I weep for Wendy

I gasped as I saw the front page of this morning's NY Times -- Wendy Wasserstein is dead at age 55 of lymphoma. It can't be! But it is. I have felt sad all day. But it wasn't until I read the brief and very personal editorial tonight at dinner that I wept. I am mourning as I write. While I only met Wendy once, when she spoke to the audience after we watched her early play "Uncommon Women and Others," I feel as though I have lost someone I knew. She graduated from Mount Holyoke 8 years behind me, and "Uncommon Women" was how we referred to ourselves at Holyoke. The play was her senior thesis and it covered familiar ground. She and I had, after all, lived in some of the same dorms, had shared many of the same experiences and professors - and I, like so many others who had gone to a 'girls' college in the mid 20th century, understood so many of the experiences her plays were based on. "The Heidi Chronicles," dealt with all-too-familiar issues to those of us who came of age in those years...and those who are still coming of age. Wendy was funny, smart, independent, and talented beyond belief. Famous, yes -- but always approachable and down-to-earth. I am bereft.