My thought was to begin this blog with my ruminations on the process of recording my latest jazz CD. I intend to do that; after all, this is my music blog. But today I learned that a very young lady, who grew up here in Petaluma and whose family I have known for several years, died tragically and unexpectedly from a fall off a cliff overlooking Rodeo Beach in the Marin headlands. Although I didn’t know Phoebe Washer very well personally, I do know her mother, Drew, and was especially smitten by her brother Henry, who is a friend of my daughter. I’ve been thinking about the family all day long, and feel so heavy in my heart for their pain. It is something I dare not imagine, that devastation and utterly bereft and unfathomable dark hole of anguish that Pheobe’s parents must be experiencing as I write this. In moments like these, one automatically thinks of their own child, and the heart clenches in that reflexive, instinctual spasm of “oh no God please don’t ever let this happen to mine. Please keep her safe.” And I’m not religious in any way, but Who Else to call on but ‘God’ the huge omnipresent Presence who surely must be able to prevent things like this from happening? If not God, then Whom?
Phoebe was a truly remarkable artist. In fact, her art was astounding, deep and full of a wisdom that belies the young age at which she created it. You can see it at her website: http://www.phoebewasher.com.
I think that Phoebe’s art perfectly reflects the image that I have of her in my mind. Ethereally beautiful – 
in fact, she was so physically beautiful, as you can see, that it was hard to look at her – impossible beauty! Yet with a sweetness that was not cloying or self-aware…more nostalgic or old-fashioned. So much like the images that she created in her paintings. Maybe it’s because I am the mother of a teen-aged girl, but I find that all of the young women here in Petaluma that were Phoebe’s friends and my daughter’s acquaintances are so painfully beautiful in their rawness and openness. How was Phoebe able to render those aspects of herself into images that evoke stories of loneliness, pathos, searching, discovery, arrival? At 16, 17, 18, 19 years of age? Only talent that she was born with, and parents that nurtured it, and friends and family who loved her for it and knew it’s promise.
Dear Phoebe, rest in peace. I am so sorry you are gone. Sorry for all those who love you and will miss you every day. You’ve reminded me today that the beautiful, the talented, the special and the blessed can leave just as suddenly and irrevocably as anyone else.
