1996

Your quilt, one of many

Stitched with tears, bakes in sunshine

National Mall grass

Black Thing

im going to stay here until they go away

im going to stay right here in the closet

oh stop smirking not that kind of closet

no one in this family is in that kind of closet

im in a for real closet                                                                                                            

my favorite closet way up on the top shelf sprawled across the hatboxes of military helmets collapsible toppers berets fedoras souwesters and bowlers where i can inhale the leather scent of the mans jackets  

its quiet up here with the good smell of leather and man sweat

i dont like the hubbub the crowds in the living room kitchen bedrooms

even the bathroom where the man keeps my box

the apartment is full of people

the mans sister

his friend

his friends siamese bitch

yes i know a bitch is a dog but i am using the other meaning of the word

you dont insult my intelligence and i wont insult yours

at least ill try not to insult yours whatever intelligence you have anyway

so many other people that i am dizzy with the smells

i am too old and fat to avoid their legs

keep their heels off my tail and their hands off me

i dont like when they touch me 

i dont like strange people touching me

i belong to the man

 

im not even sure how i managed to get up here

its been years since i climbed the coats but now i am here

up on top of the hatboxes in the warm quiet

so quiet up here away from everything everyone all over

im going to stay up here until they go away and the man helps me down

i hope he comes soon

he should be looking for me i think 

such a long time since he fed me

since anyone fed me even the mans friend or the mans sister

they give me dry food but the man shares real food with me and I bring him presents

okay I used to bring him presents when I was younger

he even made a poster for the door with a scorecard because he is proud of my hunting

ill just take another little nap while i wait

its late

its so very late

i know its late because im very hungry and i want down

when the man gets me ill pretend to be annoyed and hiss but i hope he comes soon

maybe when he gets me down he will be sorry for forgetting me and he will hold me and give me treats and stroke my fur and play make believe and put me in the hats and take pictures of me like we used to do before when we were young and sleek and not grey anywhere

hes gotten so thin

i wish i could give him some of my fatness

i wish i could

im so fat now i take up his whole lap and the rest of the sofa too 

he pushes me off because his stomach hurts all the time so I go up on the back of the sofa to nuzzle his neck and watch the fireplace with him

i know what ill do

ill call him and he will come and reach way up and say come here black thing you silly old black thing what are you doing up there all alone and pull me down and hold me and take me to sit on the sofa with him

im going to call him now

man

maaaaaannnn

oh man come get me man

if you get me down we can sit in the living room and i will do the firefly dance on the windowsill and play peekaboo with the curtains to make you laugh and i will bring you a present

oh maaaaaannnn my man come get me please

i wish he'd come get me

im lonely up here

i dont want to be up here anymore

why doesnt he come

he always comes when i call

where is he            

where is my man

i wish everyone would just go away already so the man can get me and sit on the sofa with me and watch the fireplace and eat sardines right out of the can and itll be me and him and everything will be okay like before

Wellwood D14

He’s pushing up daisies through the hedgerow
I waited too long before, too long since
The blip in my life that was us
Grey roads and heat wave ripple air before,
tree root broken sidewalks and tsunami wind since
I lie down, partly hidden by the bushes
Soon, I will take his hand and we will push up daisies together.

Dearly Not Yet Departed

sss sss sss that soft rasp...
Do I know you?
Do I know you any longer?
Grey tinged, hairless, curled,
skin breaking away in pieces, bedsores.
In the olden days, before medical interventions of extraordinary measures,
I'd have held a candle to your lips, waiting for the exhale, the last exhale,
the exhale that leaves the light burning.
In the olden days.
But now, I watch the monitors, blip-blip-blip, etching you on thin strips of green paper.
Kissing you, cool, dry, kissing you goodbye last night, tonight, and I think, tomorrow night, too.
The goodbye kisses will go on as long as there is paper to feed through the machine,
writing your long agos and maybe somedays and most of all, your nows in ink
that will be stored away, protecting someone somewhere from possible future liability issues.
I carry you, inhale your exhalation and the blue flames rise, guiding a chisel on granite.
It writes your name, but it doesn't write you.
I write you. I write you inside me. I write you.

