Miss Maudie: Year One

 Day One: "What is this place?"

I saw her as I strolled through the San Bernardino City Shelter with a friend. We were looking for her dog, a gorgeous German Shorthair Pointer that had somehow been left behind. Jeanette works with this breed in cadaver search and recover, and she’d seen Maggie’s profile online. I agreed to go with her to “look” (ha ha ha ha ha) because it had been a year since Thomas died, and I kept wanting to believe I was ready for another dog. (Here’s the truth: We’re never “ready,” are we? Like, “Okay, whew, I’m over that heartache. Where’s my new dog?” Nope. Not ever. Still… I needed a hiking partner. Maya needed a sibling. It was time. It was hard.)

Then I saw a blue heeler curled in the tightest dog donut ever. Thomas, you may recall loyal reader, was one quarter Australian cattle dog. But… I was looking for a male. The kennel card indicated this was a female. And a two-year-old. I didn’t want a young dog. (We older folks are constantly doing math: I was 70. If the dog lived to be 16, I would be 84. Would long dog walks be sustainable…?)

The stray hold on Jeanette’s dog wasn’t up yet, so we left. I came back the next day and sat by the little heeler’s kennel, talking quietly to her. I came back twice more, the final time with Jeanette on the day she picked up Maggie to take her home forever. I started to leave with them.

“Weren’t you going to do a meet & greet with that blue heeler?” she asked.

Sigh. I supposed so.

When the kennel worker saw which dog I wanted to meet, she physically cringed, her shoulders slumping.

“Okay,” she said, “We’re going to go really slow with this one.”

I waited 15 minutes for her to get the terrified dog cornered and leashed. When they emerged, finally, from the kennel area, the dog straining at the end of the leash, trying to escape, the whites of her eyes showing, I stood quietly grounded, not making eye contact. As soon as my girl saw me, she ran to me, dragging the kennel worker along behind. The anxious dog sat on my feet, then turned and stood, placing her paws on my waist, begging to be picked up. As if she were a puppy.

“Whoa. She’s never done that before,” the kennel worker said.

“I guess she’s going home with me,” I said.

In the weeks that followed, I ascertained this from Miss Maudie’s behavior:

1. She had been someone’s spoiled baby. When I showed her around the house, she saw the couch and wanted to climb up on it, but she looked to me for permission first. “No,” I told her. “No dogs on the couch.” She has never tried to get up there since.

2. She had some type of obedience training. When I asked her to sit, she would move around behind me and sit on my left side, as dogs learn in some classes. She still does this.

3. She had been hit and kicked in her past life. This became clear immediately. If I raised my hand, she ducked. If I lifted a leg, she jumped away. I learned to move slowly, to signal to her that I was just going to pick up something or put something down. She still flinches at times when I touch her without warning her first.

4. She is wary of adults, but reactive to young children. Twice on the hiking trail she has lunged at and tried to nip very young kids with absolutely no provocation, just the kids walking silently past. It triggers something in her. I think I know what that is.

For the uninitiated, there is a children’s cartoon entitled “Bluey.” The main character is a blue heeler (or the cartoonish semblance of one). My great-granddaughter loves Bluey. Sadly, kids’ love of the show has caused parents to buy puppies “just like Bluey!” Except… your average cattle dog is nothing like the kind, mild-mannered cartoon character. Cattle dogs are sassy and independent. And they nip. Boy howdy, do they nip. I’ve had Miss Maudie 366 days as of today. She has nipped me at least that many times, if not twice that many. She has never done this aggressively; she nips when she’s happy or excited. Still. It pinches….

I suspect that Maudie was someone’s beloved puppy. Until she wasn’t. Until she grew up and asserted herself and nipped, whether out of joy or because someone was smacking or kicking her. Then she was dumped. Or, more likely, the “reporting party” that had her picked up by animal control, claiming she was a “stray,” had had enough of her.

Their loss. My gain.

Maudie is my ride or die out on the trail. She will stand between me and anything, big or small, be it bobcat, coyote, raccoon, or human. Her joy abounds—especially if there’s water, her favorite thing to find in the whole world. She loves that even more than dead decaying animal carcasses to roll in. (Ick.)

