My Dearest Clark:

Writing to you from beautiful downtown Syria,Virginia under the wintry majesty of the Blue Ridge.

This is a fiction.

I picked up the orange tee shirt from atop the clothes dryer. I shook it out, wondering if I should run it through the dryer again to get out the wrinkles. The shirt had sat unfolded for so long; since the day you left us. My mother gave me that shirt. You have probably seen me wearing it long ago. It is the one with the Navajo pottery appliques, festooned with turquoise and terra cotta pots. I was finally able to fold up the tee shirt; and, with it a substantial amount of other clean and dried laundry which had lain fallow and neglected for these two weeks now.

It is unlike me to leave the laundry unfolded.

And the mail unopened.

And the phone unanswered.

Clark, we have a watershed here. An event. It began the day you left.

You will remember. We were tired. You arrived, and we laughed non-stop for two full days, did we not? Or so it seemed to me. The only time we were not laughing was when we were trying to be serious for Ralph in the Brumidi Galleries. Or so it seemed to me.

So, the day you left, I thought well, now, I am tired. Perhaps I should just take the day off and sit back and relax. The laundry can wait to be folded just one more day, yes?

Tired deepened into lassitude, and I went to bed early that night. On Sunday morning, I awakened to complete blackness. No, not pre-dawn darkness, but an unfathomable emotional vacuum. I could hear it coming inside of me. The bear walking down the path. Sometime during my sleep, after your leaving, the bear swallowed me whole, and I awoke dead in his stomach.

Sunday, all day. I wondered how long will this last, and how bad will it be? The emptiness of the house echoed back to me the answer. Long. Bad. You are in the stomach of the bear, and now he lives here, too.

Monday morning, and the unfathomable black vacuum of the bear's stomach ruptured into full-blown agony. The blackest sort of bereavement. I tried to work, but my one phone conversation that morning, a call to my business partner, deteriorated into an anxiety attack complete with uncontrollable sobbing, me hyperventilating, trying to hang on and let go in the same instant.

I knew in my head, as all this was going on, that it was completely inappropriate. No one close to me had passed away, the fabric of my life had not suddenly parted. There was no real, tangible loss to link to this anguish. The old bear was simply there, and it was ripping me to shreds before my very eyes.

Two local women put me back together. One on Monday. The other a few days later. Monday's woman looked me squarely in the eyes and told me that I would be alright soon enough, and if I could only find the causal factor, I could probably understand sooner, and be away from the bear completely. The other woman looked into my heart and told me that yes, it was pretty banged up, but it was still beating quite strongly, and she also told me that I would be alright soon enough.

A week passed, and the bear's shadow began to evaporate. As his shadow became lighter and lighter, he tired of having me in his stomach, and he has gone for a walk in the woods to look for other, more palatable prey.
On this past Monday afternoon, and once again capable to the task, I set out to reconnoiter the surrounding environs. This was the usual supplies run to Charlottesville. I needed the new light fixtures for the stove room and the foyer. You will recall that they were left uncovered after the electrician first came to install the rheostat switches for the overhead lights.

Since I had not eaten in several days, I stopped at Taco Bell for fast food and a cold drink. My belly full, I set out on Route 29 for the usual long cruise into C'ville. This is where the trigger was finally revealed to me, as Monday Woman said it might be. On my various trips into C'ville, I normally use the cruising time to let my mind run out into the sky. The black ribbon of the highway is my device for cooking up a little creative thinking.

In 1987, I met my cousin, Suzanne McBride. We were reacquainted, not having seen each other since my Grandmother Helen's funeral in 1974. Suzanne is the daughter of my Grandmother's brother. So, I suppose that would make her my second cousin.

Suzanne McBride came into my life during a year of heart break, the year I learned from my husband that our marriage was not going to work out in quite the manner we had originally planned. Slowly over time, as Suzanne and I became close friends, I replaced that which was missing from my most important personal relationship - emotional intimacy - with the pleasure of her company.

Suzanne reintroduced me to the horse, and in doing so she gave me my freedom. She took me in hand one day, in her Mustang convertible, for a drive out to Bastrop Farms to meet Judy Connolly and Judy's daughter Carol Bandy. Soon, I became a fixture at this horse farm. I would ride every weekend, and spend all of my time with the horses caring for them. Judy and Carol taught me about their Arabian show horses. I learned to ride again. I competed in horse shows in Western and English equitation classes. My heart was restored by horses, and the friendships and attachments which came with them.

Suzanne married the man of her dreams and moved to Victoria, Texas. I spent every available weekend I could squeeze from my schedule with Suzanne and Tommy. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a summer day spent in the deep woods of south Texas. Centuries-old live oak trees, dressed in the flowing lace of Spanish Moss, spread their arms across meadows of bunch grass. Texas Mountain Laurel trees blossomed their grape scented umbels in the spring. We spent many an afternoon walking in the woods across several seasons through a semi-tropical sand-floored forest where the gnarled mauve roots of ungnadia speciosa broke ground and snaked to catch our feet. We collected the fruits of Turk's Cap to make jelly. Above the sandy banks of the muddy, brown Guadalupe River, we looked down into the eddying waters and marveled at huge alligator gar and catfish. She taught me the difference between Crow's Foot (false garlic) and wild onions, and named the illusive bird song of the deep woods as that of the White Crowned sparrow. We were a family.

Suzanne McBride was highly educated, and she was a gifted naturalist. Worlds unfolded for me from the gifts of her keen intellect, and practical approach to life. She taught me the trees and birds of Texas. She taught me about Victorian architecture. She taught me the history of Texas politics. And, she shared her love for her family with me. We were a family.

In return, I loved Suzanne without reservation. I made a point of telling her how deeply I cared about her, and how much it meant to me to share in her life. She accepted my love for her as the love of a daughter or a sister, without condition or question. This is, by my observation, an aspect of human relationships which is unique to women, or at least uncommon to men: the deeply held and greatly treasured lyric of platonic friendship. Suzanne and I could spend long hours together looking through the photographs in her old family albums, or just sitting together on the couch with her husband Tommy, listening to her favorite opera recordings, and holding hands together. We were a family.

The physical resemblance between Suzanne McBride and me was commented on everywhere we went. Together, dressed up, going out. We were two pretty Texas women. Even with the 16 years between us, people always asked if we were sisters. We were sisters in our own way.

December, 1991. She was taken from me without warning. She was 49 years old.

I was completing my course work at St. Edwards only days before I was required to drive from Austin to Pittsburgh to join my husband who had accepted a faculty post at Carnegie Mellon University. The call from Suzanne's daughter-in-law Carla came at 1:15 in the afternoon on Thursday. Suzanne had suffered a brain hemorrhage for no apparent reason. No, not an aneurysm. She had no high blood pressure or indication of ill health.
She was nearly completely paralyzed, and helpless. The brain surgeon who cleaned out her skull had no explanation.

They put her in rehab where she began partial recovery of her arms and legs. Then, days later they discovered that she had fully metastasized cancer. The cancer had created a colony in her brain. What blew was the vascularization created by the tumor. She died a matter of weeks later, having lingered in coma for ten days.

My grief over the next year was terrible. The first anniversary of her death was very difficult. For a number of years after her death, I made a point of setting time aside during February to remember her life and to love her again, to assuage the loss of her presence in all of our lives.

Over the years, I began to forget her. I would forget about the event of her death, but February months never stopped being difficult. Even though she had mostly faded from my memory, I would still experience a residuum of sadness each February. Eventually, I stopped marking the memory of her death entirely.

Priscilla Ziegler, a newly acquainted friend and Syria horse woman, died at about the same time this February. I went to her funeral. I did not know her well enough to permit myself to be wounded by her death. I grieved more for Priscilla's suffering during her last year of treatment for liver cancer, than for her passing. Priscilla's funeral was a non-event for me. Vaguely sad, and providing some closure for her family and friends. Honestly, it did not occur to me that this was all taking place over the same time frame.

Priscilla's death and funeral where I tried to close-off my heart to the inevitable.

Suzanne's death anniversary, so long forgotten but never truly forgiven.

Clark's arrival and departure.

It was you, Clark. The bear followed you into my camp, and he hid in the shadows and waited until you left, and I slept, before he swallowed me.

You, Clark. You with the laughter, you who again (like Suzanne) gave me back the connection with the horse through our shared pursuit. You, my mentor, long lost cousin, and companion in mischief.

You brought such joy and entertainment into my house. You brought filial friendship, courage, and trust. You loaned your husband to me so that I could once again experience the simple joy of fishing in a stream. You loaned me your horse, and we flew through the trees like herons across the marsh.

Very simply, Clark, you opened the door to a room in my heart where I kept some of the most cherished, the finest memories of my life with Suzanne in Texas. She was a woman who was too good to stay with me for very long. She was needed elsewhere more desperately than I needed her here.

You went back home, across the mountains. I forgot to close the door, and the bear went for a walk in my head. And now it is February, and I am required to grieve for Suzanne one more time, having neglected to do so for these several years.

I cannot abide sissies. So, it is with much embarrassment that I find myself behaving in such a weak and womanish way. Banish the bear, great dark lurking beast with his stinking stomach!

On to other matters, Clark. I am exceedingly proud of your new employment! This calls for celebration. I can easily picture my friend Clark, that tall, strong, slender woman in the jog cart behind the trotters, ten miles per horse round-and-round the track. Freezing her ass off and feeling the nerves in her shoulders go numb from trying to hold back the go'ers. Dip Lucy did this with King, you will remember. They won. Frequently. An Arab pulling a racing cart, dominating a world populated by Standardbreds. Dip lost King this past summer, the victim of very old horse age. Never a lame step though.

I am a little concerned about the damage your work may be doing to your heart, though. I know what the effin rats mean to you, and how badly their lives must be affecting your own. I know, too, that you are a small salvation to them. Each one of the effin rats is a perfect poem, not a commodity to succeed or fail with. Those who fail to excel are doomed to the killer buyers at auction. Those who perform well are doomed to an early lameness, or to be an object for reproduction of more effin rats.

Clark, please come back. You are my extraordinary friend. Kiss your old husband for me, and kiss the posse and the pack, too.

I am over it. The bear stalks other prey, not in my woods.

And the laundry is folded.

I wish for you peace, good cheer and God's speed in your endeavors.

YOUR HUMBLE AND OBEDIENT SERVANT,
Captain Lewis
(February 1999)