Sheloshim

Mommy died on April 16, 1986. The hospital called my uncle to tell him that she had taken a turn for the worse and perhaps we should come in to speak to her doctors. A turn for the worse? She'd already spent a week in the intensive care unit, had tubes running in and out of her, been robbed of her speech-oh that was the worst, being unable to speak! She'd yanked the tube out of her throat once too often and the nurses had tied her arms to the bed- and the use of her limbs. So what could be worse than that?

I had spoken to the nursing staff before I'd left for work that ordinary Wednesday morning, like any other Wednesday morning: "No change." What could have happened in the seventy minutes from when I locked my front door until I sat down and changed from sneakers to pumps? What?

Everything changes in the blink of an eye.

A child is conceived.

A person falls in love.

A truth is revealed.

A woman dies.

But that is all neither here nor there because tonight I want to talk about what happened sixty day later, twice sheloshim.

Sheloshim is the first thirty days of mourning. At the end of the month of mourning, the bereaved are allowed to wear regular clothes, uncover their mirrors and return to life, or the end of the world, as they know it, and are expected to function, to be okay with things, be normal.

I am expected to function and to be okay with things. But I know I'm not, I know that I am filled with slivers of glass. Twenty years in the future in a time and place where life appears normal, the bottom of my foot will be shards and I will leave a trail of blood, but I don't know that. I look into a shattered mirror and see nothing.

No one looks past the mirror, past the teeth of a shredder.

Sixty days and Jeff was admitted to Mt. Sinai for the first of many stays, the beginning of a too long, too short period of dying, pain and funeral planning.

I begin to count on June 16, 1986, like the counting of the Omer, long hot summer followed by a wet fall. David and Jeff went to the high holiday services at a temple near their home. We didn't have a regular temple, didn't have a congregation to support us for good or ill, a spiritual home where we could pad around in our slippers and drink tea with honey while analyzing the meaning of the letter ‘bet' in a particular word and why god chose to pass this cup of bitter to our lips.

Jeff carried the prayer book which had been given to him for his twenty-first birthday and had his name embossed on the cover in gilt lettering. Although his grandfather or maybe it was his great-grandfather, had been a rabbi or at least a big-macher in the reform movement, no one remembers the truth of family legends, Jeff was the product of a mixed marriage and not ritually observant. I have always numbered him among the holy thirty-six, but what do I know anyway?

He and David were reveling in exploring their Jewish roots and their new found spirituality. They shared Jeff's prayer book that year, the first time my brother had gone to services in his adult life, and struggled through the Hebrew together.

A year later, while Jeff drifted in and out of consciousness, David read the services to him and the minyan of friends who stood at his bedside in that small room at Mt. Sinai, or so I was told later.

When I spoke to them, to Jeff for the last time, from Hong Kong, I asked if they would meet me at the airport when I returned in a few days. Jeff replied, "I don't know. I can't predict what will be tomorrow, let alone a week from now. Little Sister, everything changes in the blink of an eye. You, more than anyone, know that."

Yes. Yes, it does.

In the blink of an eye, David read the services to Jeff, read them despite his inability to read Hebrew, read them as Jeff struggled to breathe, read them as Erica steeled herself not to cry, read them as Brian punched his fist through the wall, read them as Jews all over the world prayed for forgiveness, for repentance, prayer and charity to temper judgment's severe decree, and by the time the blink was finished, he was gone.

The next year, David carried Jeff's book to BHS, the home we'd found on Remsen Street, the congregation that adopted us and became our place of peace, took us in as we merged until we didn't know where one of us started and the other one ended, Meanddavid.

But that is still another story, the story of the lost years and I cannot bear to revisit it.

David carried it every year and let me hold it now and then. He'd hold Lizz and I'd hold Jeff's book open so we both could read.

When he died, I looked for Jeff's book with all of David's other prayer books, his tefillin, the collection of kippas, in the buffet in his dining room behind the left door. It wasn't there.

I looked in the bedroom.

I looked in the bookcases.

I looked in the garage.

I looked in the cars, woodshop, office, parlor, behind the wood stoves, under the loose tiles, above the kitchen cabinets, on the shelf in the closet where the cats slept, in the pockets of his jackets, under the mattress.

It wasn't there.