What she can do now:

Walk nicely on a leash with Maya.

Release a toy/bone/whatever at my command “Let me have it.”

Stand still when we see critters at my “NO CHASE” command (which must be given sternly, because damn it, she wants to herd those deer!).

Give kisses on command. (Thank you, Maudie!)

Return to me every time I call. (“Come by me!” is the command.)

Untangle herself from her leash at the command “Fix yourself.” (This is fun and amazing to watch.)

Jump into the truck (“Load up!”) and straight into the crate she travels in, turning around and waiting for me to zip her in.

Wait patiently for her food until I release her with the “Okay!” command.

Speaking of patience; she is the most patient dog I’ve ever had. I write in the morning. She waits. I walk her and Maya early, then eat breakfast, then sit down to work. She knows at the end of my writing session, she gets another walk. She will lie patiently for as long as it takes—until I stand up. Then she’s on her feet in seconds, wagging her tail, ready to go.

Maudie loves Maya. Like, loves her. Kisses her, nips her, nuzzles her, and did try to cuddle up to her at first but Maya snapped at her. Aww, poor Maudie!

Maudie hates Jenny. Disdains her. Lifts her lip and bares her teeth at her. Jenny will never cease in her effort to make peace with her. But that’s why I love Jenny; she reminds me daily that we can love those who don’t love us in return, who treat us in ways we don’t deserve. Hey, it’s their problem, right? Not ours. Good kitty, Jen!

Has it been 366 days of love and joy with Miss Maudie? No. It certainly has not.

She hoovers up as many things as she can get away with while we’re out walking, literally trotting down the street with her nose between her front feet. Her favorite day is the day after trash day. She has stolen food that people left on graves—cheeseburgers, chow mien noodles, green… stuff. She has managed to find at least two rotting rabbit bones and crunched them down before I could even give her the command to “leave it.”

Like other dogs of her ilk, she loves to roll in nasty stuff, the nastier, the better. (Her life motto seems to be “Anyone’s trash is my treasure.”) She is so smart, she has learned to drop back behind me on the trail so she can roll in something behind my back so that I don’t see her and stop her.

She is dirty more often than she is clean.

But hey, she will come right into the shower with me and allow me to bathe her, so there’s that.

And even when she’s naughty, she is at least entertaining. Even when she’s nipping me.

So here’s to whomever decided to ditch this dog: Thanks! She is loyal and loving and hilarious and beautiful. Your trash. My treasure.

Christmas Miracle with Maya

 

It happened. I’ve been waiting patiently for nearly five years. But it finally happened. Maya wagged her tail at me.

Yes, of course, she has wagged her tail before.

She wags her tail when it’s breakfast time.

She wags her tail when it’s dinner time.

She wags her tail at Maudie.

She wags her tail when she goes out to potty.

For crying out loud, she wags her tail after she poops, so happy is she!

But she never wags her tail at me.

Until last night.

I came into the den (where she bides her time) to perform our nighttime ritual—me crawling onto her gigantic bed, petting her ears, stroking her head, telling her she’s perfect just as she is, and shielding her when Maudie comes barging onto the bed to get some of the love.

Lo and behold, last night, as I bent down to join her on the bed, the little white tip of her tail thumped on the bed.

OH. MY. DRAGONS.

It’s been nearly five years since I brought her home—skinny, shivering, never ever making eye contact, flinching and cringing at my touch. Maya hated everything. Except Thomas. She loved Thom from Day One, would have been happy never to see me again.

Slowly, in tiny baby steps, she recovered enough for me to care for her daily without her being terrified. But her level of trust was minimal.

Until Maudie. In one year, Maudie has changed everything for Maya, has shown her how to be a dog, how to be happy while walking, how to receive and even look forward to love.

So last night, she looked up at me with her sweet face and said, “Yes, Mama, I see you coming to give me love. I’m looking forward to it.” 

Christmas. Miracle.

Thank you, dog gods.

