the title was going to be, “the myth of memory, a history”, but i changed my mind & now it’s “how fate works”

so: first i saw the photograph and it got me to thinking (see paragraph in green), but that didn’t seem to really convey my thoughts on the image as succinctly as i thought it should.

“they” say that to write your memoirs you should build a linear narrative; recording dates, experiences, births, deaths, marriages, moments of your life that for one reason or the other have stuck with you.

the author works on the yearbook his senior of high school. yes, i know who she is, but for privacy’s sake will not identify her.

and in the same vein this came unbidden (also in green):

i think it was mark twain who said that an autobiography is made up of the small details and not the large ones (i paraphrase.)

but i felt it was headed no where, and it was beginning to sound sort of hoity toity, when i know i don’t have the wherewithal or at the least, i did not want it to go that way, when i thought of dosso dossi’s wonderful “allegory of fortune“, which then prompted this:

and that my friends, is how fate works.

iris, photo-realism, and lowell nesbitt

lowell nesbitt for your edification.

a man who put his money where his mouth was. we could use more like him.

these recent photo studies of a bearded iris blooming in our garden reminded me, as i was manipulating their outcome, how much i admire the work of lowell nesbitt (not that i’m comparing myself to him, but that these photographs were evocative of his work, triggering memories i have of selling his editions in the ’80s and knowing when to share the sexuality of them with a client and when to concur with the client that they were just pretty pictures of flowers. sometimes i was more successful than others when it came to sharing his rapturous abandonment to nature and form and i could always tell when i’d stepped outside the comfort zone of the collector by the look of disbelief that clouded their brow or the uneasy shuffling of feet and the rise of color in their cheek. perhaps the provocation was worth it to me, that uncomfortable moment when “sex” reared its beautiful head in conversation between strangers, some more ready than others to free fall into its embrace. okay, i may have pushed it, a bit, for the thrill, but what is the point of art if not to disturb?)

a shaded bower and re-incarnation

when i was 14 or 15 i bought a ratty old paperback at a used bookstore titled “the world is not enough”. it must have been 4 or 5 hundred pages long and concerned life in a castle in france during the 14th/15th centuries (as best i can remember.)

the protagonist was a young page to one of the knights of the castle, about the same age as me at the time who falls in love with the daughter of the prince whose castle it was. there was much mooning about, secret passageways leading from one bower to another; the young page could often be found sitting in une fenêtre of the castle tower watching the goings-on in the castle’s court with its smell of horses, shouts of the other pages, clanking of armor, and the smell of cooking fires. the book seemed to me to be my autobiography from another life and time, so much so that i could not shake that sense of dèja vu, of having lived that life for years afterwards (still can’t, obvsly.)

i lost the book years ago and now i believe that i do not correctly remember its title–i’ve searched for it over the intervening years, wanting to read it again to see if it holds the same spell over me it did so many years ago, but i’ve not been able to find it and all i’m left with is my memory of it and the belief that i lived there and then.

in honor of mother’s day, a reading of roses are red, violets are blue (in which the author speaks with his mother about the long island medium)

mother’s day card from the author to his mother, 1962

it doesn’t seem possible, does it mother, that in just a few short days it will be 30 years since you left this world? how to account for the intervening years, then, the years that i wish i could have shared with you; the failures, the small triumphs, the love, and the sadness, the gossip, the weather, bill clinton, george w. bush, and a trip to france? in just a few paragraphs today there is no way we could cover all of that ground is there (water under a bridge, but actually more like virginia woolf wading into the rill that last time, her sweater pockets filled with rocks)? how then, to explain my life to you; all those little things in my life that  went undocumented because i could not call you on the phone and tell you, “i got the job!” or “i think you’ll like him, mom, he means the world to me.” the time pneumonia put me in the hospital, so sick there was concern that i might not make it through, the white cyclamen my boss sent to me sitting on the window sill of my room (all remembered with the hazy soft filter of time and morphine.)

and even more so than the peaks and valleys are the tiny little moments that you experience on a daily basis when the road is level, like when i was a teenager and you asked me what happened during my day and i would respond, “nothing.” those are the nothings that you do share eventually, unprompted, it spills out of you as we recount the week behind us, you on the stool in the kitchen under the wall phone, me, well me, wherever i was living at the time. how could we catch up on all that love? what of it, hmm?