I sat on the floor in the dining room. "David, you need it? You need it so bad you took it with you? You're with Jeff now, you need his book, too? You're with your bashert, you couldn't leave me the book? You left me all the drek to deal with, the house of cards fell down, but you couldn't leave me the book. Fuck you, David."

He didn't answer. Not answering is also an answer.

I nodded, got up from the floor and went about my business. What choice did I have? At services, I used one of the books from the piles of books stacked all around the sanctuary. Every year when I took a book from the pile, I thought of Jeff's book and resented my brother for taking it, resented him for standing next to me, telling me things I knew, what I had to do or not do, to live my life without regrets or guilt, but not sharing the book. Being dead gives one a kind of omniscience or perhaps it changes one into an obnoxious know-it-all. I'm not sure which and who am I to judge anyway? Every year I did this, but I continued to search, moving furniture, emptying closets, cupboards, shelves of life. I enlisted all my friends in the search as we dismantled David, but it never turned up.

We contracted to sell David's house about five years after he died. All the furniture was gone, the cars, tools and supplies. All that was left was a folding table and three chairs, where we'd sat boxing up the last few things. I clicked the remote and opened the garage, looked around. I'd lost my brother and I'd lost a child and I'd lost years of my life. Gone. The echoes of sunlight were swallowed by this cave I'd wandered for so long, tripping over stalagmites of Stickley tables and knocked in the head by stalactites of log rules.

I sighed, walked to the table, stopped.

In the middle of the table was Jeff's book.

I reached out, touched it with a fingertip to see if it was real. Pulled my cell from my purse, dialed.

"Richie, did you find Jeff's book?"

"Stephen, did you find Jeff's book?"

"Harrison, Antoine, Micheal?"

No. No. No.

"Honey, Jeff's book is here."

"What do you mean? David took it."

"It's here. On the folding table."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

My husband pulled into the garage and got out of the car, walked over to me. Reached out and touched the book with a fingertip to see if it was real.

"Feels real."

"Did you....."

"No. I would have called you or brought it home. I wouldn't have pulled a stunt like this."

"So?"

"I dunno, hon. I dunno. Maybe David decided he doesn't need it any longer."

"Or maybe that I need it more than he does since we're..."

"He passed it on."

"How?"

"How? How do we know? Do we really want to know? Do we?"

We stood there, staring at the book, for bit longer. I picked it up and put it on the passenger seat of my car. We backed out of the garage and drove home.

Every year I carry Jeff's book, the book he received for his twenty-first birthday, the red "Gates of Repentance" embossed with his name.

Jeffrey H. Glidden.

I never did find out what the "H" stood for

A Good Death

There is such a thing as a good death. And a bad death. I've seen both. Hah! I've seen so much death, left right and sideways that Lethe has knocked me down and covered me as easily as the Atlantic in January or July. This is not my death we are discussing, for once, that will be soon enough I am sure, but death as an abstraction, death that I have witnessed.

Oh, I've seen. I've seen close, I've seen so close the Eish crept out between the lips I pressed shut, crept out and snaked around and kissed me. I've known death from the other side of the world, when all I could do was nothing, nothing, nothing to help or console, heal or be healed except rock like an autistic child, banging my head against the wall so I wouldn't feel.

A good death. What is a good death? A death prepared for, expected, welcomed, longed for even, perhaps with your loved ones around you to comfort you and each other. I want a good death for me, but that will be alone, just between me and the lightpost. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk about myself, the ego train never leaves this choo-choo track does it? It's not all about me although in some sense every word I write is a reflection of me. Me and the lightpost. Or the support beam. The cinderblock wall. The water way down below, swollen river calling me.

It's about Jeff. My beloved Jeff, my snaggle-toothed, 5 ft 6-1/2 inch angel with the most beautiful black ringlets I've ever seen, at lest until it fell out in clumps from the meds, great handfuls of hair, trails of hair. Hansel and Gretel tried to follow the trail of hair, but the birds took it to weave into new homes for their chicks.

If the birds got a hold of one of Jeff's boots, they could house the whole covey there.