Day of the Dead - Honoring the Grandmothers

 I come from a long line of strong, independent, defiant, flawed women. I see myself in all of them, all the way back to my great-grandmother.

 

Bertha Gifford, my great-grandmother

Bertha Gifford, born Bertha Alice Williams, was my mother’s grandmother. She married a man much older than she, and he was unfaithful. When he died, she married a man much younger than she. She could, because she was beautiful, but also because there had to be something—I mean, I never met her—but for a man of 20 to love a woman of 30, and pursue her, and marry her—there had to be something more than just carnal lust. Unless she was the one pursuing him, in which case, knowing these women as I do, he never had a chance.

But Bertha and Gene were together for decades, faithfully, each committed to the other. Even when Bertha was accused of poisoning people she had cared for as an untrained “volunteer nurse” in their community, Gene remained loyal to her. And even when Bertha went to trial and was subsequently remanded to an institution for the criminally insane, Gene stuck by her for years, driving down the long, slow gravel roads of Missouri to see her as often as he could… until he finally took up with another woman. (Lucky for him she was incarcerated….)

Someone in their community told a snoopy reporter that Bertha once chased a man off of their property with a butcher knife. This story was offered as evidence that Bertha was insane and capable of murder. Was she, though? Because I have questions about that. Where was Gene when this happened? And for what purpose had the man come on their property? Because this is what I know about some men—starting with my stepfather and including men I’ve worked with and men with whom I once attended church—some men believe that they can take what they want from a woman, that it’s their role to dominate, her role to submit. Bertha strikes me as a woman who didn’t cotton to that, a woman who stuck up for herself, and yes, a woman who would grab a butcher knife from the kitchen when threatened and stand up to a man and say, “Touch me again and there’s going to be blood shed and it isn’t going to be mine.” Because I have said these words to a man, although I did not have any sort of weapon in my hand when I said it. Is this proof of my own insanity? Am I capable of murder? I will answer a resounding yes to that, given certain circumstances.

My grandmother, Lila Clara Graham (West/Parrack)

Bertha’s only daughter was my grandmother, born Lila Clara Graham. Lila, a child from Bertha’s first marriage, married a Missouri man, but they soon moved to Detroit so her husband could get in on the growth of this new technology, the automobile. The marriage didn’t last, but Lila provided for herself by running a boarding house. Okay, full disclosure, this is what I was told when I was young. In my thirties, after Lila had passed, and I began to ask some critical questions of my mother while researching Bertha’s life and alleged crimes, my mother explained that, well, yes, the establishment was actually a “blind pig,” the boarding house being a cover for the illegal sale of alcohol during prohibition.

“A lot of different people would come and go,” my mother said, “and it wasn’t the best clientele, if you know what I mean. That’s why my mother sent me down to Missouri to live with my grandmother. She didn’t want me to be exposed to the kinds of people who hung around there.”

It wasn’t until many years after my mother’s passing that I learned from her stepsister that the “boarding house” was neither hotel nor blind pig. In truth, Lila ran a brothel. Thus the shady clientele. Thus the need to shield her daughter from what was actually going on with all those folks quite literally “coming and going.”

My grandmother saved enough money in the 1940’s to move to the West Coast. Got herself a cute little apartment in Los Angeles and took a job as a cook in a bar. She did this on her own, no man in sight. And this was the grandmother I knew, the one whose daily uniform, whether at home or at work or visiting our family in Lakewood, was a comfortable cotton dress with short sleeves and a full skirt to accommodate her large, round body, covered always with a clean, ironed apron. She made her own clothes, and she made clothes for me and my sister. She came to visit often, sitting at the kitchen table with coffee or a cocktail, snapping green beans or shucking corn, gossiping with Mom about the neighbors or talking shit about the men in their lives.  Until Mom told her to “stop spoiling” us, she always brought gifts for us kids—coloring books for the girls, those little balsa wood airplanes with plastic propellers that wound up with a rubber band for the boys, cinnamon raisin bread, and hugs. Big, soft, laughing Grandma hugs.

