A new story or an old story in a new voice with a different
lens? Tonight's blog is a narrative I wrote yesterday at the Bookmill. Bobby's birthday is Thursday so he's been on my mind. I conjure him, he comes to me, he keeps me warm.
He came to live with us because he was about to give in to
the life of a junkie and he needed to get out then or be sucked into the world
he’d spent the last year trying to protect her from. He was so in love with her, but he knew his
own body, his own will power, his own consciousness was about to slide into the
abyss of heroin usage. He asked Paul to
take him away, so Paul brought him home to his family where everyone fought
addiction and no one knew who was winning which battle. That night he taught my 16 year old self to
scream.
It was January of 1970 and I was pregnant. Our home was a hostel filled with an odd
group of family and friends. We had
moved into a rambling Colonial house on the other side of town. The idea was we could get away from one
another, we could have some privacy, and maybe some quiet which all of us
needed, all of our nerves needed calm. I
was convinced cigarettes would help, some thought pot, others whiskey, and a
couple others thought heroin. Bobby
thought I needed to learn to scream, to shriek as loud a s I could. And he
would teach me how. He would push me
into snow with my midriff bare and cover me with fresh icy cold, January snow.
I didn’t scream at first. Screaming was
foreign to my being. Showing my anger or
fear was not encouraged so when I did it, I did it in tantrums, high drama, but
Bobby just wanted me to let out a loud long shrill, release it all,
ear-piercing, forever sound. It took a while. But I learned.
Bobby and I shared living space for the next 24 months. 6 of
those months I was away, but he continued to live with the family. In those 2 years I moved six times and Bob
came with me all but two. He learned to
play bridge with my Dad, he helped my Mom out, he worked, he took care of an
array of cats that were refuge in the house, too. Bobby did not succumb to heroin, unlike Mike,
who did. He smoked a lot of pot, but for
the most part he stayed straight. Books
were his escape, books and music and aloneness.
Daddy taught him how to help him edit and copy the score of his opera,
which they finished the morning that Daddy died. Two weeks or so later Bobby moved out of
Connecticut, away from us, to Western Massachusetts where he lived the rest of
his life. By then, he and my sister were
an item.
What made me start telling this story? I’ve been thinking about those specific two
years. Between upcoming birthdays and
visits from family and this irrational submersion into the trauma of that
abortion, Bobby has been sitting on my shoulder. Sometimes I know he comes to throw a ball for
the dog, the two spirits I feel most often.
Bob’s death, 10 years after Paul brought him home, powerfully affected
my consciousness, my direction in my life.
People come and go, some leave their indentation, others slide away
without a trace, and others remain a question mark. I think Bobby was an angel placed into my
life as a steadying influence, a rudder, someone who helped me make good
decisions in a chaotic bad decision life.
I do believe he’s still there reminding me of the way. He throws the ball for Curry on the other
plain and gives me visual access so I know there is a constant good.
The stories within this story are full of emotion, laughter,
and tears. He was the first person I
helped die. There are so many stories
worth telling, maybe a chapter in a book.
I’m not sure where I should go with this?
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