Jeff had time, or at least e knew how fast the sand was running. The blessing? curse of knowledge, that odd gift which resulted in god but perhaps not shekinah abandoning us in Gan Eden, knowledge which opens one door and shuts another. That is what all knowledge does, opens doors. Who admits that it also closes them? Who has that courage? Courage is touching the sacred, holding it, evaluating it. Where is it sacred? Is the taboo, the profanity in the object or in the touch?

The holy of holies will turn you to ashes. I have tasted ashes, worn sackcloth. Am I a holy vessel? Or am I a contaminant?

Sixty days. Sixty days after our mother died, fifty-five days after shiva ended, thirty days after sheloshim, thirty days when we were supposed to breathe deep and know that we come out the other end of this tunnel, and it doesn't matter if there is light or no light, all that matters is coming out the other side.

Oh god how could they? How could they kiss him on the forehead and send him home to us, wounded creatures that we are? How can we take care of him when we are don't know how to take care of ourselves?

He was so beautiful. But you know that, you've heard me say it any number of times, that David's bashert was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. A sun everyone wanted to touch, to be burnt, scorched, rendered into an offering fit for a god, or rendered as an offering to a god.

Is there a difference between being an offering and being transformed into one? Aaron's sons were struck down, nothing was left. My sun accepts, catharsis, transforms into a part of the whole, a better part than it was to start.

If you knew him.

If you'd met him.

He had as good a death as it is possible to have, if you can wrap your mind around the concept that any death being a good death.

I'd like to die like Jeff. Oh, not of AIDS, not from medicines that poison while they heal, not from some long wasting illness, not surrounded by people either. No, I'd like to die peaceful, here. Knowing that whatever I had done or not done, the decision was made and all I could do was accept and sleep. I want the freedom of irresponsible, of escape. Jeff had everyone who loved him crowded into a hospital room, a minyan which sang his eish to straight to heaven, to the right hand of god, to join the rest of the thirty-six who awaited.

I still have the flowers that were on his night-table. Twenty-one years and I still have the flowers.

Bed's Too Big With or Without You

No more bags. How the fuck am I going to pack the rest of this stuff. I am disgusted with detritus, he thought, and debris. Aw fuck, toss the crap in a pillowcase and be done with it. It’s just bedstuffs anyway. I’d leave it here if I didn’t need it.

He pulled a pillowcase out of the stack of linens. A striped yellow and pink pillowcase, standard size. Hers. From before they even lived together. Staring at it, its stripes worn and faded, he sighed. Standard size pillowcase from back when they shared a double bed, before they upgraded to a king. A king size bed, so much more room to watch TV, read the papers, have breakfast, make love, be creative. So much more room to be creative while making love. Life was good. And when life was not good, not kind? So much more room to hug the ends of the bed and avoid ‘accidentally’ touching each other. In a double bed, you’re always bumping into each other. Can’t go to sleep angry in a double bed. You touch every time you turn over. Which means you better make up or you better make up. In a king, the hurts can lay there right in the middle of the bed. The hurts send out suckers all night long, grow new branches and push the root systems deeper. Never again, he muttered to himself, stuffing towels into the pillowcase. No more king bed. Maybe a queen, but a king? No. Not in this lifetime. No.

How many piles of sheets and blankets on the floor? What next? Splitting a household is much tougher than merging. Merging was gradual, CD’s, books, clothes here, special pots and pans there. Over time, things come together. But picking apart who got what, determining whose it was originally? They did not have the luxury of time for that, each eager to have a new life. Well, one of us was anyway, he thought, shoving sheets into the other yellow and pink pillowcase. One of us has a new life, and the other? What do I have? I have some striped yellow and pink pillowcases. And no bed to put them on.

What happened? When did it happen? When did I realize that it was all a pack of lies I’d been fed? And lies about inanities. Lies that could be found out in a second. So why do it? Was it all just pathology? Or because she told so many lies she didn’t even know what the truth was any longer? Little lies as a front for big lies? Was the point to have the lies discovered, confronted? Had it all been a learning exercise to test the honesty of the pupil and not the teacher? He looked up at the light fixture. No answers there. He’d never know, did not want to know. Because that would mean admitting he’d checked. That he had suspected enough to look.

And then he found out the inanities were a cover. That there were more lies underneath. Serious lies. Threatening lies. Lies that went beyond simple facts into the realm of thought, action and emotion. And she had lied about all of them, lied in her thinking, her deeds and in her feelings. It was beyond any whiter shade of pale he could accept.