Lila laughed a lot, clacking her dentures closed so they wouldn’t fall out of her mouth. She taught me my first Spanish words and phrases— con leche, mañana, café—when I was Kindergarten age. Because when she came to L.A. and worked in the bar, she had Spanish-speaking customers. So she learned to speak as much of the language as she needed to in order to serve her customers. Imagine that.

Lila, my grandmother, never spoke of Bertha, her mother, never gave a hint that she lived with this secret… that she lived with so many secrets. When her marriage ended and she was alone in a big city, she found a way to survive. And when she could, she pulled up stakes and struck out for the Pacific Ocean, reinventing herself again. She didn’t have a single relative living in California when she came here. I wish now I could ask her why she came, what her dream was. I wish I could ask about her mother. Mostly I just wish I could hug her again and thank her for my lifelong love of cinnamon raisin toast.

My mom, in uniform

My mother, Arta Ernestine West, was born to Lila and her husband in Detroit. But she thought of Missouri as her second home, loved life on the farm with Bertha and Gene, loved fishing in the Meramec River, loved her horse, Babe, loved school and winning spelling bees. (I never once beat her at Scrabble, but Lord knows I tried.) She loved James, her uncle, Bertha and Gene’s son, who was four years her senior. They were hanging out together the day the sheriff drove up and took Bertha away to jail, the day my mother’s life changed forever and became one of shame and secrets. Mom had just turned ten.

At twelve, back in Detroit, she was sent to live with her father and stepmother while she recovered from an illness.

“Ernestine was very, very sick,” her stepsister told me. “I hope it’s okay to tell you this; she had syphilis.” (Years before, a doctor had confided to me privately that he was treating her for tertiary syphilis. In a terribly awkward conversation, I tried to explain to my mother, in her late eighties by then, why he was prescribing certain antibiotics. The conversation did not go well.)

Apparently one of the customers from the so-called boarding house had… Well, there’s no need to elaborate… just… more shame and secrets.

My mom left school and married the first time at age 15 and was divorced a year or so later. In her early twenties, she roamed around the country, picking up gigs as a nightclub singer. In 1943, at the age of 25, she enlisted in the branch of service known then as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps, where she learned to drive and service the large military vehicles used in WWII.

Until my adulthood, I had no idea Mom had been married three times before she married my dad. I also didn’t know how bad their marriage had been until a family friend, a man who’d been the kid down the street from us in the 1950’s, told me the story of how Mom and Dad had been at the neighbors’ house for a cocktail party one night and had exchanged heated words. Mom sassed him, and my father slapped her, at which point my mother grabbed an empty beer bottle and said something to the effect of “Come on, Pete, come at me again.”

Shades of Bertha, no?

My father died in 1963, and my mother, with the GED she earned while in the service, found a job working as a clerk for a school district. Somehow she managed to feed four kids and keep us in clothes until we were old enough to care for ourselves.

As I said, I come from a long line of strong, independent, defiant, flawed women. And I am grateful every day for that strength of character, that defiant independence, that willingness to do what needs to be done in order to survive. When I divorced, and my husband abandoned his children, refusing to pay child support, I went to college, earning my degree in four years while raising four kids on my own and living at the poverty level. People sometimes ask how I did it. This is what I learned from these women: We do what we have to do to survive.

What I learned further from these women is that no good comes from carrying the weight of shame and secrecy. Unlike them—and because of them—I try to live my life in such a way that my children and my grandchildren can ask me anything, and I can tell them the truth.

No more secrets. No more shame.

And because I believe in life after death, I know that these three women are with me always in spirit and in power. Lordy, I just wish I could hear what those old gals are gossiping about now.

Wear Sunscreen

 

Wear sunscreen.

Wear. sunscreen.

In 1993, I found a mole on my leg that looked scary. When my doc saw it, he said, “That’s coming off today.” Two weeks later, he called me in, sat down beside me, took my hand, and told me it was a melanoma, that I would be having surgery in a few days to remove a large chunk of tissue from my leg, and further treatment might be needed if the cancer had metastasized.

At that time, I had been divorced a year. I was a single mother of four beloved children whose greatest fear in life matched mine--that something would happen to me and their father would get custody of them. Those days... sitting on the couch... waiting for the surgery... were long and dark.

