My friend Susan Sugar left her body last month. I was on my way to Key West, hoping to see her, but I didn’t get there in time to hold her hand before she left. She passed on the day I arrived.

She was an incredible painter.

She lived in Key West, and also in Manhattan. When she was in Key West, she would ride her bike to the Reynolds Street Pier every morning to paint the dawn. So, on the morning I woke up in Key West after her departure, that’s where I went. I hadn’t painted plein air in a while, and hadn’t painted the sky in watercolor in ages. But I did, and I found her there.

I saw her in the frigate birds that soared above me. I felt her in the sky, pushing the clouds into formation. I felt her as I painted, smiling and joyful, dancing and free. When she was here, she called me ‘Slim,’ which no one else in the world called me, and that first morning I saw a woman walking towards me on the pier, wearing a tshirt that said “SLIM” and I smiled, and got goosebumps. Is that what you can do now? Some kind of wild, playful magic that perfectly matches your spirit? It was delightful.

I kept painting. I wasn’t very good at it, but I didn’t care. I went every morning. I talked to her, and to the chickens and pigeons, and to her beloved friend Danny, and others who came by and saw me and wanted to talk about her - just because I was painting on her pier, at her time. I looked at her work when I got home, learning from it, and from her. I got better.

She made everything beautiful. Her homes, her paintings, her meals, her friendships, her self. And she’s doing it still. On the last day of our time in Key West, we went to the pier at dawn for a celebration of her life. I don’t know how many of us were there - sixty, maybe? Children, elders with walkers, all ages in between - all in white, all lined up on the pier, watching the sun rise. There was music, and it was windy, and she was in a beautiful urn that passed from hand to hand and heart to heart, until she was handed to her friend in a kayak, who rowed her out to sea. The frigate birds soared, and a dolphin swam by.

We gathered in a restaurant on the beach to break bread and tell stories. We who gathered were woven together by our love for her. It was beautiful; I didn’t want to leave. I love Key West, I love my community there, I love the skies that taught me how to paint. And now, on this trip, they - and Sugar - brought me back to painting. That’s a dance, too - the back and forth with art, the ebb and flow. You paint, you live, you laugh and love and grieve and struggle, and you paint again. That was her life, and that is mine.

Thank you, dear Sugar, for leading the way.