Chapter One
It will be nine months, tomorrow.
Nine months since Ava passed.
She was 83 years old when breast cancer took her.
By the end, that lively (at times, almost fierce) spirit of hers took a beating.
So, when she finally surrendered the fight, it was something of a mercy.
I won’t try to tell you how much I miss her.
I couldn’t anyway.
That language hasn’t been fashioned yet.
What I will do is introduce you to her. The Ava I first encountered, unbowed by time or disease.
In May of 1956, I had just graduated from the School of Industrial Art in New York. It’s moved since then and changed its name, but it was (and still is, as far as I know) a high school for training commercial artists. I wanted to be, of all things, a newspaper comic strip artist, which was a tough row to h
