shellytown

My best friend died May 27, 2006, in Brooklyn, NY. In this space, I'd like to memorialize him, help to remember him, and honor this amazing creature whom I was lucky to know.

Appropriate. Nothing's lessened. My Bear. "Stay with me," I used to tell him on steep hills, slippery surfaces, stairs. He always did. He always will.

A pawprint on my heart, a handprint on his.

He used to lie in the yard, paws stretched straight out in front, quietly watching the world. The birds & squirrels would flit around him, and he would just watch. The essense of Oso: a peacefulness. This is only one thing I can learn from him.

One year today, Oso. This is our Memorial Day. You are still with me, every day. I miss you, every day. You didn't have a chance to see us build our life here in the city, but we have our life - mom & bear - and nothing can ever change or touch that. I love & appreciate every moment we had together. I just wish we'd had more. Nothing and everything has changed in our year apart, Bear. That's all I see this as, really...now, we have a while to be apart. I'll be with you again, and it will be the happiest day. In the mean time, stay with me, Os, any way you can.

To live a life – my life – in honor of a lost one, a man down, a comrade too soon taken: I can think of no greater tribute to my Oso than to return to the life we had together, to finish what we started.

Os, you died before you could grow old with me, but I promise you now: I will grow old with you. And as I do, I will continue to write, create and believe as I’d begun to in the years I was lucky enough to have you in my life. Especially at the beginning, when we really developed our bond.

I’ve always known that you represent something vital and important to me, to my very identity. I wasn’t sure what it was. But now, as I’ve begun to see that my life must change, must return, the two great struggles of my life – one recent (losing you); and one eternal (being an artist) – have dovetailed into what I believe is my true and honest path: to be a writer.

My calling. It called me from Austin to Greensboro, to find you and the rest of our little family. It called me to New York, first on the worn stone steps of NYU’s English Department, and later, on the fire escape in Tribeca that night in September…I was out of earshot for a long time, even while you were with me. Only recently did I hear it again, on the F train home every day from Times Square.

This is for you, Oso. Every word, every reader, every effort to get back in it, every moment of joy or pain. It is all (as I wrote once, a long time ago) only and forever you.

Two years, Bear. In the second one, I started truly being here, where you brought me. Where we came together. In honor of you, this weekend I gave your name a place on me physically. It is the only thing I ever thought should go there, and it is the only tattoo I will ever have. Kind of like you were the only dog I ever loved the way I did. Now that I have you on me, forever – for the rest of my ever anyway – I feel even closer to you. And, somehow, freer of the sad memory of two years ago.

What’s replacing that sad day is my good memories of you. I remember you best as always wanting to be outside. No matter where we lived, there had to be a way for you to be outside. (It’s why I rented the place we still live in, with its tiny “backyard” that I know you would be on right now, watching the birds and planes fly over, the wind moving the ivy on the old church, the old Brooklyn ladies next door wheeling in their laundry.) Lying in the grass, or the dirt, or even the driveway…watching the world, taking it in: That is Oso. Then the little game you would play with me when I had to ask you come in: You’d pretend to not hear me, but you’d be very still and sort of looking at me out of the corner of your eye. “Os!” I’d say again. Suddenly you’d jump up and run to me. I love that this seemed like a vestige of your young-dog run-from-me days. I love you for it – I always did – because you were strong-willed and independent, but so loyal. Just as I was to you. You only find that kind of connection with another soul, Os. We had it. We still do and we always, always will.