passed, as funeral days most often are, in memories and storytelling, in laughter and occasional tears. For us, it was also spent in thinking of those still living in her immediate gap, and wishing we could do much more to ease their day along.

As the day wore on, the clouds began to lour over a previously beauty-blue-skied Dover. They chilled the air right down to Winter, and a thin damp drizzle grew serious and thick. And the rain fell.

I'm not one for signs and portents, but it was pleasing to see, and feel, this darkness and this rain. Much like myself, Rita had always said she wanted rain for her funeral. In my case, make no mistake, I just want to make you all freezing and steamy and generally imbue the sense of grand misery that I think my passing would warrant. I'm not sure if if Rita's lively sense of mischief made her reasoning the same as mine - but while I bow to no-one in my appreciation of her sense of humour, I don't think she was as mean as I am. Nevertheless, she wanted cold, and rain and cloudy, and by jingo, we had it. If you want to read in, you could imagine that she wanted all these things, but wanted Larry to be comfortable, so she hit us with them all instead. Fair play, Rita Faith, that was neatly done.

When the time came that we knew her funeral was due to begin, d said ten silent Hail Marys, and I said a single silent Hail Rita, and we each plucked petals from the rose, and kissed them softly, and sent them scattered to the sea, to set our loved one free. Free from all the pain she's now escaped from in this world. Free from all the stress she felt for her beloved son. Free from a life that offered much but never quite came through for her. Free to be forever in our thoughts, and in our lives.

There are a kind of people, who when they leave us, make us feel like we will never see their kind again. We mourn more for our own misfortune, missing them, than for an ill we don't believe they any longer suffer. That's how today feels - as though not just a person but an era and a way of being has slipped away from us forever, gone with the wind of untimely change. And so we grieve our loss, and the loss of the world which never now will know her. But Rita Faith Bova was alive, and changed my life forever, and now is gone, set free to water and to wind, and given to earth and all its beauty. And to our lives, and memories, as long as we can share them.