He's gone, but he's still everywhere

[published in the Marin Independent Journal, June 3, 2008]

Peter died in April. We’d known each other for more than thirty years. We were friends, lovers, husband and wife, divorced. Sometimes we hardly spoke, so angry at each other that we needed to feel we were on the opposite ends of the earth. But in spite of that and surprising to us both in the end, the love we had was stronger than our ability not to feel it. It simply was. Like the air. How can the air be missing?

Painful, bittersweet and lasting--the sorrow you feel after the death of someone you loved stretches you. It’s an enrichment in that way. It has something to do with how all-encompassing the missing of that person is. How you look for him everywhere, because you sense him around you. How you see him at the steering wheel in the car behind you as you cross the Golden Gate Bridge or in the warm brown eyes of a mother deer in China Camp. You sense the movement of his hand in the wind at Rodeo Beach, or his breath over the horizon at the end of the day. And you feel yourself expanding because you're reaching in all the corners, farther than you've ever reached before. Wanting to touch what you know is out of reach, but looking for a way to do it anyway. Because you know, you simply know he's everywhere.

It has something to do with the depth of feeling, knowing that in order to survive you need to keep moving forward, to accept the sorrow as you would any imperfection in yourself or in others. Imperfections that you can do nothing about. And in that, you are perfect.

It's an exploration of what love really means. How it floods you with songs and lyrics, photographs of time you shared. Smiles and tears through the minutes and the hours. And the paradox of loving someone so much in spite of all the reasons not to. Loving unconditionally. Which is the revelation.

More than anyone it was Peter who urged me to write, who convinced me I was good at it, and who led me to believe in myself. Peter, wherever you are, find peace in your heart knowing that you'll forever be in mine.

mr. p

i wrote this for peter a few months ago, after he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. he died last saturday. i'll be writing about him in one way or another for the rest of my life. more than anyone it was peter who urged me to write, who convinced me i was good at it, and who led me to believe in myself. peter, wherever you are, read this poem again. and find peace in your heart knowing that you'll forever be in mine.

mr. p

thirty years ago
it was
when we met
at a street corner
and i said playfully
'let's get together and talk about old times.'
i was younger than you by eleven years.
you smiled and so did i
and so began our conversation.

although as you would tell it
it began in a slightly different way.
you saw me at my desk
wearing a danskin and jeans, seemingly focused on my work,
all the while looking very slyly at you.
you caught it and i knew it.
i was the girl for you.
you were a crazyman, somewhat disshevelled.
a missing tooth,
which was puzzling
for someone as handsome as you.
something cool and a shade of hip
energized, electric, yet a nuance of something tired and worn.
and i couldn't figure it out
how you, with your bagels and chinese food, your
bravado performance, and your sherman cigarettes, would
be the one to steal my heart.

but now i realize it had little to do
with the stories you told, how you made me laugh
your somewhat sleazy smile, your downright wizardry in the kitchen
or the fact
you had my father's nose.
it was something else, something
intangible, illogical, a fact of life,
which was simply
that you loved me and i loved you.
right then and there--forever.

and through all these years
spent together and apart-
laughing, crying,
shooting arrows through the mist
or holding each other in the storm
to brace against the cold,
the love we have
has laughed in our poor bedraggled faces.
for what fools we are indeed
to think we can decide whether to love or not.
love simply is, like the passage of time,
like it or not.

which is what we knew when first we saw each other-
in the shadows of a quiet building on vallejo street-where
we began our conversation.
not quite conscious a thought,
but a melody we both heard.
a recognition of someone
we've known and loved since the beginning of time
before the invention of the telephone.
remember when we talked for three hours?
before the invention of paper
remember the poem you wrote?
seven pages of thoughts, scrawled
on lined three-ring paper
telling me (and you) of feelings
you had stored away for
the winter, as you had
for so many seasons before.

the snow falling outside your window
so cold inside, you shivered
and then--from a time
you didn't yet remember --
my face appeared behind the frosted glass.

and our daughter--the best of both of us.
we dreamed of her.
christmas in july, remember?


i can't go away, nor can you
we're linked forever, we are.
you in me
and i in you.
mr p, i love you