Blatant and stupid as the lies were, was it worse to admit the initial distrust on his part in even checking or worse admitting the discovery of the lie? He knew he’d been looked into, the ubiquitous google and zaba and zillow, but that was to be expected. To check on her? The audacity on his part, the niggling doubts. And then...

If she lied this much now, what kind of lies would she tell later?

Why? It had only served to tear them apart. His knowledge of her lies, her knowing he knew and both of them silent. The longer it went on, the harder it was to admit. Even to say, hey, I wanted to see if I could do this and look what I found. For her to say, you knew how to verify this, good job. Or, you SOB, you’ve been checking up on me. What was the name of the elephant in the north east corner of the bedroom? The green elephant, not the purple one. That big green elephant, my jealousy is as big as that elephant. Not going to be an issue soon. How she chose to squander her time would be her prerogative. And whatever webs she cast? Who cares? Not him, not anymore.

He looked at the pillowcases, her pillowcases filled with the sheets and towels he was taking. His new life wrapped in a bit of her old life. If I put those pillowcases on my bed, when I finally get a bed, it’ll be like sleeping with her. He shivered. Lust? Grief? Whatever. I’ll figure it out later. I wonder if she’ll notice they’re gone, that I took them. If she realizes I took them, maybe... He pushed his hair back and picked up the pillowcases. The rejected sheets and towels lay in heaps on the floor. He kicked them, then walked through the piles, scattering them down the hallway.

Got to finish in the kitchen. Not leaving her my good saute pans or my celphalon pots. Let the bitch buy her own. Pupil passes teacher. Pupil does not want to pass teacher. Pupil still loves teacher. Sometimes. Just sometimes. But sometimes...

Love is not enough.

Jeff and Erica

It was Jeff's birthday the other day. And Erica's yahrzeit. She did not die on his birthday, no. She died the next day. Or that night, but not on his birthday. No.

It was a strange and terrible year, even as years go, following another strange and terrible year, a whole series in strange and terrible years. I kept my funeral shoes near the door. It seemed too much trouble to throw them in the closet when I'd only have to dig them out again a few days later. Timmy and I discussed snubbing each other. We were tired of running into each other in funeral chapels, cemeteries, wakes, shiva calls. Before that year, we were used to two or three years passing with only a phone call or christmas card. But that year? Never more than ten weeks without seeing each other.

Never more than ten.

I went to a lot of funerals that year, the year before I got married, moving guests from the "yes I will attend" column to the "deceased" column. Perhaps the wedding, wearing my dead father's necklace, my dead mother's scarf, Jeff's penny in my shoe, was a funeral of sorts, too, a funeral pickled on champagne and ice floes instead of whiskey and ice. Perhaps.

We all thought Jeff would be the last funeral. Who was left to die?

I, the bad sister-in-law, came back from Tibet to a treasure trove of mourning. My mother's death money sent me there, away from it all, and I came back a month later, spinning my prayer wheels, to find four more coffins waiting for me. Yes I'd sit and spin my prayer wheels, wood and ivory, with my little prayers tucked inside, sending them straight to heaven, straight to god. Every prayer was "Enough."

If I lined up all the coffins head to toe, head to toe, head to toe, counted the miles, I would be a fool. There was no relief that year. It was SLAM SLAM SLAM, body shots, gut shots, huge gaping holes of grief shots.

Still, there was nothing to do about it, except make whatever plans seemed to go with or against whatever grain there was and I don't know I just did and didn't think. Or I'd think and turn away from it. Twenty years later and I don't know that, that it IS twenty years later. To me it isn't, certainly not. When I let myself feel, let myself in, it is now.

The dragons have sharp claws, sharper than a serpent tooth, especially from the inside trying to get out. Dragons in full bloom that year, slowly circling the campground, waiting to pounce on the person that inadvertently? with audacity? leaves the confines of safe haven. They wait. Dragons can wait forever, they have no concept of time.

Dragons only exist in me. They aren't real. Everyone knows dragons are just more make-believe. Right? Right?

