Photo by Bill Perrault
It's sad that with my father's death and other drama affecting me mentally, I had to set aside writing anything for my friend Patricia Fillingham, who passed away just a few days before my father did. I take comfort in the fact that she wouldn't begrudge me for any stalling. Week after week at the Stone Soup series, she took time between listening and struggling with her walker to talk to me, invite me to one of her parties (I wish I attended one), or just ask me if I was all right. Most of the time, I wasn't, though I tried to tell her otherwise. She was too sharp an observer to stop asking.
Often, it felt like a hand basket of hell on Mondays when I started helping out with Stone Soup, learning the ropes and trying to implement some positive changes. Patricia was one of the people who never stopped letting me know how much she appreciated what I did.
The last two weeks of going back to Stone Soup have been jarring. When I see the empty spot in the front row, I feel like I'm addressing a different group. This is how much of a fixture she was in my life on Mondays.
It was my friend and one time Stone Soup feature, Jen Kohl, who first dubbed Patricia a "spitfire" just on the basis of her no-nonsense demeanor on the the open mike. I just went with it and started to introduce her as the Spitfire of Stone Soup. She took good-hearted issue with that, telling everyone that she didn't see her as a spitfire at all; but given her resolve and her poetry--much of it a no-holds barred take on her old age and other frustrations--it just seemed to fit.
"She was so frustrated with being old," a friend recently related to me in an email, "and with all her body really--she felt so much it was wearing out." This is true, but her frustration was tempered with her passion for life and the arts, whether it was the weekly Stone Soup readings (along with the reading she hosted in Belmont), or publishing her poetry and the works of other poets through Wart Hog Press, or interacting with the various Stone Soup goers (Stone Soup member Bill Perrault recently revealed that Patricia had talked to him about publishing his work). She told me once that she preferred Stone Soup's unpredictable open mike to any of the features. She got to know many of its regulars well, but she would talk and listen to anyone who visited the venue. If she interrupted anyone to speak louder (sometimes throwing off a performer), it's because she had simple hearing troubles but wanted to make sure she listened to every person that stepped up to the podium.
In recent weeks, talking with her family, I've learned more about her life in new Jersey, including the work her departed husband did with photography and the poets of that area. It upsets me sometimes that local poetry scenes are so insular that they can all but leave a person and their work forgotten if they happen to move. With the outpourings of praise for her now coming from both states, I'm glad that wasn't the case for Patricia. I'm thankful that I was around to observe part of her artistic journey.
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