A memorial for Bobbe Ross on her birthday

Had she lived, my dear friend Bobbe Ross would have been 88 years old on May 17.  It's a birthday with a special meaning in Japan, as the characters for 88 resemble the character for rice, a symbol of purity and goodness. Not that Bobbe believed in that particular symbol, but she would have insisted we celebrate the occasion with Chinese food, which she loved. Afterwards we would have gone to a movie--something on the big screen, something with quality and heart and flair or good politics or possibly just an absurdly funny one. She had eclectic tastes.

Bobbe died in the autumn of 2013, after several years of living with Alzheimer's disease. The last time I saw her, in a Boulder nursing home a few months before she died, she looked at me and said "I love you" as I was leaving. I blew her a kiss in return. It was a very appropriate goodbye for someone who was one of the best friends I've ever had.

This photo, taken in the mid 90s with her daughter, Sable, is one of my favorites, as it shows something of her style and her pleasure in being with us that day. I think she was one of the first in her generation to get a tattoo.

Here is an edited version of a memorial essay I wrote a few weeks after her death.  Reading it again today helped me remember our heady feminist days in Denver and the friendship that continued after I left Denver for Japan.

Bobbe had a generous nature and expressed it in so many ways, especially with her time and willingness to “walk her talk”. My first memory of her--in 1977--is placed in the Capitol Hill basement where a group of us put together the feminist newspaper, Big Mama Rag. I think we had just come back from a demonstration against the Hyde Amendment, one of many which have since curtailed women’s reproductive freedom. We connected as politically active women who had started life in Chicago and had moved to Denver within the same year. There was a heart connection too. I loved her laugh and that passionate spirit--later so well expressed on her kitchen magnet, “Dance naked with your cats”. I think one reason she took to our politicized community was the fact that dancing was a part of it.  Another was her joy in finding a movement focusing on women’s autonomy--less available to her generation which came of age in post World War II America.

She had a certain style. Here she is a few years later, visiting her friend Linda Lane in the mountains and posing with someone else's motorcycle in a restaurant parking lot. (Same T-shirt, I see, the one with two women relaxing on a beach. She loved the water. )

Bobbe loved justice more than anyone I ever met. Writing for Big Mama Rag gave her the opportunity to explore more deeply the connections among racism, classism and sexism. That was the one project we shared. I went on to the Woman to Woman Bookstore Collective and she went on to several other projects--Jobs for Justice as well as much legal support work. She also supported Native American rights and followed the issues, including the Hopi/Navajo Big Mountain struggle. 

She traveled outside the US, with particular interest in countries that had had communist revolutions--Russia and Cuba. After she returned, she never really expressed any disappointment with how those revolutions had turned out. Instead, she focused on the people she had met and talked with. I think “revolution” was always a very personal matter, rooted in experience. It’s not surprising that two of her favorite writers were Tilly Olsen and Meridel LeSeur, two working class women who raised families and supported many progressive struggles in the mid-20th century. Despite setbacks, Bobbe “kept the faith”. I think the poster she kept on her wall for years showed that--the one with the smiling Chinese girls holding a net full of brightly colored fish. It stayed there, long after the abuses of the Mao years were revealed, a symbol of what remains possible.

Like all of us, I think she understood that political activism is a story of dealing with loss more than victory. She was prone to episodes of depression periodically--which she usually shared with me after the fact. I think that understanding of the nature of loss helped her be the empathetic friend she was. When I was going through a crisis with the Woman to Woman collective in the early 80s, she shared her own experiences dealing with embarrassment, disappointment and anger. A very understanding friend indeed. 

Shortly after that, when I became a part-time foster mom for a little boy named Gabriel, she was understanding there too, being a mom herself. Though she worried about her own parenting, past and present, as well as how the future would turn out for her kids, she often expressed her pride in how they were creating that future. If she could come back today, she would be so pleased to see how their lives have continued to unfold, all filled with love and good work in the world.

When anyone jumped on her choices--whether it be smoking, driving habits or refusal to do something for her own good--she could be fiercely stubborn, defending her right to do as she pleased. But in turn, she supported my right everyone's right to do the same. However, after years of hearing her rail against “professionals” who could or would not support the grassroots, I wondered how she’d feel when I chose to go back to grad school to get a Master's degree. I need not have wondered. She was totally supportive.

After I went to Japan in 1990, she continued to be a dear friend. She wrote letters and sent funny cards. On my visits back to Denver, I always stayed with her. We often went to plays or movies. She also joined me at the reunions I had with old friends at The Mercury Cafe. This photo, taken in 2005, is the last one I took of her.

Every year we laughed and talked a lot, and every year, at the end of the visit, she said, ”This was the best one yet!” After I bought my cabin and put it on Linda Lane’s land in Florissant, she came out to visit. She loved the beauty of the sky and the expanse and the majority of my neighbors--llamas and alpacas. I remember her sitting in the pasture several times just watching them. And of course, if a dog appeared with a radius of 50 feet, you know she’d be there making friends with him or her and the accompanying human.

After Bobbe died, her children scattered her ashes in Nebraska. Her roots were in northwest Nebraska, near Crawford, where she had spent summers as a girl. Once I traveled with her and Sable for a visit. I saw and heard about some of the things she had loved in this small town--especially her joy and skill in swimming and stories of an early romance. Later, she returned to be with her cousin Mary when Mary died. She returned home, saying, “I know now that death isn’t something to be afraid of,” adding that she could see what a peaceful departure it had been for her cousin.  I don’t know whether that subconscious understanding carried her through her own passing, which happened under more difficult circumstances. But it’s clear that Nebraska is the very best possible final resting place for her ashes. Her spirit is certainly already there--as it is in our hearts as well. I am so honored to have been her friend.