A 'Love Actually' Legacy: Eva Cassidy

I can't remember where I heard Eva Cassidy sing for the first time. I know it was the late 1990s, and and I scurried out and bought two of her albums, Years later, the rest of the world fell in love with her through the Christmas movie favorite, Love Actually.

Love Actually premiered in 2003, but like so many others, it repeats on smaller screens so often that almost everyone you know has seen at least a quarter of it. It's Eva's voice, as always, is memorable. So is her personal story, because fame arrived for her long after she died of skin cancer at the age of 33 in 1996.

Eva's featured song in Love Actually is Songbird. In Maid in Manhattan (2002), it's Kathy's Song (an oldie-but-goodie first recorded by Simon & Garfunkel).

According to Wikipedia, when Amazon listed its 2005 top 25 best-selling musicians, Eva scored fifth place behind The Beatles, U2, Norah Jones and Diana Krall. ABC News Nightline profiled her in 2010. Her music still sells today.

I don't know what Eva would think of all that, just as I don't know if she dreamed of being a Mom one day. It's a special category of NotMoms, isn't it, the women who died young and without expressing a choice about motherhood. What I do know is that Eva and her talents will be long remembered, and they represent a fine legacy indeed.

You can't sing, you say? Not to worry. You have other gifts for the world because every woman does. And legacy isn't synonymous with "children".

(Image Credit: Eva By Heart album cover)