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!