please note the dish towel thrown jauntily over her shoulder. i have the same habit.

a few days ago, m. introduced me to the “long island medium”, a “reality” show (how to explain reality tv to you, you who left before its onslaught, lucky you) about a woman living on long island in new york who communicates with the dead. i wouldn’t have thought to bring it up were it not so close to this time marker, this anniversary of three decades without you, although it’s probably silly not to, all things considered, since your mother was as psychic as they come, but it appears that this woman really does talk to the dead. (if it’s not true, my hat’s off to the producers of this ‘unscripted’ show for pulling off such amazing acting turns from ordinary people.)

m. and i spent a lazy sunday afternoon and early evening watching, actually more like completely absorbed by, this phenomenon, this woman reaching out to strangers to tell them (she can’t seem to hold herself back from intruding on other people’s lives) that their loved ones are watching them, are with them when the grandchild was born, the birthday was celebrated, the high school graduation, the wedding, the death of another close relative, the dog that died.

ghosts always seemed to accompany us, seen here at christmas in california, 1968

the medium insists that she only shares happiness, and the people whose lives she touches seem to be at a point in their grieving where this interruption, this communication from their ghosts is most needed. she paints a picture of “the other side” as one of all roses and harps and eternal bliss where those who’ve left us frolic together, each and everyone coming together to watch over you, the living.

there are so many joyous tears and looks of incredulity at the minutiae she apparently knows about your intimate life that you can’t help but believe that she has touched on some element (the 5th? or was that just some silly movie with bruce willis and brad pitt?) that i have to ask you, mom, have you been here all along?

as lovely as that seems and as much as i would like to believe that you are here, now (and it’s true i may unconsciously believe that you are) it does not put you physically in front of me as much as i might yearn for that. if the long island medium were to communicate for you to me, yes, it may offer temporary succor, but the fact remains that i cannot call you up when i want to, to check in with you, how you’re feeling, that you had your hair cut and styled, bought a new dress, went out to dinner with your friends, volunteered at the local VFW for a food drive, drove up to jeff city for a doctor’s appointment by yourself, that the dogwood are blooming, a neighbor has a new dog that spends more time with you than with them.

all of that is gone. i accept that. and today, on mother’s day 2012, just a few days from when we laid you in the ground 30 years ago, it may be enough for me to know that you’re close by, watching and smiling, still in love with your son.

iris 2 (my modeling career)

i lived vicariously through my friend t.s. (hi, sweetie, <3 u!) a model of incomparable beauty (truly), but one year

the carol ware fur salon (at bonwit teller or i. magnin? i can’t remember, but it overlooked the watertower on michigan avenue and was the ne plus ultra of fur salons in the city at the time–197_) put on a runway show in the wicker room of arnie’s restaurant where i was working. so i’m standing there minding my own business, when ms. ware comes up to me and says, “you, what’s your name?” “bobpatrick,” i replied. “come with me,” she said taking me by the hand and into the hall where she promptly pulled a man’s fur coat off the rack and handed it to me, “you’ll wear this,” she purred as she helped me into a nutria-lined trenchcoat, pushing me into the room to walk the makeshift runway that ran between the tables where much of chicago’s beau monde was seated.

so i walked, bitches. i tied  the trench’s belt, i untied it and opened the coat to show off the nutria lining, i walked to the end of the runway and stopped and stared off into space with a look of “let them eat cake” disdain gracing my 20-something mustachioed face…and turned and repeated ‘the walk’ back through the tables.

ms. ware gave me another coat to wear and later, after the event was over, asked me if i wanted to do it again at her shop. which i did and while there, when i thought i knew it all, i suggested to her “what if i put a belt with this mink coat,” she stopped cold, turned her steely gray eyes to me, half-glasses perched at the end of her nose and said, “do not gild a lily.” a lesson i’ve tried to remember throughout the intervening years (unless, of course, i’m in a particularly rococo mood, then everything gets gilded.)

my mother’s boyfriends

“charlie ritter,” she’d sigh whenever a photo of him would rise to the surface of our photo box.

