Maya Green's Obituary
“Tell the truth” Maya said. “The truth is the most important thing.”
Maya Green passed peacefully at home on May 14, 2026, with her family by her side and a clear path to the great beyond.
Born Priscilla Sue Hill in Providence, RI in January of 1941, Maya’s childhood was fraught with neglect. “My parents worked and drank” she said. “I was raised by the maids, and they didn’t like me.” Her mother was 40 years old when Maya was born and she was a rare breed: a woman who owned her own successful Real Estate business. Her father was a kind, humble man, who was outshined by his enormously successful wife. Prone to drinking, he would often mumble reassuringly to himself, “I’m not such a bad guy”.
Maya was a beautiful young girl of means, but she was not allowed to be a debutante due to her association with neighborhood vandals. She was expelled from college for not following the rules (curfew was not her highest priority), but she was fortunate enough to study in Vienna and travel around Europe as a young woman.
Giving up on college, she instead managed to get a job at one of the most prestigious interior decorating firms in New York, and while her tenure at the firm was short-lived, her love of interiors would inspire her for the rest of her life. She dated prodigiously and sometimes inappropriately: from politicians, to a young Ted Turner, to guys with names like “Laird”, she was glamorous enough to always have a date. Once, in Boston, a well-heeled suitor invited her to meet the President of the United States, (John F Kennedy), but she declined. “I have to wash my hair” she said.
She finally settled down after meeting a handsome young banker at a wedding in Rhode Island. After a three week whirlwind of reckless romance the two were engaged, and they remained inseparable until the day she died.
The newlyweds had two kids in quick succession and muddled their way through the challenges of early parenthood using as their bible not Dr Spock’s “Baby & Child Care” but instead using “Trader Vic’s Bartending Guide”. At 31, Maya’s growling depression led her to the doors of a church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where she had an epiphany and was reborn. The preacher there said “nothing but God should have a power over you”, and she realized that her only divinity was at the bottom of a bottle.
“My name is Priscilla, and I’m an alcoholic” she managed to say for the very first time on May 13, 1974. On that day she devoted the rest of her life to sobriety. With help from the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, she inspired hundreds of others to do the same during a staggering span of 52 years of sobriety. Her husband Rico embraced sobriety a decade later, and then her children also fell in line. “Nothing makes me happier” she said, “than the sobriety of my family.”
Maya went back to school and finally finished her B.A. at age 39, followed by a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. She opened her own practice in Bellevue, Washington and practiced there for several years before Rico’s job took them to California. She took up tennis, sang in an all-black Gospel Choir, ran a marathon, studied massage therapy, and wrote letters to the newspaper complaining about the violence in Robert Altman’s “Popeye” movie.
While Maya’s sobriety never wavered, her demons still raged. A fitful sleeper, Maya would obsess over furniture arrangements. Where most of us could see 3 or 4 variations on a room, Maya could see thousands, and with her indefatigable drive she would try them all. Often Rico would go to sleep in one house and wake up in another!
She lived in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Santa Fe, Florida, and finally Oakland, and everywhere she went she attended AA meetings, sponsored newcomers, worked the steps and told the truth.
She loved telling her truth, even when it was unnecessary, and sometimes the blast radius of “her truth” shattered her relationships with friends and family. But her bold truth telling also had positive outcomes. She was never afraid to talk to strangers on the street, homeless or otherwise. “I love your hat!” she once said to Boots Riley, the famous movie director who she ran into one day in an Oakland cafe.
In her sunset years, Maya loved picking up garbage around the lake with her “trash club”, doing crosswords with Rico, and redecorating her friend’s houses. She had a lot of ideas about interior decorating, and she was always right.
Maya celebrated her 50th year of sobriety by taking a scuba diving trip to the Maldives with her daughter. At age 83, she travelled to the other side of the world to swim with whale sharks, and after a lifetime of tense relations Maya and her daughter finally found joy together.
Maya is survived by her husband Rico, children Polly and Ajax, and grandchildren Angus, Rosie, and Zap. But Maya’s true legacy is the impact she made on her friends in AA.
“She was just herself, the most genuine friend anybody could ever hope to have” - K
“I live a really beautiful life now .. because I met (Maya) and because (she) changed my life, and (she) gave me hope and (she) gave me just joy.” - C
“More than anything, (she) gave me the ability to hear God tell me how much he loves me and how much he loves you and all of us.” - K
“(She was) one of the special people in my life that have shown me what a beautiful life we can have in sobriety.” - A
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