Mafalda, there were fireworks the night you died. From our back porch we watched them through the trees, surprised, some impromptu offering in the time of Covid. A high current of wind carried them away northward, carried you away, in firelight and starlight, a film of clouds between, the evening breeze over skin and a fog of renewed grief, cool and calming. There was the throb and hum of crickets and other summer night sounds all around, cacophonous, pulsing, a supernatural, wholly natural chorus singing “Life! Life! Life!” as it reclaimed you into that bigger, forever-life that nature shepherds.

The fireworks, muted through a deep lacework of leaves and branches, were mysterious and pretty and unspectacular…you would have noted and loved the way it looked. Some reaching higher above into the open sky… Where do you go now, Mafalda? How about I keep you here among the birches and apple trees and soft-needled pines, with me. Others will keep you too, together in all our places we will keep you in all the places you belong.

Derek said earlier, speaking of it all and of this new sorrow, “it’s like a bomb went off around us.” And then he said, “I loved her.”

You loved design and dance and art, nature of course, and people most of all, were attentive to life and its small and proper riches. And you loved your family conventionally, beautifully, perfectly. I’ve known no one kinder or more loving, and how did you find that grace? True grace, Mafalda.

I loved you. I love you.

Goodnight, beautiful Becas.

Mafalda Lobo, September 7th, 1967 – August 15th, 2020.