monday night i was rollerblading from the montgomery street bart station to work. up kearny. past financial district bars and chinese restaurants and skyscrapers and flower shops and all of those boxes. the ones with the newspapers standing up, headlines a barely legible blur as i fly by. and i saw Katharine in there. and my breath caught. and my heart. and my hand to my mouth. and i’m braking. i’m doubling back. i’m kneeling in front of the yellow san francisco chronicle box as if in church, genuflecting before the altar. she died sunday, they said. at the age of ninety six, they said.

and i thought for sure she’d live forever.

oh, Katharine!

i do not know how to feel. i mean, we weren’t buddies or chums or pals or lovers or sisters or family friends. i just adored her. admired the way she comported herself through the world. the way she was a feminist, before feminism was a word. the way she wore trousers, instead of always dresses. the way she never watered down her mind, her individuality, her strength and power. the way she never let anyone own her or tell her what she could or couldn’t do. could or couldn’t be. she was always her own. she only took roles in which the woman was strong. she didn’t pander to the people to the press, to the popular notions of womanhood. she loved and she didn’t let love diminish her.

and i’m holding my heart. my eyes are burning. i do not know how to feel, who to talk to, who would understand. i arrive at work and i try to explain . . . who she was and what she did and how and with what grace and strength and integrity and self-love and how i adored her. and as is always the case with death, words are insufficient to illustrate the wonder of a life.

leaving later that evening, i rollerbladed all over downtown san francisco, collecting newspapers. i felt half-crazed, but i wanted every obituary i could find. i went searching for the new york times, as if it would have the answer. the answer to what? the question of Katharine.

i never found it. the new york times or the answer. i sat on the bart train, reading her obituaries, so many of them so poorly done. defining Katharine only in terms of her relationship with spencer tracy. saying garish things about her. it was easy to see which of those obituaries were written by individuals who had never seen her films, who had no sense of the context of her life. some of them were better. more accurate. more appropriate. more respectful.

no answers. i just tore through the insufficient words, clawing at what never gets to be kept. she lived so very long and so very well. who am i to cling so tightly?

i practice release. i practice appreciation. i practice letting go.

i don’t watch television. had it not been for the fact that i had a work shift on monday, it would probably have taken me a little while to realize that she had died. sometimes in the course of the past several years, i would find myself thinking, ‘oh, god. i wonder if Katharine has died. i wouldn’t even know . . .’ and then i found myself searching half-panicked through websites, trying to find something which would confirm that she was still breathing.

Katharine Hepburn breathes no more. i felt slightly sheepish trying to explain to my partner what that means to me. and what Katharine has meant to me. and how she has affected my life. even though i never knew her personally.

andre was marvelous. she took me quite seriously. she was warm, sympathetic, and kind. she understood immediately. andre said to me, quite simply, “she was in your heart.”

yes. she will always be. in my heart.