Brig

I just heard that an old friend, Brig Gulya, has died.

Her full name was Brigitta.  I met her in law school when I was a third year student and she was a first year.  We were both performing in the law school musical.  I thought she was funny, smart and beautiful.  I asked her out and we started dating.  We had some good times. 

I started a trivia contest at the law school and handed it off to her when I left.  She would send me tapes of her contests.  I thought she wrote great questions.  I still remember a few of them:

Q:  What is the subject of the magazine Bondage?
A:  It's the official magazine of the James Bond Fan Club.
(A very religious professor guessed it was about S&M.)

Q:  Name the seven dwarfs...in alphabetical order.
A:  Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy
(She waited until someone buzzed in before mentioning alphabetical order.  What makes this especially hard is that the first dwarf, Bashful, is the one you always forget.)

Eventually, I moved to the West Coast and she moved to the East Coast, so we rarely saw each other.  She did come to visit me once.  We went to Disneyland (and saw the seven dwarfs).  She looked great in her princess hat.

A bit later, she got married.  She had a magnificent wedding at a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Entertainment was provided by Lester Lanin and his Orchestra.  After that, I sort of lost touch. (Not uncommon when an old girlfriend gets married.)

Luckily, last year, I took a trip to Washington.  I'd heard she had been working for the federal government, so I looked her up.  We had lunch at a very nice country club in Arlington.  We hadn't seen each other in a long time, but she still looked great, and was as charming as ever.

We talked about old times, of course.  And we caught up.  She had gotten divorced, but seemed happy with her life, and was looking forward to a lot of things, including some charity work she was organizing. (She was always good at organizing things.) I left that lunch glad we'd finally reconnected.  We did talk on the phone after that, but I never saw her again.

She did mention she was having some medical problems.  I didn't realize how ill she was till I heard she died of cancer.  So here's to you, Briggie.  I won't forget you.