Post-surgery I was relieved to hear that the first pathologist had been incorrect; the mole was really a basal cell carcinoma, and not much of a threat. I started breathing again.

From that time going forward, I stopped tanning my legs, always wore long pants, began using a face moisturizer with sunblock, and I always wear a hat or cap while outside to protect my face and my eyes. (A colleague was diagnosed with melanoma in his eye. He lived less than a year after his diagnosis.)

Fast forward a few decades….

I generally spend August picking peaches off my tree (eating them, freezing them, giving them away) and writing poetry for the Cascadia Poetics Lab's Postcard Poetry Fest. This August, while I did do those things, I spent some quality time with first my dermatologist, then a surgeon. Because, after months of pleading for a dermatology appointment, I finally got one—and yep, I was right, I had a couple of spots of skin cancer.

One of those spots was a melanoma. For real this time.

Damn.

Damn damn damn.

Hearing the voice of a doctor I didn't know say in a voicemail, "Unfortunately, the lesion on your arm is a melanoma, and you'll need to call and schedule surgery right away...." sunk my heart from my chest to my hiking boots. Thus followed a few more long and dark days.

A week after surgery, when my surgeon called to let me know he’d gotten clear margins, that the cancer had not spread and I was free to “go live my life” as long as I see my dermatologist on a regular basis, I thanked him profusely. Then I ended the call and sobbed in relief for twenty minutes.

So now I have a four-inch scar down my arm (which will fade with time, I know) and the sense of gratitude that wells up when we realize that, shoot, this could have gone in a whole different direction.

I don’t want to be sick or undergoing treatment. I suck at that. I want to be writing, and I want to be out hiking (which, by the way, no doubt led to this skin cancer, as I had been covering everything except my arms. Now I’m wearing UV blocking sleeves whenever I am out in the sun).

My beloved readers… wear sunscreen. Cover up. Take good care. Some cancers, as we know, are preventable. Let’s be smart together, okay?

For your edification (and because we’re getting close to Halloween, ha ha ha), I have posted below photos of my arm immediately post-surgery, then as the healing progressed. Don’t feel compelled to look unless you want to.

Here’s to your good health! Sláinte!

How Terribly Strange...?

The "round toes" of my "high shoes"

Old friends... sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass... falls on the round toes... of the high shoes

Of the old friends....

Can you imagine us years from today? Sharing a park bench quietly....

How terribly strange to be seventy....

(from "Old Friends," by Paul Simon)

Paul Simon was twenty-six years old when his song, “Old Friends,” was released on the Bookends album. I was fourteen. I played that vinyl record (a gift from my junior high boyfriend, Doug Olson) over and over and over that year and the next. To Simon, at age twenty-six, the thought of being seventy years old must have been unfathomable, as it was for me. Paul Simon is eighty-three now… and still doing music.

I am seventy. And I have to say, it has not been “terribly strange” at all. In fact, being seventy has been a lot like being sixty-nine or sixty-eight. Am I a bit more wrinkly? Well, sure. Does it bother me? Not a wit. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, I hope that with each passing year, I am becoming more “real” (although, just to be culturally current, I would use the term “authentic”).

At fourteen, though, I could not envision myself at fifty, much less seventy. By the time my grandmother was in her fifties, although she still had her sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurdity of life, she was diabetic, wore dentures, and had trouble getting around. I was already clinically depressed at fourteen, and I could not imagine finding joy in a life such as hers. “No,” I thought. “Just no.”

At fourteen, my vision of what my future would hold was darker than I can describe with words… and I do know some words.

Turns out, in my fifties, I wasn’t like my grandmother at all (though I loved her dearly). At fifty-two, I moved to a cabin in the wilderness where in winter I regularly shoveled my truck out of several feet of snow in order to get to work, hiked almost daily, stacked cords of firewood, and befriended young bears, raccoons, and the little fox that wanted the other half of my burrito.

