Remembering Basha Hicks

When Brad and I first arrived in Rome in mid-September, we joined several expat groups and started to attend various sponsored events, including a Monday-night conversation exchange, a Tuesday-night group language lesson (where we’ve become regulars), and a Thursday night apertivo.

                                                                

All these events typically involve a reasonable cover charge (€10) that gives access to a small buffet and a drink. We go more sporadically to the Monday and Thursday events, but back on November 17, we happened to go to a wine bar in Trastevere for an expat apertivo. The crowds at these events have tended to be mainly younger working-people in search of networking opportunities, and we always feel a little left out. As I was standing in line, however, a lively 60-something woman came over to say how delighted she was to see someone her age. I said I couldn’t agree more, and Brad and I became fast friends with Basha Hicks right on the spot.

In the next couple of months, we spent a lot of time together, often at events and venues that Basha suggested. We learned quite a bit about her life. She was American, having grown up in Massachusetts and spent time in New York, among other places, before moving to Miami after marrying. She had an undergraduate degree in natural resources management and had spent ten years in Venezuela working for government-sponsored environmental agencies and programs. Her Spanish made her much more comfortable speaking Italian, of which I was jealous. She had also gone back to law school (at Harvard) in her late thirties and practiced law in Miami. She had just followed her 23-year-old daughter, Emelia, to Rome where Emelia is getting an undergraduate degree in Roman History from John Cabot University. Basha went to movies, lectures, museum exhibits, concerts, had joined both the American Academy of Rome and the MAXXI Museum of 21st century art. She had great ideas about where to go and what to see and great stories about her life, like meeting the Dali Lama through a mutual friend and babysitting Uma Thurman and her siblings when they were little (Thurman’s father was an international expect on Buddhism). She had applied for an environmental program working with lions in Kenya for the summer (you know, to get out of the heat of Rome, since it is winter in Kenya then).

It has taken me a while to be able to post this, but in late February, we got a text from Emelia to say that Basha was in the hospital in a coma and not expected to recover. She died on Friday February 24. What a shock and how many great experiences we will miss with her in the future!

Here are some memories of our too-short friendship:

Brad and I met Basha on November 17 at Drink Art Gallery, at an apertivo organized by the expat group, InterNations. (This is just a photo of random guests, stolen from their Facebook page.)

On November 23, with Basha and other friends, Brad and I attended the candlelight vigil at American Embassy in Rome organized by local Democratic groups after the election. We relied on Basha for intelligent political commentary. She would be so disgusted right now. We had dinner on Via Veneto afterwards with Rose and Wayne, other American friends we have met here. I wish I had taken a photo of the sign Basha made and brought to the vigil (but I think that might be her on the far left of one of the photos).

Just before Basha went home for her visit to the States over the holidays, the three of us went to a winetasting on the other side of town, and had coffee and pastries beforehand at a nearby Nonna Vincenza pastry shop that Basha liked. 

I had a bad, weeklong case of food poisoning in November and then fell and twisted my knee a little in January. Basha was always so concerned, checking in by email and making suggestions.

On December 10, Brad and I joined Basha at MAXXI and had the pleasure of meeting Emelia for the first time. We had a late lunch afterwards and Emelia shared her culminating paper with us (about Cassius, one of those involved in the Cicero-Catiline episode) as she was on her way later in the evening to an end-of0term meeting with her professor. Wish I had taken some photos of our group, but the art was great (in particular, the exhibition of the artist that drew Basha there that day: Pakistani-American artist, Shahzia Sikander).

On January 28, Basha organized a trip to two little towns north of Rome: Bomarzo with its Park of Monsters 

and Caprarola with its amazing Palazzo Farnese (plus the cats sleeping on the car roof in the sun of a wintery day). 

Because it was winter, we had the place essentially to ourselves. I will always remember singing with Basha in the music room of the palazzo, which has phenomenal acoustics, and also the crazy narrow streets of Caprarola with our driver, Stefano. 

My daughter, Lily, and her boyfriend, Luke, were visiting Rome at the time, and they joined us. It was a great day.  

In January or February, Brad, Basha and I went to see Martin Scorsese’s new movie, Silence. Brad and I suggested it because we had run into Scorcese at a small Roman church a few weeks earlier when he was in Rome to screen the film for 400 Jesuits. (This kind of stuff only happens here.) She was skeptical and rightly so. We were all underwhelmed and vaguely offended by the film, but it did provide a prompt for Basha to talk about her history with Buddhism and her spiritual beliefs.

The week before she died, we saw Basha a lot. First on Friday, February 17 for a group dinner at Ai Marmi, the famous pizza place on Viale di Trastevere with marble-topped tables and huge crowds. (Because of the marble, the locals call it the morgue: “obitorio” in Italian.) 

Afterwards, we went to the rooftop deck of Ken and Joan’s rented apartment in Trastevere. They had joined us for dinner and had been in Rome for some months while Joan was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Great fun.

Because we wanted to hear the details about her recent trip with Emelia to Milan, we had Basha over for dinner at our house the next night. Then on Monday, we joined the same group of friends for drinks at the rooftop bar of the Raphael Hotel, overlooking the Pantheon and Piazza Minerva with its obelisk held by a lovely little marble elephant by Bernini. (Glam shot of hotel stolen from their website.) Of course, Basha picked up the tab (just as she had one night when the three of us went for cocktails to the hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps)!

After that, Basha, Brad, Ken, Joan, and I had a wonderful dinner at Antonio dal Pantheon. It was where Ken and Joan, a few years earlier, had celebrated with friends and family after they renewed their wedding vows in Rome.

It was a very memorable dinner with lots of warm and interesting conversation and great food (I had pasta in tomato sauce and pig skins: so wonderfully Roman). We heard later that Ken and Joan had walked Basha home afterwards. They talked about how interesting she was and how sorry they were not to be able to get to know her better.

We are very grateful that we could be with Emelia, Emelia’s father and Basha’s wonderful sister, Lynn, who traveled to Rome after Basha’s death, for the memorial at Basha’s apartment. To you, Basha, my favorite rendition of the Irish song, “The Parting Glass.” We miss you! May you rest in peace and keep us in your thoughts …

February 24, 2018: Remembering Basha today, on the anniversary of her death. Brad and I along with Ken and Joan Richmond (friends we had just met last year at this time when they were last visiting Rome who also met Basha just before she died) went back to the Hotel Rafael to give a toast...here's to our warm memories of you, friend!