Virginia (“Ginny”) Duffy made her final exit, gently and swiftly on January 19th due to vascular dementia. Before she became too sick, she would often say reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I’ll be of much better use to you on the other side,” like being dead was where she would do her best work.
Mom was a loving, open hearted seeker who, as a counselor, was committed to helping everyone -- family, friends and Clients -- shift their limiting beliefs to create a life they loved and deserved. One of her favorite phrases was “how to you want to feel?” and then she’d help you get there. She never said a mean thing about anyone (really), but could laugh at the absurdity of life and the silly messes we all get into. Her cooking was legendary, her decorating deeply informed of side road junk hauls and curated auction-house antiques. She was a powerful wielder of sewing needles, cooking utensils, paint brushes and back tickles. How all that spark and verve and artistry and big love and emotional intelligence slowly erodes into the stiff arroyos of a darkening mind, is still incomprehensible.
Ginny was born on July 17th 1937, in Des Moines, Iowa to immigrant Dutch,
German, Scandinavian, Irish & English farmers – a perfect American mutt. As a
young girl, her family moved to Teaneck, NJ, where she developed such lasting
friends, they still meet weekly on Zoom. Despite her disease, these seven (7) BFFs all (almost) 89 years old embraced Mom’s head down presence on those
calls with loving kindness, always concerned over her occasional absences. After graduating from Teaneck High School, Ginny attended Skidmore, but then
To sum up a whole human is impossible, but it is important to acknowledge
Ginny was both a product of her time and utterly independent. In the 60s, there were the mini-dresses and GoGo boots, Dippity-Do and fondue, burning bras and “Bring the Boys Back,” wild themed parties (Think: Rosemary’s Baby) and a hair-of-the-dog Schaefer beer propped on the stick shift of her Peugot. There was a lifelong love for Neil Diamond and Boris Pasternack, who she painted with great reverence, and Persian cats (of which she had many). A powerful memory of Ginny would be her cooking while gabbing with friends, the wall phone chord stretching long and thin, frying acrid over the stove top burners. In the 70s and 80s, Ginny got serious about exploring all of the psychological, self-help tools of the day; TA, EST, DMA, EMDR, The Law of Attraction. She would “chase the pain,” make new choices, the universe is an echo. She became a Reiki master, a gifted astrologer, then a counselor, leading seminars with her husband Bob in their NYC living room and country house in South Egremont, MA. She fought hard for her sanity (in her words “I had a lousy childhood”), and developed a wellspring of wisdom that many sought – even her daughters’ friends still ask, “what was that thing your Mom said... ?.” She was in NYC during 9/11 and wrote extensively about the experience and what it meant for our country, a country she fiercely loved.
At the end of her life, and despite the dementia, Mom had moments of awak-
ening where she would emerge from the fog, blinking into a life she did notrecognize. She would immediately worry about everyone around her, insisting she should have been put away long ago, and that we should focus on our own lives. During one of her last awakenings that gave us a precious 12 hours, she marveled at her absence and shared two words that were surely the driving theme of her life. “I was gone for 3 years,” she said, her voice raspy, “but now I’m back. I think the lesson is you can always BEGIN AGAIN.” Mom always believed we can begin again. And now surely, she is. And surely, she is hoping that we are, too.