At seventy, I still have my own teeth, in case you’re wondering. And I’m still hiking, though not daily, just once or twice a week, as I no longer live in the mountains. I’m walking three miles a day, though, and managing to climb over downed trees or up over boulders when I do hike. And, like Paul Simon, I'm still playing my guitar and singing. Who knew seventy would be this much fun?

Honestly, I’m feeling pretty blessed after seventy turns around the sun.

That includes experiencing the miracles of Nature through 280 seasons.

And let's see, at an average of two cups a day, that’s approximately 38,690 cups of black tea I've enjoyed (given I began drinking the stuff at age eighteen). Ahhhhh… that morning comfort!

I’ve been owned by eleven cats (13 if you count childhood family cats).

Nineteen dogs have blessed my various homes. (Some were short timers, like my beloved June. All were adored.)

I’ve rescued and held a hummingbird twice.

I’ve rescued and held (with leather gloves) a baby opossum, returning it to its anxious mama.

I’ve felt the muzzle of a yearling bear as it snuffled my bare hand.

I’ve written and published eight books, and I’ve seen my byline in numerous national periodicals, including a published poem or two.

I literally laughed and sang my way through a career teaching teenagers what to love and what not to love about literature, as they taught me what music I should listen to and how to stay socially current.

I’ve lived to see all four of my children fledge, struggle, find their wings, and fly to responsible adulthood. (My biggest blessing to date.)

I’ve lived to see five of my six grandchildren do the same. (Jordan is still a teen.)

I’ve lived to hold two magnificent great-grandchildren in my arms.

So, I’m just saying, seventy does not seem strange at all. Seventy feels warm and comfortable, like flannel sheets in winter and a cup of hot chocolate with Irish cream and a good book.

Despite the current political climate (don’t get me started), seventy feels hopeful. Yes, it’s awful right now, but the young people coming up are brighter and cooler than ever, and as much as some might try to hide diversity from them, it’s right there in their social media feed, so yeah, they will be the champions of inclusion. Trust me. Just wait.

July 1 begins my birthday month. I’ll be seventy-one next week. Here’s my prediction, based on waking up above ground with open eyes and an open heart for the past 25,909 days: Seventy-one will feel a lot like seventy. Only just a bit more wrinkly.

A Gift by Special Delivery

 

We live in a magical time of consumerism, don’t we? I mean, make a wish—“I’d really like a pair of flannel pajama pants with dogs on them”—and here’s a pair for you in The Big Shopping Warehouse of Rocketman Jeff.

Can you imagine this for someone in the late 1800’s? “Oh no! The paddle on your butter churn broke! It’s gonna take Grandpa a day or so in the barn to make one. Oh, wait—we can order a new paddle. Better yet, let me just order you some Kerrygold butter from Whole Foods. Yeah, the milk comes straight from Irish cows so you know it’s good….”

Ah, it’s lovely, isn’t it? And weirdly, part of the charm is getting that brown box at the door—especially when we didn’t order anything. I love opening my front door to find something a friend or family member has sent. “Hey, kids!” (Of course I mean Maya, Maudie, and Jenny.) “Look what someone sent us! Let’s see what it is!”

Exactly one year ago this month, I received an unexpected gift. But it didn’t come in a brown box, and it wasn’t left on my front door. It definitely came from a friend, though, and it was left in my back yard, more specifically, in the planter. You can see a photo of it here; Nature gifted me with that young cottonwood tree you see at the top of this post.

Quite a beauty, isn’t she? Of course, she didn’t start out that way. She started out like this:

Can you believe it? A tiny seed like that! There are cottonwoods that grow in the nearby ravine (aka “Coyote Gulch”), and they slough off their seeds in the spring breezes like Californians shed sweaters. The air is filled with these floating puffs of seed pods, reminiscent of the Who Horton heard.

One of those puffs blew into my yard, and one single seed—somehow—took root. Sometime in September, when I was weeding that section of the planter, I discovered a tiny baby tree. My first thought was, “Oh, honey, you can’t grow up here. There won’t be enough water, and your roots will eventually wreak havoc on the block wall.” That’s me. Always leading with the pragmatic aspect of my being.

