I don’t like this.
I don’t want to write this tribute because I don’t want Becky to be gone. I’m not done yet. I want to walk this world with her a little longer…
My dear friend Becky Busch left us on Saturday, August 10, and if I can be forgiven for assuming I knew what she was thinking at the time, I would say she didn’t want to go. She fought to the very last.
For my part, I’m also fighting. I want to put this into context, into a story that doesn’t make the world an unfair place.
Becky was… Well, she was a light in the world. And I would like to believe that this world adores those who make light, who inspire others to be better than they were the day before, who deliver joy, excitement, mischievousness, adventure, and wonder to those around them. Becky was all of these things, and yet it seems her life was cut cruelly short. Brain cancer dogged her and eventually took her last Saturday.
Becky was a novelist, like me. She and I shared a birthday. I don’t usually put stock in connections like that. Birthdays are just numbers on a fabricated calendar, and while it is fun sometimes to imagine they have significance, I don’t believe such things create a true connection.
I do, however, believe in a person’s soul recognizing kinship in the soul of another.
When I met Becky at the Bighorn Book Nook in Georgetown in 2018, I didn’t know she’d beaten back cancer once before already. The first thing I noticed about Becky was she liked to play. Her sparkling, lively gaze captured me in the first moment she introduced herself with that jubilant verve with which she did everything. By end of that bookselling event, she had me posing for ninja action fights to post on facebook.
So yes, her liveliness was the first thing I noticed about her. The second thing was something odd about her hairline. The scar from her initial battle with cancer arced from one ear, over the top of her head, and down to the other ear where they had opened the front of her skull. It was artfully hidden by her lustrous wavy hair, but I spotted it. I didn’t, of course, mention it, but I wondered.
Years later in 2021, she told me that story, but only after she finally pulled me aside and spiritually smacked some sense into me.
See, when I go to a con or a selling event, I go for business. Those who know me know that I go into what I call “work mode.” Though there are a multitude of opportunities to find community, to make friends, to find one’s place at cons—that is why they were created, after all—I do not go to cons for that purpose. I turn all of my focus to spinning story and selling books. Up to the Bighorn Book Nook in 2021, I’d seen Becky as another author like me, a colleague, here for business.
So for two years, I lost out on the amazing friendship we would have. But in 2021, Becky was finally done waiting for me to “get it.” At the end of the first day of selling at that Bighorn Book Nook, she came over to my booth and cracked through my “I’m working” shell.
I don’t remember her exact words, but they went something like this:
“You’re my people,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“You and me. Kindred spirits.”
Her statement melted me. I mean, it’s not every day that confident, beautiful women walk up to me and say such things.
“Really?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” she said. “You don’t think?”
“I… well, honestly I hadn’t considered it.”
“Well consider it.”
I laughed. “All right.”
“Dinner?” she said.
“What?”
“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? Let’s find out if I’m right. I think you’re part of my inner circle. I wanna find out for sure.”
And that’s how Becky became my friend. That first dinner was sparkling, magical, and I thumped myself on the head that I hadn’t seen this connection sooner. She was right. We were kindred spirits. Her humor was my humor. That mischievous glimmer in her eye was my mischievous glimmer. Her love of fantasy, faeries, and wonder was my love as well.
We drank and shared stories. That first dinner turned into another, then into us getting together back in Denver, going bowling with my wife, talking story whenever we got the chance, and having movie quote wars. I pride myself on my movie quote knowledge, especially when it comes to Marvel movies, but she would beat me every time.
The more I came to know about her situation, the more I admired her. I watched her navigate another bout of cancer—where she beat it back a second time—and I heard stories about other traumas she’d endured. The most recent was when her condo building caught fire. Her specific condo didn’t burn, but because of insurance BS and other bureaucratic crap, they didn’t let her back into her home—not even to get a change of clothes or her laptop! At first it was just supposed to be for a month. That stretched to six months, a year, then a year and a half. It just went on and on, always with another excuse as to why they wouldn’t let her back into the building. Those heartless a-holes made her homeless all the way up to her death. I cannot even imagine the frustration, but Becky always had a laugh to give to me with her cutting jokes about the whole situation.
I thought Becky would be part of my life forever. We were kindred spirits, after all. Soul-connected. Found family.
She was so full of vitality that when this third and final bout of cancer came ‘round, I knew it couldn’t possibly win. She’d beat it again, like she had before. Such love, such life, such beauty would prevail. It should prevail. Yet, it didn't this time. I have wrangled with this injustice inside my mind and emotions for days now. And all I can think is:
Maybe the Universe doesn’t think about time the way we do.
Maybe the few years Becky was in my life were as important—more important—than all the future moments I’ll never get to have with her.
I often imagine, and I’m not the only one I’m sure, that longevity equates to value, to importance. We build monoliths because of this belief. Skyscrapers that can last centuries. The Statue of Liberty. The Eiffel Tower. The Arc du Triomphe. It’s one of the reasons I write novels. Books can last for an age, and that permanence has value, doesn’t it?
But perhaps permanence isn’t important at all. Perhaps only the moment is important, that single moment when love and magic occur. After all, the Arc du Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty—what do they matter to their creators, long since passed away? They only matter to those able to look at them, to feel something about them in the moment, and perhaps to carry that feeling forward, use it within their own lives.
Perceiving, feeling, and carrying that feeling forward is, to me, like a little flame in my heart. And perhaps that little flame is as much permanence as we ever get. And when I am gone, it will be time for others to take up that brief permanence, to have their own exquisite moments rule their days, to carry those little flames forward.
Perhaps worth isn’t determined from how long someone influences your life, but from how intensely they do.
This is how I choose to remember Becky, by the number of little flames she left in my soul. Her unfiltered laugh. The speed and wit of her mind. Her fabulous pick-me-up hugs. And how she knew every quote from every sci-fi, fantasy, or 1980s movie before I did.
I love you, Becky. I always will. I wish I could have walked this world with you even a little longer. But instead, I will take forward the flames you gave me. I’ll do my best to light other little fires with them. I’ll do my best to prove that the Universe does love those who bring light to the world.
Rest well, my friend. I’ll see you in the next life, as surely that is the fate for kindred spirits like us.
And I will leave you, of course, with a movie quote:
“Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that.”
“They’re doomed.”
“Yes. But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts…”