Brigitte de Harrault

Today we would have celebrated her 62nd birthday. Brigitte, who so unexpectedly took her exit in September, or as Doris said, turned to ‘cosmic dust’.
How to describe her? How do you hold a rainbow in your hand?
And that is, ultimately, an appropriate question, because Brigitte was, in essence, light.
Like light, her properties were fluid as a wave in some interactions, and as hard-hitting as a particle in others.
Gently warm at times, but incisive when focused and coherent.
Capable of illuminating beauty as well as scorching that which was rotten.
When you got to know her, like light, she was made of a riot of colors and shades and wavelengths. Light, as telecom veterans know, when stimulated and decoded in the right ways, can carry an amazing number of diverse messages, in both directions, simultaneously, instantly, around the world.
We all knew, better than she did, that Brigitte was like light-fundamentally bright.
Brightness measured in what’s:
What were you thinking?
What are you up to?
What about this?
What if?
There is no need to rage against the dying of the light. Light affects us for a long time after it’s fused. We’ll be discovering energy reserves, and experiencing sun spots, for a while yet.
How do you hold a rainbow in your hand? If she were here in a more physical way, she might ask if we were working on the right problem. And if she could have disassociated from herself, a process she would have had fun with, she would ask if things needed to be solved at all.
Brigitte is now part of our experience. And she would tell us to process that experience. Having been brightened, warmed, and occasionally tanned and burned by Brigitte was not an annunciation. But it was an illumination that calls for reflection.
And if any one of us tried to bury what we felt about her, rather than feeling it, she would tell us, tersely, to remove the earth, and grass we had piled on those feelings.
She would command, Sod Off!