My next response was this: Thank you, Nature, for gifting me with this tree, a place for the little finches to rest in the heat of the day and perhaps even nest one day when the branches are tall enough and strong enough (instead of inside my aluminum patio cover). Thank you for offering a place for Jenny and Maudie to find shade where there was none before. They love to lie up there in the tall grass, but by summer it has dried to a crisp brown in the heat. In seasons ahead, they will have shade. And so will I, on that side of the house.

I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me; cottonwoods spring up quickly and fall down easily and break branches in strong winds and ask me if I care. I don’t. I wanted to worry about all those things, but you know what? I already have so many things to worry about—the health of my aging cat, the health of my aging friends, hell, the health of my beloved country—this one tree can do what it’s going to do. Nature offered it. Nature must care for it. I’ll just stand back and enjoy the benefits.

And maybe, from time to time, I’ll climb up there and give that tree a hug. Because that’s just who I am. Thanks, Nature. I love you!

 

Of Love and Friendship

Tom Clift on bass. Photo courtesy of Steven Young Photography

This is a cautionary tale.

It is a story of love, and trust, and friendship, and sad lessons. And time. Because we always think there will be enough time….

Sometime in the late 90’s, I stumbled upon a chat room for depressed people. Don’t remember how and doesn’t matter. My first reaction upon finding it was laughter.

Seriously? Y’all sit at your computers and talk to each other about how sad you are?

My second thought was: Boy howdy, this is my tribe.

So I joined. Nearly every night for months, I would log on and chat away with perfectly imperfect strangers who turned out to be some of the funniest, most intelligent people I have ever encountered. And yes, most of them were or had been clinically depressed. At that time, my life… my soul… was fairly balanced. But while I had learned strategies to keep the darkness away, I had not yet followed my journey into therapy, so I never knew when suddenly I might be spiraling down, trying to hang onto hope. These people, with their love and compassion and kindness, lifted me. Nightly.

One of the individuals who was frequently in the chat room used the handle botTom. (My handle was Savannah, the suicidal sister in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.) Among those chatting, botTom stood out for three reasons: He was kind. He was funny (in a gentle, clever way). He was articulate. (God, I love a man who can spell and punctuate correctly.) And he was incredibly smart.

It happened one evening that folks in the room were discussing the winter weather, and I mentioned that I was blessed to be enjoying the sun in Southern California. BotTom sent me a private message: “You’re not in Georgia? Are you visiting? Or…?” It took me a sec. Then I realized….

“No,” I told him. “Born and raised in and can’t escape CA.”

Turns out the same was true for him. We decided to meet for lunch and get to know one another. He had described himself perfectly, so when I saw him outside the restaurant, I felt immediately at ease.

“Tom?” I said.

He held the door open for me as he said, “Is your first name Savannah, then?”

I am still tempted to tell people that’s what the “S” stands for….

We talked for two hours—about how we both grew up in Orange County, about how we came upon our blessed tribe of fellow depressives, about love found and love lost, and about cats—specifically, the two Siamese cat children that remained after Tom’s girlfriend moved out.

Somewhere toward the end of that two hours, we established that Tom was a musician. I absolutely love that he was so low key about this. It would be another year or so before he happened to mention that he had toured with The New Christy Minstrels and had played with this or that well-known person or band in the L.A./Orange County areas of SoCal.

Tom’s music, my writing, were almost never a focus of our conversations. We met up or called infrequently to check in on each other, and our exchanged “How are you doing?” was intentional and meaningful. He knew I was living with adult children and grandchildren and working fulltime and trying to write my second book. I knew that he was grabbing gigs wherever he could get them while working a low-paying day job and struggling to afford rent in Orange County.

Life is hard, and depression is a sly companion, slipping in while you’re busy keeping your eyes on all the chainsaws you’re juggling. We kept tabs on each other’s mental health, and after we became Facebook friends, if he saw something there or on my blog that indicated I was struggling, he would message or call. Those two Siamese cats—his sweetest and truest companions—lived to the age of 20. When each one passed, I checked in often, as Tom was so heartbroken in losing them, I thought we might lose him.

