Wild is the Wind

What I remember most are her eyes. To say they shone like diamonds would be an understatement.

They weren’t diamonds; they were floodlights. They lit up the whole room and everyone in it. Their spark was contagious, and they were only a glimpse of the boundless joy for life that oozed from her.

Next came her energy. She took the ordinary and made it extraordinary. She took what otherwise would go unnoticed, like a teardrop in the sea, and made it the only thing that mattered. At least that’s how I felt. Whenever we talked, I felt like nothing else on earth existed. She was there, she was present, she cared.

Then she’d run off mid-sentence and jump into Kennebec Lake wearing nothing but her denim jacket and a mischievous smile. And that jacket, I could never forget that jacket. It looked like it came straight out of 1965, but she made it timeless.

It kept her warm when she spent four months in the Australian outback bartending to get by. It turned heads when she strutted through the glamorous streets of Monaco without a care in the world. It was a comfy pillow while she hiked the Kungsleden Trail in Sweden and slept under the stars.

That jacket went with her everywhere she went. It was by her side when she walked away from her job for good. When she left to find herself. When she left all of us behind to chase what was ahead.

The next time I saw her, she could not stop talking about those six months backpacking around Southeast Asia. She talked about the struggles, the excitement, the extreme highs and bottomless lows, the nights she couldn’t remember, the nights she wished she could forget, and the days she truly understood who she was. Riding on the back of a motorcycle without a care in the world and following her whims wherever they took her.

Free. The only way she knew how to live. It was the time of her life, until the next time of her life happened. And they didn’t just happen; she made them happen. She ignored every inhibition, lit up every moment of every day, and never settled.

Being with her felt like walking through a hurricane and staying dry. Like anything and everything is possible.

Anthony Bourdain once said, “Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

Except in her case, it wasn’t just her body; it was her whole life. I’ve never met someone who enjoyed the ride as much as she did. Someone who rode every ride in the park and then went back for more.

The last thing I remember is taking a red-eye flight to Scotland. On a cold autumn day we buried her, along with her denim jacket, in a small ceremony outside of Stirling. A flame like hers is never meant to last forever and can only withstand the wind for so long.

But that flame still burns. It burns deep inside of me and everyone else who knew her. It burns where even the wildest wind can’t extinguish it.