Jeff's memorial service was on his 30th birthday. That was his short range goal, to be thirty. And his long term goal? Thirty-five. This man, who had the courage to climb out of a bottle, climb out of the drug haze, this man who saved lives as easily as he snapped his fingers, this man who was truly beautiful, all he wanted was to be thirty.

Erica did not have a good day at the service. She'd spent the past sixteen months nursing her child, her firstborn, through illness after illness, as the ravening dragon inside him chewed his liver, his intestines, his heart, his brain. I stayed with her and we counted sugar dots. We even had the fancy ones with little flowers on them. Sugar dots and sugar cubes are a tradition in my family, a funeral tradition. I still have Jeff's sugar dots, a few. But we used most of them at Erica's funeral. Two days later.

Jeffrey Jan 17, 1958 to Oct 9, 1987.

Erica ???? to Jan 18, 1988.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Cemetery

I was thinking about my brother this morning. Yes, I realize I think about him every morning (I think about you too, Big Brother, but I do not discuss you here.) but a favorite incident has been tickling my brain the past few days. David was a character. We all have slightly twisted senses of humor, ways of dealing with our past that some may find a bit off-setting.

We have more dead than many people of our generation. Well, perhaps not now, not now that I am a little old lady, much closer to my demise, so close I can smell the cordite and treacle, than I am to my beginning, but when we were in our twenties, it seemed we were the only two who had more relatives in Wellwood Cemetery than in our phone book.

Every time ten people in my phone book die, I replace my phone book.

I have had many phone books.

I don't keep a physical phone book any longer. That is another story.

So, David and I would often talk of our dead, our ghosts, speak of them and to them. I still do. He still does. We had a nice little chat yesterday morning. He agreed that the new purple sheets were a really nice shade of purple and reminded me to wash them before first use. And I better watch out, the last time I had purple sheets, I was five years old and ended up head to toe purple hives. I replied, these are sheets, not sulfa drugs. Which also turn me purple, FYI. As do other medications, but not penicillin. I am such an old fashioned old lady. Give me a poultice of moldy bread, that'll fix me right up, good as new. But I digress.

Back to David, who was also allergic to sulfa drugs but took large dosages of them during the week before he died, blood pouring out of every orifice in his body, the morning after they would not let me see him, his visitor passes already in use, his phone line dead. I stood there in the hospital lobby, so desperate to go upstairs, making such a scene, hoping they would have rachmunis on me. They threatened to have me arrested, sent me out into the night.

The doctor called me at 6:15 the next morning.

I was already awake, waiting.

I was already awake, waiting when my mother called to say that my dad had died.

I was already awake, waiting when my uncle called to say that my mom had died.

I was already awake, waiting when Kay called to say Richie had died.

Is that why I never sleep?

Am I always waiting for the phone to ring?

Alright, Robyn, you wanted to tell a tale, stop staring at the computer screen. The flickering diodes hold no answers, no insights. The warmth and pressure of the laptop on my thighs will have to suffice as an answer, a comfort. It is the closest I get to losing myself in physical pleasure, the solace, my drug of choice to make it all go away for a while. It is the closest I get to not being alone.

David was widowed. After a while, he dated. He would meet men in bars or at clubs or wherever and decide whether or not they were worthy of going home with him. When the first throes of mourning had passed, the random faceless fucking of shloshim, he resumed his selective tendencies and decided to pursue a relationship. After a third or fourth or fifth date, he'd determine whether or not to introduce the person to his family.

"I want you to meet my family."

"Wow, I am honored. Great. When?"

"Now is as good a time as any."

The person hopped on the back of David's bike and wrapped his arms around David, thinking, oh wow, I am going to meet Kid Sister and Most Amazing Niece and maybe even Long Suffering Brother in Law. This is great, I must really rate.

And they took off. Down Eastern Parkway, Linden Blvd, onto the Southern State they'd fly, exceding whatever the posted speed limit was (you thought I was the only one who exceeds the speed limit? Daddy and David were each ticketed at over 100 mph.) until they turned in at the gates of Wellwood. David would continue, much slower, pulling up in front of our parents' tombstones.

"XYZ, I'd like you to meet my parents. Mom, Dad, this is XYZ. Okay, Grandma and Aunt Ettie are right over here and then I'll introduce you to Jeff and Erica. And Cousin Irving, he's in the front. Oh. You thought I was going to introduce you to Kid Sister? Maybe later."