Ira's fight with the man

[I wrote this when Peter was dying; it wasn't a certainty then, but we all pretty much knew--inncluding Peter himself. When I originally wrote this post, I didn't want to use his name. Out of respect, even reverence for him, I suppose. At the time I still hadn't realized to what extent I loved him. Sadly, that didn't happen until the last few days of his life. He knew before I did. I believe he always knew. And beneath all of my convoluted masks, I suppose I did too. -fs, 8/7/10]

i don't remember exactly how long ago he told me he suspected something was wrong, seriously wrong. he'd been getting thinner and thinner over the last year. he is a man who has practiced denial as diligently as some of us practice yoga or eat a healthy breakfast. so in spite of sensing something was wrong, he did nothing to deal with it head-on.



we've known each other for more than 25 years. and through that time we've been lovers, friends, enemies, and everything in between. he's a self-avowed "tap dancer," a master in bullshit--not just to others, in fact primarily to himself. one friend described it well. "when he takes off the tap shoes, he's wearing another pair." and all his life he's talked about beating "the man." the same friend who talked about his "tap shoes" said that "the man" is really ira himself.


but ira is an enigma. there is a beauty that resides in him, something deep and soulful that is so strong that in spite of broken promises, money owed, manipulation, lying, cheating, and a slew of traits and events that no one wants to deal with, he has an assorted group of friends from many eras of his life who have managed to stick around. because somewhere inside him, all too often shrouded by the more acrid, ignoble parts, is a delightful person who views and appreciates the world with the same innocent delight as a wonderful little boy. the evening of the day that he was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer, i stood by the window of his hospital room that looked out into the Marin County, California hillside. The face of the pale yellow full moon hovered against the charcoal sky. I told ira to take a look. "Oh wow," he said. And he looked at that moon with the same wonder I had seen so many times during all the years I've known him--whenever he was appreciating the beauty in the world. He stared at the moon for what seemed like a very long time. And I fought hard to hold back the tears.



at least a year ago, it seems, his doctor had prescribed a series of diagnostic tests, none of which he had done. then, just a few days before christmas '07, i received a call from a mutual friend, stephen, who had made it a point to visit ira or at least check in by phone on a daily basis. he'd been doing this for several months, watching a gradual and very perceiveable decline. stephen called me from ira's house and spoke to me in a low, but urgent voice. ira was visibly dehydrated, despondent, and more than likely stoned out of his mind on pot and percoset, the later prescribed for pain in his foot, but to what degree had he abused it? stephen reported that ira was lying on his sofa in essentially the same position he had been in the night before--a small bowl of soup balanced perilously on his stomach, barely touched. stephen urged me to come over, to help convince ira he needed to go to the hospital. lynn, one of ira's neighbors and a long-standing friend, was there too. and now she was headed across the street to engage the help of her partner, a nurse who works with AIDS patients in correctional facilities in the Bay Area.



when i arrived, ira was still on the couch, in what had become a ridiculously disshevelled, dirty house. ira sat up and managed to walk to the kitchen, where he put his soup bowl in the sink. i tried to reason with him--as had stephen and lynn before me, that he needed immediate medical attention and that the best thing he could do for himself right now would be to go to the hosptial. he balked at the idea, lashing out with a sudden force that didn't seem possible, "not now. maybe later, but not now." by this time, lynn returned with her partner. with straight-shooting urgency, she assured ira she would help him seek hospice, if indeed he was going to die, and that she would help make certain that he would not die in a hospital--something he had long feared--that he would die at home. he agreed to go to the hospital.



rather than calling for an ambulance, lynn called the local fire station to request a fire truck. she asked that they keep it all lowkey. no sirens, no big deal. they agreed, but that's not how it happened. when the firetruck approached ira's house, it was with the usual fanfare we associate with big red fire trucks.



the crew was efficient and treated ira with patience and kindness. one of the attendants asked him a few basic questions, to make sure he wasn't being taken somewhere against his will. and he took his vital signs. then, bundled up in a goose down jacket, and wearing a beret and long, aviator-type scarf wrapped twice around his neck, a thoroughly weak, emaciated, desperate and frightened ira was positioned into a wheelchair and transported to the back of the fire truck.


and that's how it began. ira is a man who has lived his life as a charmer, a master of ceremonies, a raconteur. he was a talented music producer who tap danced his way in and out of alliances--professional and personal, managing to disappoint others nearly as much as himself. he's dug himself into holes of various sorts and relied on others to dig him out. and now--with all the good wishes, his promises of transformation and redemption, amidst owing money and trips to the pot store, ira is still ira, fighting the final battle against a ravaging poison that exists beyond the touch of his smiles or tears.