we’d sit side-by-side on the sofa or her bed and poke through this box of memories, the left-over images not put into an album; pulling out a black & white image of some forgotten event/relative/friend (i refuse to believe they were forgotten, instead i think it was a way to evade traveling down an uncomfortably bumpy road of memories) or a faded polaroid my grandfather had taken (back when you had to apply the chemicals to the surface of the polaroid after it was ejected from the camera and you’d stand on tiptoe next to him to watch the image magically appear–it was magic too, for who among them could explain that to you?) on one of their trips to oregon or washington or wherever it was he and my grandmother would go in their pink rambler on a fine spring/summer/fall day; grandmother sending postcards to ‘button’ and evelyn from this roadside attraction or that one, a monument to the relentless march of the white man across the great divide. you know.

this box of photographs would have never been taken out of the closet it was stored in were it not for me. it held, what i believed at the time, the secret to my mother’s mysterious past, including my forgotten past (how quickly children set aside memories as they age). the photo albums, the proper ones with their black pages and photo corners, and the special pen with white ink that my mother would use to caption each one in her perfect palmer method hand-writing, the teacher within her irrepressible, were of less interest to me. after all, what was there left to discover?

but this box of photographs held a surprise inside of it every time i managed to dislodge it from its perch on the top shelf of the linen closet, for years i had to stand on the metal kitchen stool to reach it (remind me to show you a picture of the metal stool that was in our kitchen forever, it actually still sits in my kitchen today); the thrill of teetering on tiptoe and reaching into the closet itself with its smell of fresh linens and old magazines, cardboard and antimacassars, talcum powder and beeswax candles, was only slightly mitigated by growing taller until i no longer needed the booster rocket of the metal stool, always cool to the touch with its painted surface, a decal on the seat back that was changed every few years (florals, kittens, puppies, dolls in sunbonnets and gingham, and repeat), and its rubber-tipped legs.

there were times when i would take the box into my bedroom and sort the photographs according to a code that only i was cognizant of: photos of men over here on the pillow, men with women over there at the end of the bed, landscapes somewhere in the middle or i would take all of them out of the box and spread them all over my bed like a map to a past that i had a hard time comprehending, or even remembering, for no matter how often i asked my mother about this photo of him, she’d always sigh, “that’s charlie ritter,” and i store that away for a while until i was older then she might add, “he was my boyfriend when you and i lived in highland park.”

charlie ritter, divorced like my mother (where did they meet? i never found out), had grown children–in fact, somewhere there’s a black & white photo of he and his son, the son with a blond duck-tail, rolled up shirt sleeves, and a motorcycle leaning next to a pole with a basketball hoop stuck on top at the end of a driveway with a cinder block wall–how i remember this i don’t know, but there it is–and another of charlie sitting in the stands of wrigley field, a day at a ball game taken by mother, am i there too? possibly, but not in the photo, just charlie sitting there with his ray-bans on, black hair slicked back from his forehead (a mt. rushmore head: prominent forehead, nose, chin, all poking outward like the granite spires of the black hills we were soon to call home, perhaps it was prescient, but who was psychic enough to realize that? certainly not i at 6, nor my mother in spite of her abilities.)

i have no reason to believe that he treated her with anything but respect. it may be that he even found me, if not amusing, at least not a hindrance to his infatuation with my mother, but i have no way of knowing for sure. this gray area of adult life remembered from such great distance (and forgetfulness). when i think about my mother at 43 now that i’m well past that age, it’s easier to understand accept her sexual life — the one area of their parent’s life that children refuse to acknowledge — and when, at only 6 or younger, and for that matter older even, you have no experience to even entertain the thought of a hot embrace (the only time perhaps is when you were in tears and pulled to the bosom of your mother in comfort, there is a bit of sex in that, is there not? don’t cross your eyes and wrinkle your nose at me, denying it will only confirm my suspicions.)

my mother had other boyfriends after we moved to rapid city late in 1959 (driving from highland park, illinois in a black & white plymouth sedan–it had fins which gave it a chariot quality — not that i knew from chariots  at the time — but looking back, and that is what this is all about, the looking back at the past for clues to the present, i see a stop-motion animation of that car flying across the prairie, the corn fields, the wheat, the rivers, and the plains, the badlands and the foothills, the gullies, the washes, the cottonwoods turned bright yellow running along the silvery ribbons of the missouri, the platte, the mississippi, the little creeks, and rivers that fed them, the corn palace, the feedlots, the bison, the herefords — when i first learned to identify the charolais, the aberdeen, the brahman, the heifer from the bull — the geese flying south crossing our westward motion), but none of them have a name associated with them–there was the one who gave me a pair of dress rodeo cowboy boots for christmas one year that i only wore once because i was promptly beaten up my 7th grade year in middle school for wearing such ‘queer’ boots, there was ‘floyd’, and although he has a name, it may not count as his real name as i never met him. she said he was her masseur and once a month, sometimes twice a month during my early teens, she’d come home from  “a message at floyd’s” looking like she’d just been freshly fucked, but i only think that now in retrospect, because, you know, you know that look after a while don’t you, but at the time, when you’re in your pubescence, you want to still believe your mother/father, the adult(s) in your life when they say “i had a message and i’m going to go lay down now. why don’t you be a dear and make us something for dinner. wake me when it’s ready, will you? that’s a sweetheart.”

