Tag: legacy writing

Legacy Writing 365:345

Monday morning, I was having a long, convoluted dream (as many of mine are). One of those cast of thousands dreams. Just before I woke up, I dreamed I was sitting in a room and my mother walked in. She was laughing, and in the other room, I could hear Debby telling our father a story, and he was laughing, too.

“This was a good idea,” Mother said, “us coming here. She always makes us laugh. We’re so proud of her.”

I was smiling when I woke up, and I could distinctly remember a day when I was either at Mother’s, or she was at The Compound, probably in the year or so before she died, and she was talking to Debby on the phone, sometimes hollering with laughter. “I’m SO glad you called,” she told Debby. “You always make me laugh, no matter how I’m feeling.”

Debby has that effect on me, too, and the dream and that memory reminded me of one of my favorite photos. It was 1990 and we were all in Salt Lake City. David had taken his brothers-in-law skiing, and Mother, Debby, and I had lunch out, went to a movie, did some shopping in the mall. On a whim, one of us said, “Let’s get our picture taken with Santa!”

As soon as we received the photo, Debby said, “Look at the expression on Mother’s face. She looks like Santa’s goosing her!”

“Gave me a chill all over my body,” Mother said and cackled.

Legacy Writing 365:344

Around the time I was in the fourth grade, I was given several Dakin stuffed toys. I can’t remember what they were now, though I seem to recall a skunk, maybe a donkey, and a dog. The only one I held on to through the years was my reindeer, because he stayed with my Christmas decorations. I would put him with my Santa’s Workshop display each year. However, when he was stored in the same place where a lot of my books were lost because of some kind of destructive bug, my poor reindeer’s antlers and eyes, made out of felt, and some of his spots, were all eaten.

I still displayed him though. If you look carefully at this photo from 2008, you can see a lone wire hanging behind his head. And I sewed green beads on to give him some eyes, even though I thought the final effect was kind of creepy.

Sometime between then and last year, I took pity on his antler-free state and fashioned a silver pipe cleaner into festive head gear for him.

Then Steve B posted some photos to Twitter of his holiday decorations, and lo and behold, there was his reindeer, who he called Zombie Rudolph.

It made me feel sad for my little red friend. After all, he’s stuck with me through a lot of lean years, hard Christmases, and bad haircuts. How could I possibly leave him in such a deplorable state year after year? So on Craft Night, I removed the stupid pipe cleaner and the scary eyes. Then I put some red wire on his little head.


Apparently, my camera was set to “Alabama National Championship” focus, so Rudy is a bit blurry.

I could see by the faded circles where some spots should be.

I could still remember the colors that were on my original reindeer, so having gone to the felt farm earlier, it was time to create: new antlers! Eyes! A nose! Spots!

I decided to leave his tattered ribbon intact. After all, there’s nothing wrong with evidence that he’s a Reindeer of Many Years and Adventures.

Now he’s nestled between Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, a happy boy. I have a little of my childhood back. And isn’t that one of the best parts of Christmas?

Legacy Writing 365:343

Since today’s the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, I think of Riley. The other day when I posted about my high school band director’s death, an old friend from high school commented, saying she’d checked my blog to see if I’d heard the news. It made my heart ache a little, because I know she’ll never forget what happened in 2008.

I’d mentioned Riley in a post I wrote about the Beatles, because their music was all over the manuscript I was working on (which would become A Coventry Wedding). Susan happened to read it and sent me an email to tell me she was sorry about Riley. When I answered with panicked questions, she was horrified. She thought I wrote the post knowing that Riley had died. She didn’t know that no one was sure how to find me, so I hadn’t heard the news. (If you read this now, Susan, I hope you never feel bad about that. You had no idea, and without your telling me, I wouldn’t have known to get in touch with Riley’s mother and a friend of his who could tell me all that had happened.)

David was visiting, and he and Tom were in the living room watching a ball game. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell anyone; that would make it true. I couldn’t breathe. I walked out of the house and stood outside, blind and stupid. Finally I went inside Tim’s place, walked upstairs. I stared at him a few seconds, then I broke down. Tim thought something had happened to my mother. I don’t know how long it was before I was able to tell him that Riley was dead.

