Gilda, on the month you unwillingly left us,
You came to the world in a land of cherries, rust, and lakes. You wore costumes. You grew up. You became a professional at spreading laughter. You looked at the world and the world looked at you. One day in May, you fell asleep. At first, everyone who learns about it can hear the laughter fading, leaving room for deafening silence. We start to collect pictures and anecdotes, like desperate historians trying to reconstruct a lost civilization.
And then we find you, giggling inside your best costume: immortality. We learn to find you in other people's laughter and in our own, in still images that try to come back to life, in the stories of your loved ones who whisper your name in a loud world. You come back to us, like the lilies blooming in my yard every summer and the snow in our Toronto tickling my eyelashes every winter. You are everywhere. You are in your 40s and also in your 70s, you beat oblivion.
We get to wear your memory without losing sight of our present. We celebrate your life, and your eternity.
