Messages of praise and affection for Tasia have been many, on Facebook and elsewhere. Well-deserved, professionally and personally from 91 years of a well-lived life.
I’ve been an acquaintance of Tasia’s since sometime in the 70s and a friend for a number of years, especially during her time as a board member of VSA North Fourth Art Center. But it wasn’t until the last three or four years that it feels right to talk about Tasia, my buddy.
Tasia and I decided to write our first books during our super-ager (a rather new designation for people over 80) years. I’d been journaling and collecting scraps of info and pictures from scattered locations for some time; Tasia, on the other hand, seems to have been doing the same, though in a much more focused and serious world, including documents, legislation, letters, news releases/articles…the stuff of history. So, there we were a while ago, sitting on my couch with two friends, putting the possibilities out there. And we did it…and encouraged each other in the doing. Easier for me, a travel memoir; much more exacting for Tasia, an important work of New Mexico and women’s movement history. The Change Makers: How New Mexico Became the Land of Women’s Equality was published just weeks before Tasia’s death in late July of this year.
I am calling us book buddies because no small part of my deep sadness is that I imagined us with the occasional coffee or limoncello in hand over the next years sharing ‘author’s’ observations, perhaps laughing at a silly comment or glowing from a compliment. Maybe we’d regret starting our writing-book adventures so late in life, perhaps we’d think it was just right.
About the indomitable Tasia. I suppose everyone who knew her well or even a little over the years knows about this Tasia. I did not until this closer friendship. And remember these are just my observations.
First. She never stopped working, professionally and/or personally. Ever it seems. Mostly these last years on the book, down to the last pre-publishing details, but also on her work with the legislature, her forays with Robert out to any number of New Mexico’s cultural, social, and political events, and not least, enjoying family and friend interactions of every sort. It is almost certainly rude of me to say this, but it came very close to being annoying! Here I am, three or four years younger, and spacing my ‘work’, outings, and hanging with friends and family all out over days and weeks. One thing a day.… While every time I talked to Tasia, it seemed she had several of the above going on almost simultaneously. I know that she did space herself a bit more in the last year or months, but it always seemed like so much to be doing. Like truly personifying what whoever invented the title ‘super ager’ must have meant.
And secondly, I think this loosely qualifies under the indomitable label; maybe it’s a separate category: Tasia’s fairness in discussing anyone and everyone. At least in my experience of her. In any of our discussions or chats, I never heard Tasia engage in hurtful gossip, rumors, or trash talk. Yes, honestly. Not even a little.
Not that she was given to saccharin allusions or politically-fakish complements, it’s just that she always seemed so fair in her references to one and all. I do like to think, had we had time to drink more limoncello together, she would have dropped a gossipy tidbit into the conversation now and then.
I miss Tasia a lot. We only saw or communicated with each other occasionally so the hole her passing leaves in my life isn’t that of a daily or even weekly big talk or news exchange; it’s just that I thought many more kindly-little-old-ladies or sharp-as-a-tack book authors’ discussions lay in our futures. But, I am so grateful for the time as writing buddies we had.
The phrase ‘growing old together’ is usually taken to mean with one’s partner. Well, I’ve taken it to mean my elder friends (you must be over 80 to qualify…and you know who you are). I do not want any of you to go away before I do. Tasia escaped first, but wow, what a full life she had. A lesson to those of us who will shortly follow…let us not waste last hours, months, years.