I haven’t lost as many friends to death as some people I know, but I’ve lost too many, and Riley’s death took something from me that I’ll never get back. No one outside my family and Lynne knew me so long, and I’m not sure anyone has ever known me as well as Riley did and STILL loved me. He was part of my soul. He always will be.

John Lennon… I never, ever forget hearing that awful news on the radio that late night when I was visiting Tuscaloosa, cutting my trip short, and getting back home to Riley as quickly as I could. I remember every one of those days afterward vividly. Riley and I had endured such misery in 1980, and still we’d never imagined the year could end with something so shattering, something that would make us feel like all the things that youth offers–resilience, hope, giddy excitement, promise–would vanish on one cold December night.

Today, I decided to open up the bin of my old journals and see if I’d managed to write anything worth reading about that December, that event.

In all that mess–of course not! Why write about something profound when you can instead be a stupid girl and waste pages and pages and pages on some guy who broke your heart and whose memory means absolutely nothing to you now and you wish you’d never even met? Or worse, some boy who you THOUGHT broke your heart that now you don’t even remember knowing and have to struggle to see a face with the name you’ve wasted so much ink on?

Maybe the real heartbreaks are written somewhere deep inside us, where no one else can ever read them by accident, but only if we choose, after time has tempered them and given them context, to put them on paper. I don’t know. But while going through all that stuff, I did find a bunch of Riley’s poems and songs. I smiled over a song he’d written for me, that I’d typed for him, which is still so, so dear to me. Then I flipped through a few more pages and found two versions of that song in his handwriting–one with strikeouts and one final draft.


“Becky’s Song (I Knew You When)–dedicated to a best friend” he’s written on the top and bottom of the page.

Like the world, Riley and I lost all the music John Lennon still had left to write. I had twenty-eight more years of Riley after that, and I’m grateful for every one of them. If I close my eyes, I can hear his guitar and hear him singing “Becky’s Song” to me again, and like a world grateful for what we were allowed to have from John Lennon, I’m grateful for these words, music, and memories I still have from Riley.

The last two lines of the song:

I wrote this song for you
’cause you knew me then.

I wrote this post for you, ’cause you knew me then.

I miss you.

Legacy Writing 365:342


Lynne is six in this Christmas photo. She’s so cute! I love it that her tree looks exactly like our trees did when I was growing up. I think they may have been cedar rather than spruce, pine, or fir trees. (I’m betting Lynne will know.)

I stopped using icicles years ago, even when we still put up real trees. But now with the little artificial tree and because of the dogs, we never use them. I can embiggen Lynne’s tree and see not only ornaments that look just like those on my parents’ trees, but the same kind of Christmas lights. The ones that looked like this and would get so hot:


No way did we put as many lights on the tree then as we do now. We’d have caught it on fire! I don’t know if we’ll ever have a real tree again–it’s hard to keep dogs from drinking the water, plus the needles get everywhere.


Here’s Jess admiring a Christmas tree when he was about fourteen months old. This may have been taken in the same house–even in the same corner–as Lynne’s photo.

And the new generation. Lila in 2009, a year and nine months old, opening a gift next to her grandmother’s tree.

Legacy Writing 365:341

I’m two years old, and I GOT A HULA HOOP! Eat your heart out, Alvin.

And I got a doll! In a buggy! And my sister is headless!


And I got a crib! For my doll! And it looks like my brother may have gotten something, too.


But I’m holding a bottle! To feed my doll!

Actually, I’m a lot older, and I don’t get to open presents on Christmas morning with my siblings anymore, but the scene will probably be about the same–I GOT A DOLL!–with less cute jammies, though.

Legacy Writing 365:340


This is Papa and Miss Mary Jane, though I don’t know what year it was taken. The child he’s holding must be Cousin Rachel. Maybe she’ll see this photo on my FB link and tell me if she knows or remembers it.

One time Rachel wrote me about how we used to go to our great-grandparents’ graves on Decoration Day. She asked if I remembered, telling me: “Papa would round us all up to go to Center. You have to remember going at least once. Remember the trip down to the spring? Dinner on the ground? How unbearably hot? Sand piled up in points on the graves with plastic flowers in abundance? Surely, some of this rings a bell.”

She wonders if I might have been too young to remember, but for some reason, the sand on the graves seems like an image I recall. Or maybe I just see it now that she’s described it. Maybe David or Debby remembers going and can come up with some memories, too.

