Remembering Lorissa McComas on the 9th anniversary of her passing.

Time marches on, seasons change, and now the great circle of being has brought us all to this most sad of occasions. It is with particular melancholy that I recall missing the mark in paying tribute to Lorissa's date of passing last year, due to a combination of personal and business obligations. Nevertheless, this period of inactivity related to this blog has seen further movement, largely in collecting all of the events of Lorissa's life into a singular biopic that I hope to complete in the coming months. It is during my ongoing research in this endeavor that a sudden stroke of inspiration came along, sparked by a sudden yet obvious insight into Lorissa's nature, and specifically how her natural beauty pertained to one of the four seasons.

There was an unwritten rule that often steered how Lorissa's print work was marked, most notably her various titles and honors within the glamour modeling world. Though one would rightly point out the Hapuna Swimwear commercial debut and all its tropical underpinnings lending to Lorissa's career being a creature of summer. Others might note her film debut Can It Be Love (aka Spring Break Sorority Babes) as an indication of her projected lust for life and fun-loving personality as representing the season of new life in spring. However, the true testament of her recurring character upon both the printed page and in film was the twilight beauty before the ravages of winter that is autumn.

This insight of Lorissa as a sort of autumn queen passing through the divide between summer and winter is the most all-encompassing analogy to who she was, in her career ventures and beyond. Given and taken away from us all at the height of the last harvest of November, regularly featured modeling for various calendars for either the months of October or November, and even titled Miss October on several modeling documentaries in relation to her work with Playboy and Penthouse. The rainbow of colors that mark the season were often a backdrop to her print work, and even when photographed in a field or on a beach at the height of summer, her earthy brown eyes and hair, along with her symmetrical figure projected a proportionality and flair more suited to an equinox than a solstice.

In a sense, I feel a bit foolish for not noting this as far back as my 12th year in this world when I happened upon a copy of the September/October 1991 issue of the Playboy Book of Lingerie in late October of the following year amid the fallen leaves in the woods behind my middle school. From the surrounding setting of yellow, red and brown foliage her innocent yet sly smile projected outward towards me and forever changed the way I understood the godly perfection that came forth from Adam's rib on the 6th day. And lo, here I write this a little over 26 years later in the cold rain of November like a sentimental fool as the heavens weep for the memory of the lesser world that they've beheld for the past 9 years.

As these years pass I have likewise noted that I am now about the same age that she was in 2009 when darkness prevailed and justice was turned on itself a little over 300 miles south of where I now hang my hat. In the time since Lorissa left the modeling world I've noted a clear downturn in the quality of representatives in both the glamour and mainstream modeling worlds, as the strong build of a ballerina coupled with the voluptuous one of the all-american girl has given way to an array of pencil-thin pushovers and plus-sized, overbearing types that couldn't be bothered with the concept of moderation and balance. Something was lost at the time that the early 2000s gave way to Paris Hilton, something that will likely never return.

Though this moment of extreme nostalgia will likely pass like falling leaves as autumn gives way to winter, a lone echo of a dream still rings fresh in my memory, and hopefully I am not alone in this. A reverberation of a time where I was too young and naive to know the dark side of life, one that was reciprocated with a naive smile from a printed page that was produced on the other side of the country and the owner of that smile someone that I would fail to meet in life. With it travels a visual of an earthy brunette princess frolicking amid great oaks and maples as they shed their stalk in the cool of late November, the day of her birth. It is with this picture in mind that I pen the following poem:

~ An Ode to the Autumn Queen ~

The twilight of seasons now seek her grace

A treasure of a thousand rainbows worth

With the cool of the fall's wind, does it race

Eleven months and twenty-six days forth.

You'll see her there, dancing with golden flair

Half as long, the shooting star fire is thine

Blessed are all eyes that your beauty declares

Fleeting with the cold, yet frozen in time.

Diamonds in their permanence envy thee

And the snow repents of its coming reign

Even father time, regrets his decree

That the Queen of Winter shall your throne gain.

Long for the memory and weep for the cost

An Ode to the Autumn Queen, never lost.

Rest In Peace Lorissa.