Over the years, I saw Tom perform a couple of times, once on a magical night at the L.A. County Fair. He was doing the gig solo, just Tom and his guitar. I’d forgotten to bring a jacket, so by the time I’d finished my Australian potato and a margarita, I was shivering and my fingernails were blue. (This detail having been recorded in a personal journal.) But I loved hearing him sing. He sat with me on his breaks, and we laughed together about “fair people.” I confessed that I was absolutely one of them.

In 2017, Tom’s sister Jill, his last remaining sibling, passed away. As will happen, her passing put my friend in mind of his own mortality. At his request, we met at a restaurant with two of his friends to discuss his last wishes. At that meeting, Tom asked me to be the executor of his will. Of course I agreed immediately, feeling honored that he trusted me in such a capacity. I urged him to have a proper will drawn up, naming me as such. We went on to discuss such things as the disposition of his remains and who would get his guitars. “If I still have any by then,” he said. And we laughed.

Because of course he was expecting to live a long time.

Fast forward to 2025. In January, Tom and I exchanged exasperated messages via Facebook. After the pandemic lockdown, we had taken to meeting up for cultural experiences, touring the Mission Inn in Riverside, visiting the art museum, and indulging in other pleasant outings. But when my old dog was dying in 2024, I had to curtail those meetups for a while. Then Tom’s phone became unreliable, and he was not receiving my messages. Somehow, finally, his phone was sorted, and I was free, and we started trying to make a plan to see each other.

“Trying” being the operative word in that previous sentence.

On March 29, Tom tried to call me while I was driving up to the mountains and had no cell reception. When I arrived at my destination, I received the following text message from him:

          My gabby thing is dying and so

          am I wo n

          the be long

"My gabby thing." His phone? Was he joking? Or unable to bring to mind the word "phone"? Was he trying to tell me he was dying? I didn't want to believe it was true.

I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up. When I began my drive home, I tried calling again. No answer. I tried several more times that evening. No response. I know now that he had been hospitalized that day. That he had been suffering from advanced gall bladder cancer for months. That he had been sent home that same night and placed on hospice care. But I didn’t know it then.

My phone rang the next morning at 5:30a.m. while I was walking the dogs. It was Tom, so I immediately picked up. “I can’t reach my water,” he said, his words slurring. “Can you come?”

Every once in a great while in our lives—maybe only once or twice—we are called upon to do big things, tasks that require special sacrifice or uncharacteristic spontaneity. This was one of those times for me. I wish with all my heart I could write that I took the dogs home, got dressed, and drove the hour to Tom’s apartment—a place I had never been before—and given him his water. Instead, my very rational brain took over and began a series of questions. To my “Are you sick?” he responded “A little bit.” He wouldn’t tell me how, and finally told me a nurse would be coming any time, and he didn’t want to talk anymore. I made him promise that he would have the nurse call me as soon as she arrived so I could determine what was going on and whether I needed to cancel plans and go to him.

No one ever called. Tom died a few hours later. This, I learned from a post on his Facebook page.

The days and weeks following his death have been complicated and sad and frustrating as hell.

He never made a will, as far as we can tell. At least, one has not been found. One of his nieces, because she is next-of-kin, has been tasked with taking care of everything—his apartment, his belongings, his finances… his guitars—all while she is grieving his loss.

As we all are, all of those who knew him and loved him. I am meeting his friends and bandmates for the very first time, and they are amazing and wonderful people… and Tom told no one, until the very last hours of his life, that he was dying.

So grief is mixed with guilt, and I push back against it, because guilt, other than making us ‘do better next time’ or apologize when we need to, is a worthless emotion. I will struggle, though, until I see Tom on the other side, with this:

You had one job, Murphy. The dying man just needed you to drop what you were doing and come to him, something he had never asked or expected of you before, and you failed him.

It's fine. Of course it’s fine. He has crossed over, and he no longer feels any pain and he is joyfully singing with his friends who went before.

But….

My friend, we always believe that there will be enough time. None of us, however—no matter who we are—have a guarantee that there will be.