Do people still have Decoration Days? Do they visit their ancestors’ graves, clear them of weeds, put new flowers there? If I lived closer to the cemetery where my parents are buried, I know I would go often. Cemeteries don’t bother me. I wouldn’t want to spend the night in one, and of course there’s sadness there, but mostly they just seem peaceful.

Do you think a ghost would hang out in a cemetery with a lot of dead people? Maybe all of them talking, sharing stories of their lives? Or would they more likely try to return to the places they lived, or try to find people they love?

The idea of ghosts fascinates me, but I’ve never reached any big conclusions about them. I just like to speculate.

Oh–and in that photo, I love Jane-Jane’s hat.

Legacy Writing 365:339

Our friend John died in the hospital of complications from AIDS on December 4, 1996. Neither Tom nor I can fathom that it’s been that long. I was there that night, and if I ever shared John’s equivalent of an E! True Hollywood Story, I’d probably be in serious hot water. I will leave it at this: There are compassionate ways to let someone go and lean on one another in a time of crisis, and then there is what happened that night. For a number of years, those events left me raw. Time helps, as does having other people who were there and have the same perspective that I did.

John’s love James was with him when he slipped away. Afterward, we went to John’s apartment, where his roommate gave us all the time we needed to do–oh, those kinds of things we might tell our best friends, “If I die, go to my place and get rid of X, Y, and Z before my family shows up.”

While we were doing that, James suddenly cracked up laughing and handed me this card.

“I was with him the day he bought this,” he said. “He intended to give it to you. I guess he forgot.”

I opened the card and read this:

When I looked at James with confusion, he reminded me of the first day John brought James to The Compound to meet Tom and me. I’d known John for several years and foolishly had been caught in the middle of a bad breakup between him and my beloved friend Jeff (who’d died in 1995). During the bad breakup, Jeff kept telling me things he thought John was doing to mess with his head, and I kept vowing that John would never do those things.

So on this visit with James and John, John began to tell me all the things Jeff had been right about. I sat there open-mouthed, occasionally sputtering, “I defended you, you brat!” As more stories were told, I had a few confessions of my own to make of things I’d done to help Jeff try to get accurate information about John. James and Tom laughed at our “True Confessions,” and later that afternoon, when James and John were in Montrose’s legendary (and now-closed) bookstore Crossroads, John picked up this card for me.

From time to time, I still use this phrase with my friends: “I think it’s time you turned yourself in,” to let them know that those things we do (and maybe hope no one finds out about) are probably more funny than awful. Within friendships, there should always be room for laughter and forgiveness.

I still remember, from tenth grade, the quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” With John, there was no evil. There was just life, and life can be crazy and messy and flawed and absolutely wonderful all at the same time. I’m so grateful I was part of his life; he will always be a part of me.

Legacy Writing 365:338

This is a new photo, taken in the wee hours of Monday morning when I went outside with the dogs for a few minutes. I could feel EYES watching me; usually that means a rat is lurking somewhere, or a cat has interrupted some good old-fashioned rat stalking to stare at me. I don’t know if this is the same visitor I photographed in March of last year, but I was lucky to get one good photo this time.

Though it’s a new photo, I have an old story to go with it.

There’s a 1967 Canadian novel by Margaret Craven that was published in the U.S. in the early 1970s titled I Heard the Owl Call My Name, the story of an Anglican vicar who goes to live with Native Indians in British Columbia. I’ve never read it–now that I’ve remembered it, maybe I will–but my father was reading it one week when my mother was out of town. The phrase that gave the book its title comes from a Kwakiutl legend: When you hear the owl call your name, death is imminent.

When my mother returned to town, she or Terri brought Daniel for a visit. He was probably around this age.

While she was unpacking, Daniel did reconnaissance of the house–as I’ve mentioned before, she was always changing things. He came into her bedroom and said, “Grandmother, why is there an owl in the living room?” She pretty much ignored him, as adults are wont to do when children say foolish things. When he persisted, she said, “I have a lot of little birds all over the house, Daniel. [true; she collected wooden and ceramic birds and owls] Which one do you mean?”

He took her hand and led her to the living room, the least used room in the house. Then he pointed to a real, live owl who had somehow found its way inside and blinked sleepily at them from its perch.

