Post-Memorial Day 2009

Oso, this is the 3 year anniversary of your loss, your being set free, your going away from me. Not exactly a thing to celebrate, but a thing to always mark and remember. One year ago, I got your tattoo. It’s on my left arm, and it gives me comfort and love and confidence, in a small piece, just as you did. I miss you, Bear. I miss you every day, always, every time something, anything significant happens. I think of you being with me everywhere, and how, even though your sister and this brother, this Corgi, you never knew are in my heart deeply, they cannot be with me in the way that you were. You were first. You were my best bear. I love you, and this day was yours.

I did something today that I hope honored your spirit. I went to a bike repair workshop. I know that sounds weird, so let me explain why that would have anything to do with you. It came about like this. I go to work on a Tuesday after Memorial Day, your holiday. I am depressed and sad to be in this place, where I do nothing and make nothing and get paid as a writer but don’t feel good about it. I go and I talk to my friend who is older and wiser and wonderful and who therefore understands. (She’s a soul like ours, Os.) She mentions an article in the Times Sunday magazine. I say, wow, that’s weird, I was just thinking about doing something with my hands. I used to work as a handyperson when I first moved to Greensboro (before you were born) and needed money but didn’t want to work in an office. (I knew better, even then.) I read the article. It is amazing; it could describe my life, or the life I want. I remember that the Recycle a Bicycle shop had workshops or something, and I look it up. I have to call several times. No, they say, Tuesday/ladies night has been changed. It’s now on Wednesdays and it’s for everyone.

Bear, what they do in this workshop is let people come in and learn how to fix bikes. You become a volunteer, and you learn about how bikes are put together. This has to do with you because when I got you, when I lived as a poet in Greensboro, I was living the most honest life I have ever lived. I had worked with my hands, and still did, in off-times, with the same guy, after I got you. I was making my living by the seat of my pants, and I had no money, I picked tomatoes off the vines Jeff Towne planted on the sides of Carr Street and made a pasta dinner with them almost every night, and I could barely afford paper to print on, but I was happy. We were happy. You always had food, and I took the best care of you, always. We had good friends, and we both learned how to be who we were. I was ok. We were ok. Together. Going and spending a couple of hours getting dirty and learning how to do something useful (I ride my bike every day), something real, means that I’m in touch with my soul, Os, and that means I’m in touch with you.

I hope you understand.

I didn’t travel to Paterson or Greensboro or Dallas or the Blue Ridge Parkway, where your ashes are. I didn’t spend all day writing poetry. I didn’t cry about you all day. But I thought about you all day, and I did cry, of course, and I did go and do this thing, as a person, alone in a city that is MUCH scarier than Greensboro, thinking of you all the while, and hoping that what I was doing somehow makes sense to your spirit. In a way, it is just you and me again.

Because your spirit is with me everyday, even when I go to that place where I labor. It has helped me continue to write despite it all, and continue to put my work out there, every month, in an effort to have my voice heard. I am publishing something this week, THIS WEEK, Os, which is a strange and wondrous coincidence, about you. I know this is important; I know you would understand it has to be done alone. But with you, Os, I was never alone. I could do what I needed to do but never be alone. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, and I had it, for a time, with you. And for that, I will always be grateful, and I will always love you and remember this day.

It is still that way. You are still my Bear, I am working hard to be the writer you witnessed the birth of, and I know, I know because of you, that I am never, ever alone in that effort.