Remembering Lisa Hollingsworth
Today is a very sad day. I met Lisa Marie Hollingsworth in 1997 and we were together for four years from the time we were both 26 to 30. We lived together for 2 years, first for a year at 920 Harrison St. in San Francisco and later at 4 Cleveland Gardens, near Paddington Station (in London). If your definition of love is having your own happiness mixed with the happiness of another person than I was madly in love with Lisa Hollingsworth. If something made Lisa especially happy she used to say “Happy Day” and if something made her particularly sad she’d say “Sad Day.” I delighted in trying to get her to say “Happy Day” as much as possible and dreaded any time she’d say “Sad Day”.
Lisa worked tirelessly. When I knew her she first worked at the Gap world headquarters in San Francisco in international planning and distribution. She had a map in her bedroom with thumbtacks marking each of the international Gap locations and I told her someday we’d visit some of them, which we did. Later she worked for eStamp in California and in London was proud to work for MMXI (Media Metrix). Lisa frequently worked into the night and I tried to encourage her to stop, to come home for dinner, to remind her that she’d be paid the same amount of money whether she left at 6 PM or 10 PM. But she was terrified of losing her job and felt that she needed to work harder than everyone else just to keep up. As a protective boyfriend in San Francisco, I’d frequently drive to the Gap offices after dark to pick her up and take her home. In London where I didn’t have a car, I remember taking taxis at times after dark to her place of work to take her home. Lisa always viewed my picking her up by car or taxi as excessive and unnecessary. She preferred to take public transportation or whenever possible walk home, regardless of the hour. I’d never lived with a girlfriend before and when Lisa would come home on her own after a long day of work and I’d hear her unlocking the door with her keys, I remember being delighted, jumping up from whatever I was doing to greet her at the door gleefully with “There she is!” Although she’d seem surprised that I could always be so happy to see her at the end of each work day, she’d smile beautifully. I think it made her happy to see how happy she could make me, simply by opening the door to the loft where we lived. And maybe she eventually realized that this was one of the best parts of my day, simply to be in her presence again after a day at work.
I have so many memories of Lisa that it is very hard to simply list a few and try to get to the essence of who she was or what our relationship was. Lisa loved to travel and many of my memories are related to the places we visited together. Our first trip together was to Monterrey, California but later we traveled to Lake Tahoe where we skied together and I met her sister, Jen. We spent New Year’s of the Millennium in Prague, celebrated her 30th birthday in Barcelona, visited New York together many times where my grandparents lived. My grandmother adored Lisa: who didn’t? We spent Easter together in Poros, Greece and also traveled to Brussels, Bruge, Paris, St. Tropez, and Munich to name a few of our many trips together. Did you know Lisa spoke German and always enjoyed learning more?
Lisa also loved to exercise and she was a great athlete. I was never physically fit enough to keep up with her, and after a while I gave up trying. If I’d push myself and go out for a 4 mile run, Lisa would run 7. If we went for a 7 mile rollerblade, Lisa would want to rollerblade 15 miles. I never saw her play volleyball, but I hear she was very good and I can attest to her improvement as a dedicated and hard working left handed tennis player. Later on in London as she started to experience pain in her legs, Lisa turned to swimming where I’m sure she swam hundreds of laps in a single workout.
The three most important things to Lisa were:
Her independence
Her ability to challenge her mind through work
Her ability to push her body to great feats of endurance
Lisa never wanted to be a burden on anyone or be in debt to anyone. She gave freely of herself and was always there to help you work through a problem, but she expected nothing in return and had an extremely difficult time accepting any help of any kind whether emotional support from a friend or financial support, even when it was given freely with absolutely no strings attached.
Sad Day.
--Seth Socolow, July 1, 2009