I’m not sure how they got the owl out of the house–except that I know it wasn’t harmed.

Daddy was grateful that he didn’t hear the owl hoot in the night while he was reading his novel, because as he said, the title might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I learned that it’s always a good idea to listen to Daniel.

Legacy Writing 365:337

The other night, Tim shared a video he received of Hanley singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” She has totally bought into the “be good ’cause Santa’s watching you” deal of Christmas. I LOVE this age, when their good behavior is so transparently about GIFT GREED. When you grow up, you may still have gift greed, but it rarely makes you modify your behavior, even for a few weeks.

For kids who’ll be good for goodness sake, I say: whatever works.


Daniel has already had his bath and is in his Dallas Cowboys PJs as my parents’ grandkids sit in front of their Christmas tree long ago.


Josh is bathed and PJd (Spiderman?), too, as they play sweetly with my dog Hamlet.


Gina and Sarah are so cute I want to fall into this photo and hug them.

They’re all grown up now. Some of their kids are still young enough to be bribed into good behavior for the sake of a visit from Santa. I’m going on record, though, as saying Elf on the Shelf would have creeped me out as a kid and would still creep me out now.

Legacy Writing 365:336–World AIDS Day

Tom and I drove to Salt Lake City for Thanksgiving of 2000. My brother, along with my nephew and his family, were there, as was our mother, and Debby flew in to spend the holiday with us as well. Margot went with us and experienced her first real snow. She wasn’t a fan, but since she saw David’s dog Bailey treating it like nothing special, she adjusted. Along with putting together a feast and watching lots of ball games on TV, we did some sewing.

I was hoping to finish my late friend Tim R’s AIDS Quilt panel before December 1.

So Mother worked on the panel.

And Debby worked on the panel.

Thanks to them, a lot of progress was made. It was a time of great bonding for us, and since Daniel’s son, Dave, who was seven at the time, was there, it was a chance to talk openly about some of the issues surrounding HIV and AIDS with a bright child to absorb information. Having endured with my late friends a time of silence about their illness and the challenges they faced, I know that honest discussion and education do more to help create a tolerant world, curtail the spread of the disease, and drive funding for better and more accessible health care for everyone.

When we returned to Houston after that trip, there was still work to be done.

But I wasn’t alone. Lynne worked on the panel, too.

And in a ceremony on World AIDS Day Eve in 2000, Tim’s parents, part of the support system that sustained him through his illness and made sure the last sounds he heard on earth included the laughter of his family at home around him, were able to give his panel to the NAMES Project.

Each year since 1992, I’ve done a World AIDS Day newsletter. At this point with all the resources available on the Internet, I’m not sure the information I provide is necessary. But what will never STOP being vital is that we remember the ones we lost. That we remind the world there were people here who were taken from us too soon. That we do everything we can to encourage people to be as safe as they can be to stop the transmission of the virus, to be tested so that they can get good healthcare quickly and not transmit the virus to anyone else, and to know that there is a world community who wants you to be here and healthy for a long, long time. You are needed. You matter.

For twenty-four years, World AIDS Day has been observed on December 1. The theme from 2011 to 2015 is Getting to Zero. I dream of that world with no new infections and no new AIDS deaths by 2015. I’ve seen amazing progress made since I first became involved with AIDS awareness and caregiving in 1990. I remember when so much of the struggle was just coping with bigotry, indifference, poverty, and fear. Those things have no place in the face of any disease, including AIDS.

With all the progress that’s been made, the largest group getting new infections is young adults and teens ages 13 to 29; sixty percent of them don’t know they’re infected. If you’re concerned about AIDS, be an advocate for testing. Be an advocate for accessible medical care. Be an advocate for compassion and outreach. There are so many organizations who can use your time, your voice, and your donations. Although I’m not doing my usual resource list, if there’s ever a time I can help any reader here find resources local to you, I will be happy to research information with you.

That Christmas after we all sewed on Tim’s panel, my mother sent me this ornament with a note about how we all worked together to honor Tim’s memory with our needles and thread. As you can see, a dog “altered” the ornament at some point in the intervening years. That’s okay. Just as with people, flaws become part of the story.

Thank you for reading here. I write in memory of Steve R, Don P, Jeff C, John M, Pete M, Tim R and all those loved and lost.