coda:

“how did you decide on robert?” i would ask repeatedly because the answer pleased me so, even as i grew older. and she’d say, “well, we considered harold frederick since lee jr. was out of the question because you were adopted, although that would have been okay with me, but your father thought otherwise and how could i argue with him. harold frederick would have been a nod to your grandfathers, but you didn’t look like a harry to me and i loathed the idea of a fred, so i said we’ll call him robert lee and your father thought that sounded right. you’d have a little bit of his name and it seemed the right name for you when you were born.”

“but why robert?” i’d beg, and she’d pause for a moment, a marlboro lit and suspended between the ashtray and her lips  and reply, “that was the name of my first boyfriend, the first one who meant something to me and i knew that whenever i would call your name that it would remind me of that first love. you’re my first love now, you know, and that’s why i named you robert.” she’d put the cigarette between her lips and inhale, her look somewhere between then and now, a smile curling up with the smoke from her exhale.

the snail and the leaf, a parable

nothing happened. the snail made its way slowly across the sidewalk, ignoring the leaf i had placed in its way, and leaving behind it its silvery trail of slime. there are times in the late afternoon when the sun is just so in the sky that the sidewalks shimmer with snail’s trails, beautiful silvery ribbons of goo with little breaks every few inches where the snail has pulled up and off the sidewalk in order to move itself forward. at night they congregate in a mosh pit of snail love, all one upon the other; if you’re very still you can hear henry rollins and black flag just before he throws himself shirtless off the stage into the arms of his raving fans [although that may be my memory of seeing them perform at the mud club in chicago in 198_, but whatever. --author]

mothers and sons (place and time)

this is how i like to remember my mother, the time when i was most in love with her, when i did not know that i would become a stranger to her in just a couple of years (the pupal stage on the path to adulthood, the destruction of the past in order to become the future–you did know that ‘pupa’ is latin for ‘doll’–confirmation that this time is a special one.) it is the time when boys are closest to their mothers; they’re growing up, but they’re still a child. a balance between one, being a man and the other, a child, that only occurs this one time in their lives and it is the time that i cherish the most.

i’ve always felt that this period coincided with the second flowering of my mother’s beauty, the other time being in her late teens, so long ago that i don’t think she believed it had happened, if she did she would  have never admitted it, at least not out loud. she was modest about her beauty, although i would catch her sometimes pushing her hair up off her neck in the way women do when assessing their looks, judging the length of their neck and how it delicately holds their head, just so.

when i remember my mother during these few years before our estrangement (this break did not dim our love for one another, but it did shift the balance of power ever so slightly; i would find her looking at me as if i were an alien, the look accompanied — or perhaps tempered by — a sense of wonder at the mysteries of raising a child and perhaps those teen years are exactly that: your child becomes a stranger living in your house, you, the parent, of course, still love them, but it takes more energy, perhaps even a more thoughtful approach to navigate and guide your charge), i see her tall and thin; i had definite ideas about how she should dress, or what clothes she possessed that were my favorite. she was kind enough to ask my opinion as if it mattered to her.

at this particular moment, she’s wearing what i considered the look that most resembled her character, how i felt about her and what she meant to me at that time. it was a cowgirl/ranch wife-typical-day-on-the-spread-outfit (barbara stanwyck in ‘the big valley’ on tv): white shirt with pearl buttons and french cuffs, with her beautiful navajo turquoise, coral, and silver thunderhead pin positioned just below her throat (the part that men like to kiss and little boys like to lay their heads against. women must like how that feels otherwise why would they advertise its availability so often?) with gabardine slacks, the front pockets cut square, a leather belt with a silver tip, and boots.

