By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THERE are friends we can entrust some of our secrets, although there are very few of them, not more than half the total count of our fingers. In these fingers, the secrets live a life, free and unconstrained, in total trust and acceptance, and thrive, not as secrets but as facts, a vibrant, integral part of the living you. To some you entrust more, depending on how much you think they can accept, based on their beliefs and capacity to understand.

Catherine Velasco, Cathy to most, is a long-time friend with whom I shared so many things. She is a nutritionist, a feminist, an environmentalist, a fellow alumna of the MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation. Our conversations range from the intellectual to the mundane. However, these past few months, we have shared mostly about managing the pandemic at the local level, indigenous remedies, ways to mitigate impact on family economies, and COVID deaths. So many deaths among friends and relatives than we want to acknowledge at first, but accepted during the course of time.

Last Wednesday (22 September), she sent me a private message about another death.

“Our niece Asti, lady pilot, writer, actress, film maker, dive master died in a plane crash during a rally/ show in Toronto, Canada. Only 44 with 4 children, divorced from her American husband.”

“What happens now to the children?”

“I don’t know yet. my cousin Tessie and husband left for Canada today to join the children and former husband of Asti. They remained friends even after the divorce. The husband is now married to an old friend daw. My niece was a strong woman. Empowered like you.”

That was a break from the COVID deaths we normally shock each other with. I learned later that two people were onboard the plane, “owner-pilot Susan Begg, 73, from the Ottawa area, and pilot Asti Livingston, 45, from Niagara-on-the-Lake”. “They were arriving for the next day’s start of the annual 2021 Gold Cup Air Rally sponsored by The East Canada Section Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots promoting the advancement of aviation through education, scholarships, and mutual support and shares a passion for flight”. The organization said, they were experienced pilots and were well respected and loved within the aviation community.

I do not want to hear about more deaths, but this death resurrected the memory a childhood desire, I wanted to become a pilot. That could have been me there, flying among the clouds, breathing my last breath of freedom. It is how I would have chosen to die, in the sky, not on a hospital bed, gasping for air.

The death of women soaring in their careers is truly sad, but they make us celebrate the dynamism, the texture, the color of their lives, the complexity of their being.

 

Landing

 

Listen, God!

I am here, catch my body

lay me on the waters

softly, without waking

the fish spawning

in the lake

or lay me in a forest

with the fireflies flickering

dancing in the dark

breathing the rhythm

of the full moon

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments