Kage Baker was born on June 10th in the now-unbelievably primitive year of 1952. Today, she would have been 71 years old.

Speaking of unbelievable, she would have found it hard to believe she had reached that advanced age. She would also have highly resented it, and complained about the limitations and discomforts it imposed on her physical existence. Kage suffered from arthritis from an early age – I think it was the result of her 7th year, when she caught about every rash-producing illness a kid could get. Somewhere amid all the diverse spots and inflammations that kept her in bed for most of a year, I think she had rheumatic fever – and with all these sicknesses ranging up and down the 5-kid string of children in the Baker household, it just never got identified.

The rheumatic arthritis got noticed, and the family doctor shrugged it off as inexplicable. The heart murmur that resulted also got noticed, frequently; but since Kage never had any cardiac symptoms except for the murmur, all the doctors who found it also shrugged it off. And then, when she was 56, she was diagnosed with cancer. That took up all the frantic medical attention she received, for the rest of her life – her heart could have been dancing a tarantella, and as long as it kept beating, no one would have worried.

That’s why it was so surprising and inconvenient when I had a heart attack, the last year of Kage’s life. It played hob with my ability to take care of her. On one memorable occasion, it caused us to get into an argument with the EMTs who had come in response to our 911 call, as to which one of us would get loaded into the ambulance first. The EMTs decided Kage was unlikely to die from cancer without warning, whereas I could shuffle off that mortal coil at any moment. So Kage waved goodbye in triumph as I was borne off first, protesting.

And yet … Kage was dead within the year, while I trudged on – through more heart attacks, the loss of several internal organs, my own bout with cancer, and the general weight of the advancing years. Now Kage has been gone for 13 years and I will myself be 70 in another 20 days. I’m not having any trouble believing it, as the last years have left me a semi-invalid with a hilarious medical record. My only surprise is that I’m still alive. I begin to suspect I may be unkillable, which is a fairly ghastly idea; sometimes, the knowledge that all this has an inevitable end is all that keeps me going …

I used to habitually tease Kage, on her birthdays, that for the next 3 weeks she would be 2 years older than I was. Today, I can hear her quite clearly reminding me that now, as for the last several years, I shall be the elder, advancing further into cronehood while she remains an age that seems ridiculously young to me now.

Kage was 57 when she died; the strands that were going to be white had as yet only paled to gold in the red sea of her hair. She never walked with a cane. She never developed cataracts. She never had to stop drinking. She died, yes; but she never got old.

I meant this chapter of my erratic blog to celebrate Kage, and her life, eccentricities and genius. But, you know – I really miss her, Dear Readers. And, just a little bit, at this point in my own superannuation, I envy her. She’s off on her own adventure, slow-dancing with God somewhere where the ballroom walls are made of nacre, and the sun and moon shine together over the westward-flowing sea. And I am sitting here, forcing out the words one by one as I type, and gloomily comparing the freckles on my hands with the rapidly advancing age spots on the same. Oh, poor decaying me!

But still: it’s Kage’s birthday! Time to eat some plums, drink some rum, write for awhile in her honour. She was, and somewhere she still is. Tomorrow I shall do more celebrating of her life here, I promise; I’ll be in a less self-pitying mood, less drowned in mourning and regret. I’ll tie back my greying hair with my damned black veils and find some memory of Kage with which to amuse you all.

Did I ever tell you about the time we broke down on the 5, and spent the time waiting for the tow-truck arguing over who would offer the mechanic oral sex if we didn’t have enough money to pay for car repairs? Boy, that was a time, what a time it was, it was …

Have a Coke and rum, Dear Readers, and toast Kage a little bit.