she walked differently when she was dressed this way, it was more confident, less feminine, not that she lost her ability to flirt when she wore these clothes, but i know that she felt more on equal footing with men when she did. as her boy-child i had no choice but to admire (perhaps emulate) this change in her character based on what she was wearing; a lesson you might be inclined to store for future use. it is what learning is all about, is it not? the ability to process and consume information for its possible future use, use that comes naturally, sometimes even as a surprise, “how did i know that?” you might even ask yourself ten, twenty years later.

sometimes it was hard for me to share her. clouds would storm my face when someone would get between us, these shadows of emotions flying low over the prairie-colored face of a spoiled child so quickly and so harshly i often lost my breath, my balance, my mind. my mercurial nature embarrassed me, but it seemed, at the time, that it was something i had no control over and perhaps i might not have wanted to have control over it–that lack of control was a knife that i could wield with surgeon-like precision, not that it was premeditated, i don’t believe i would have thought to be that manipulative, but the results usually benefited me in some way, enough to make my tongue hang out in anticipation of the bell, pavlov.

this time and place then; we are at the stratobowl, outside of rapid city. the date tells me that mary is still living with us, but i’m not sure that mary is taking this photograph. it’s not that there weren’t many happy times with mary; we’re often photographed in full-throated laughter, mouths open, teeth showing, the sheen of pleasure sparkling in our eyes during the years she and my mother lived together. as serious as mary was about preparing for life, or what life might throw at you, she also was a prankster, her honking laugh one i still hear (should i stop and listen for it.) but it’s just as likely that it was just me and my mother alone, having asked a stranger to take our picture with our little brownie box camera, a certain freedom allowed in front of someone you may never meet again.

“shall we go for a drive?” my mother would ask after sunday dinner (the one day of the week we had our ‘big’ meal at midday, a habit that her mother and step-father always observed every day of the week, a light supper served later in the evening). and we’d pile into the car and head out into the hills with no destination in mind. oh someone might say, “let’s go out old highway 16 up to the lake and back,” or “we haven’t been down to hermosa lately, let’s go see what’s doing down there.” these excursions a time for talking about school, friends, family, or nothing at all, just a time to be together without having a responsibility to anyone but ourselves. it is the blessing of being an only child of a single parent.

i did not know that i had already used up one third of my time with my mother in 1962. what child at that age considers the future? it is too large to comprehend and the past is too small to bear its weight. it is enough to manage your now; it may be the one time in your life when you are living in the moment. (there is, of course, that nasty thing called “learning the lesson that your actions have consequences” which becomes a more frequent refrain at this point in your life, only because you are beginning to have just the slightest interest in the future as it applies to your comfort. ) and so this moment is now, when a mother and her son shared their love for each other and stopped it forever with a photograph.

notes on the discovery of my baby shoes & a letter written by my mother

i’m one of the lucky ones. i could have said, “i guess i’m one of the lucky ones”, but guessing has nothing to do with it. when a statement is preceded by “i guess” it implies inevitability, resignation, a sense of fait accompli, fate; as if the other party, the one that changed your luck, your hand suddenly full of aces, had nothing to do with your happiness, existence, being. so, no, i was right to not write “i guess” — a qualifier — in front of “i’m one of the lucky ones.

but i am one of the lucky ones. when you read the letter my mother wrote to my father’s sister on the occasion of the birth of her third daughter (nine months my junior), you’ll begin to understand how parents, proud as they are of their accomplishment, still only consider the one outcome: their child will be just like them. there will be no variation from the script, no ad lib, no scat, no flourish, no extra color, you will be just like them. at that young age, they are already defining the roles they naturally assume you’ll play (acting not yet your thing.)

what happens then when, one day–let’s say when you’re five or six, eight or nine, twelve or thirteen–the sudden realization hits them, you are not quite fitting the mold they had prepared themselves for you to fit into? they most likely will set this discovery aside, for who could think such a thing of a young child? they’ll adopt a wait-and-see attitude, their minds racing back to the beginning of your time; what signs did they miss, what roadside attractions did they drive right by with you sitting in the seat next to them? “impossible,” they’ll tell themselves; “this is just a phase,” they’ll reason; “why, there’s just no way that this difference could be true,” they’ll whisper to themselves as they turn their steely-blue gaze in your direction as you sit at the piano practicing your scales.

