I wish you’d met her. You would have loved her. No one didn’t.
A salute to my friend, Judy Walker (1949 to 2003)
Many this week were nostalgic about August 14, 2003, the day the lights went out for a huge swath of northeastern North America. I lived on the west coast at the time and missed the outpouring of community-mindedness it prompted. For me, though, this historic event will forever be linked to the final fade-out of the light that was Judy Walker.
***
I was 20 minutes into a job interview for the Director of Administration at ICLEI, an international environmental NGO. Clues about how the job would go made my 30 year old self look straight at my soon-to-be boss and say “you know I’m not going to be your mother, right?”
Judy, the co-interviewer, laughed with such force she spat coffee onto her tailored blouse. That was our first meeting. Later I’d learn her buyer at Holt Renfrew had selected that blouse, along with most of her stunning clothes that I’d later inherit. Judy’s injection of much-needed style into the Canadian environmental movement was only matched by her irrepressible American enthusiasm.
I don’t know who competed against me for that job, but because Judy ran that organization from the backseat, there was no question - with such irreverence and, as it turned out, perception, I was in.
While Judy was 17 years further down life’s road than I was, it never felt that way. She hung out with me and our other gen-x colleagues as we shot pool badly, sipped vodka martinis with olives, and lost pennies to each other in Rummoli tournaments. When we travelled for work, Judy was the welcome breath of fresh air at the end of a long day of meetings, as ready to don a lei and head to the luau in Honolulu as she was to kick back on the beach at New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. Or go to the outdoor midday market in Shenyang, China. Or reflect on her Lutheranism over a Reisling outside the church in Wittenberg. Yes, we had great travel in that job!
Whether Judy had always had this level of vitality, or whether it was fuelled by her health history, I’ll never know. Judy came into my life as a decade+ cancer survivor. Her melanoma had been treated at Sloane Kettering in New York when she was still an HR recruiter in Manhattan. She wasn’t a New Yorker by birth - no, she was a small-town girl from Scranton, Pennsylvania, but she’d adopted her love of things good in NYC, I’m sure. She brought that with her to Canada when she came to get her masters in environmental studies which led her to the love of her life, Graham, and to her job in the environmental movement where the lack of pay was more than made up for by the meaningful goals - helping cities develop sustainably and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Twenty-five years ago this was cutting edge and we were jazzed to be part of it. (I wish we’d changed more minds, but that’s for another blog).
When I left Toronto for law school five years after meeting Judy, she hosted the goodbye party.
Her health took a turn just a couple of months later.
In my first February reading week I returned to Toronto to spend time with her. When she turned 54 in July of the same year, friends told me I should book another trip. When I arrived days after the August blackout, she was able to share with me not tales of eating BBQ'd burgers with neighbours, but the trauma the power failure had caused her when it interrupted her oxygen supply. I visited with her as much as her energy could take that week. One day, she asked me to dose out the liquid morphine she was taking for pain. The mechanics of her request were so simple yet it drove a knife through me, forcing me to lighten the mood.
“Ah, where are the olives, Judy?” I asked as I poured the liquid, more viscous than vodka, into the tiny plastic cup.
She laughed weakly.
The next day, I arrived to find her unconscious. She squeezed my hand though when I told her I loved her as I left. I think. I hope. I received news she’d died three hours later while in the Air Canada business class lounge having somehow managed an upgrade on that flight home. It was hardly a shock but I managed to be shocked nonetheless. Canadian indie film director, Atom Egoyan, sat across the aisle from me on that flight. I smiled through tears as I imagined sharing with Judy how annoyed I was to be too overwrought to be a fangirl.
Judy showed me a different kind of womanhood. She didn’t buy into that list of impossible expectations America Ferrera so eloquently enumerates in this month’s blockbuster film, Barbie.*She was a boss and a leader; she ate what she wanted; she presented herself as she wished, without regard to whether it would draw attention; she spoke her mind; she wasn’t syrupy; and she didn’t take herself too seriously. Being like her is one of those unattainable constants on my to-do list.
I can’t believe it’s been 20 years.
* If you think you’re too male/old/erudite/important to see Barbie, (a) you’re not; and (b) at least do yourself a favour and read the Ferrera monologue here.
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