Depending on whether the person politely introduced himself to the granite markers, helped trim the bushes, laid pebbles on the base of each grave, how the person responded to David's dead determined whether he would get to meet David's living.

Not a bad way of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about David and Vita's list of repairs.

Vodka Straight

He wore a lavender tee shirt
with a unicorn and a
raaaiiinnnbow on it.
A rainbow.
Could you get any more cliche than that?

But he was beautiful
broken tooth smile
Made my bones hurt
marrow boiling away

Stands there, microphone in hand
Eyes shut, so far away.
He sings.
Silly karaoke bar.
I watch lean back on my bar stool.
The counter holds me up
because
my bones are melting.

He unlocks the door
of his beat up civic del sol,
old dented.
The rear passenger panel is red.

I wish
I wish I knew
I wish I knew his name....

His Memory

Jeff died erev Sukkot. I was in Hong Kong or the moon, same thing. Every year, preparing for the Days of Awe which leads into his yahrzeit, I binge cry. I cry without awareness of the tears or the root cause. The tears slide down my face, splotches on my tee shirt.
Jeff was...Jeff. I am truly blessed to have known him. I am not the only one to make that claim. He was special. A gay, short, in recovery alcoholic, a fussy little bantamweight with a broken tooth and you could not find a more beautiful person. He glowed. When Jeff came into a room, all heads swiveled to see "who"? He's cute in photos, but live he dazzled.
He was my brother's bashert. When they met, my brother said, "I prefer men shorter than myself." Jeff looked him up and down carefully. Said "I'm only 5' 6-1/2" myself." He was lying. But he knew and David knew. This was The One.
They each told me, independent of the other, what it felt like. One would wake up. Look at the other and say to himself, "This is my home. This is the one who completes me. This is the one who makes me whole, a better person, a better me."
I'd spend time with them, absorbing that glow. I was so happy for them. And oh, how I envied them! I was sick with envy and desire. To feel that way, to know, to be so sure.
One of Jeff's biggest complaints about being ill and dying was how cranky it made him. He became needy, irritable. We told him that he wasn't a burden, it was our pleasure to tend, coddle, indulge him, but he worried about it. Silly boy. The only burden was that AIDS took him before he became a burden.
At his memorial service, on what would have been his 30th birthday, there were so many serious speakers. Everyone extolling the virtues that were Jeff til I wanted to scream. I am one of Jeff's biggest fans. If there were a Jewish counsel to propose sainthood, I would enter his name. Still, after a few hours, I gave into my rebel streak and spoke of Jeff's wicked sense of humor, his ability to tell a joke and lighten any occasion. I related a few of his favorite, filthiest jokes. In sign language. And pantomime. Which made them even more explicit and filthy. His jokes were raunchy, never cruel, never mean.
Jeff saved at least one life. Directly. As metaphor, as influence, he saved so many, enhanced so many. His feet were guided one day, one cool autumn morning. A friend told this story. Jeff never knew what Mark was planning that day. How could he?
Mark had decided it was time to end it all. He went out to buy some junk, to put an extra large dollop of heroin in his needle that day and float away on a cloud of bliss, never to return. Went downtown to meet his supplier. Mark turns the corner and runs smack into Jeff. They hadn't seen each other in a few years. Jeff did not frequent that part of Manhattan.
"Mark! I haven't seen you in ages. Oh, we have to catch up. You must tell me what you've been doing, what's going on. Look, there's a coffee shop. No, Mark, I am not taking no for an answer. It is so good to see you. And hey, they have seven-layer cake. How can you resist seven-layer cake?"
Jeff put his arm around Mark's shoulder and led him into the diner. They spent the rest of the day together. And Mark did not buy heroin that day. Or the next. Or even the day after that. Jeff gave Mark a chance at life just by being himself.
Why was Jeff there, just then?
There is no such thing as coincidence.
Everything leads to everything else.
Paths diverge, converge, digress.
Time passes. The strands weave in and out, to that one moment which changes your life. Which gives you life.
"I'm only 5' 6-1/2" myself."

Moshe ben Esther of blessed memory.