you, on the other hand, will continue on your way, blithely ignoring the scrutiny suddenly directed at your every move, thought, consideration; you might even think “what’s up with them?” in the most abstract of ways, “parents” you’ll harrumph should you be of an age to harrumph, and shut your bedroom door to read by the open window this one summer, the smell of honeysuckle and the click-clacking of cicadas your balm against the abrasion of their fear (should it manifest itself in the sudden “let’s go hunting!” or “it’s time you learned how to change the oil in the car!” or “you’ll need to dig 50 post holes for the new fence we’re putting up [around your life] the backyard.”)

i was one of the lucky ones. for, in spite of every attempt to ‘make me a normal boy’ — all of which failed, btw — my difference was never a topic of discussion between my mother and i.  regardless of the drama of being a gay child in a straight world and there is a lot of drama, i knew i was loved and that made all the difference. parents are you listening? it’s such a simple idea, you’ll be surprised you hadn’t thought of it sooner. i never felt i had to ‘come out’ to my mother and i never said the words, “i’m gay” to her. and for her part in this existential little stage play (so much waiting, so little arriving), she never asked, she never pushed, well, okay, maybe once or twice she might have said, “do you have a special girl?” or “i’d like to have grandchildren one day”, but it was always done with such a light touch of amusement, that i never considered it a disappointment to her when i replied, “no, i’m lucky just to have you.”

Würzburg, 16 Nov.

Dear June & 1,2,3,4.

It’s early in the morning. & I must go to commissary so will dash this off so I can mail it. We were so glad to hear you finally had a big baby girl. Of course, we were all for a boy, but girls are so sweet & nice. Butchie is sweet, but he’s so masculine. Right now he’s feeling pretty sorry for himself–he has a terrible cold–it’s loose–thank Heaven–but his nose runs & I know he feels miserable. He has 5 teeth & is trying to get more & of course that makes him fussy. He is so big he’s a handful to care for. I’m going to call the Dr. & see if he wants to see him or if there is something I can do more for him here at home.

Got a lovely big package from Mom the other day. All the little packages are wrapped so pretty & look so Christmasy. Seems like I can’t get the spirit until her package comes, but she sends it so early it’s an awful strain to have those mysterious packages around so long & not be able to peek.

Lee finally got home from school — he was gone 5 weeks & only home once in that time. It seemed like years. He is going back for advanced training but I’m praying today that he can’t go ’till January. ‘Today is the day he’ll find out for sure. He left me the car today so I can finish my shopping & get my packages off. I know 15th was supposed to be the deadline, but I never can quite make it. Surely hope you don’t feel you have to dash around & work yourself into a fit to send us a box–after all you’ve just had a new baby & if you just send Best Wishes we’ll understand & be perfectly happy. We’re not putting out much this year–even one baby is added expense–don’t know what we’d do with 3.

My little guy just messed his pants so had better stop & get him cleaned up & my house looks like a cyclone struck it–it always does on Mon. morn.

We have a parakeet who chirps loud & long & Robert Lee sits 10 minutes at a time & shakes his head at him. It’s funny.

                                                         Love to you all–send pictures & data–name, etc.

                                                                                                     Evelyn & family.

untitled (the past imperfective)

he will always be with you; he left himself in everything he created and in all of those he knew and loved. that action, the act of his creating, of his loving is a continuous loop of film, a helix of time through which we make contact here, and here, and here (and forever. each time we touch it, we may weep, we may flail about in frustration, we may love, and we may choose to speak of his talent, his friendship, his wit, his life.) the confusion of the sudden loss seems unfathomable, it is a question without an answer; it just is. i won’t tell you that it gets better, that time makes it bearable, why should i lie to you? it scares you, his loss is a worry now, a nub, a bead that can be rolled between your fingers, picked at, murmured to; you’ll catch yourself with it at the oddest times. and then, you’ll see him in the crowd at the ________ just out of the corner of your eye, missing him when you look directly in that direction; he’ll cross in front of you and all you’ll see is his shadow, coattail, hair, black eyes flashing. those moments will startle you and calm you. you’ll appreciate their appearance (not that you’ll hope it’s true, but that he was there for just that heartbeat–from his to yours.) although i do not know what took him from you (and you may not either, truly), the actions of the past, those ongoing activities, emotions, events are still alive though and as imperfect as they may seem now, they will always continue to exist in the past and that is the gift he left for you.