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Dear Dr. Gilliam,

I was stunned to learn only tonight of your passing. I had just worked up the nerve to make a new appointment after having not seen you for months; Linda Love from your office called with the news.

If I understand correctly (not a sure thing, as my sharp, jagged sobs punctuated that conversation), you were at Mardi Gras - one of your favorite celebrations in this world. You’d had a fine meal and some ice cream, followed by a third course of Massive Heart Attack. You died instantly, moving straight into the next mystery. (Your schedule always was pretty busy.) I can only imagine that realm’s cuisine and music and art. Or, if it’s too formless for that, then its textures and resonances, faintly echoing sound waves. Whatever it is that might characterize that place (or lack of place), I hope it’s rich, full of whimsy and depth.

If you found God, please verify for me that S/He has an offbeat sense of humor. S/He might appreciate, perhaps, that just above where I’ve written “I hope it’s rich, full of whimsy and depth,” that at first, I accidentally wrote “death” instead of “depth,” which would have been fairly horrifying to me had I inadvertently uploaded such text to the guestbook accompanying your obituary (we are so modern now we have online funerals!).

I want to say here that I’m grateful to you on quite a few counts:

• You were objective. When I told you about certain events, where you had knowledge of some parties involved, you did not let that knowledge color your judgment; you listened to me and you believed me. (Also, you’ll be proud of me: today I finally worked up the nerve to consult with a lawyer. This time, I’ll follow the process through, however far I still can, given the various statutes.)

• You didn’t try to cram the complexity of me into any kind of one-size-fits-all treatment model; you were fine with discarding what wasn’t working (for example, the course of Ambien that had me driving to Wal-Mart and making strange vegan casseroles in the night - not to mention leaving long, loopy voice mails for various friends and ex lovers), and adapting stuff that seemed like it might work. You gave me the space to work through things at my own speed.

• There were, over the last 3-4 years, various gaps (sometimes lasting months) between our appointments. You pushed me in ways I needed to be pushed. And backed off when pushing wouldn’t have helped.

We speculated, once or twice, as to whether we might be some kind of distant kin, both our families having roots in the Appalachian segments of Virginia and Tennessee, and with the name of “Gilliam” having made at least one appearance in my own family tree. It may or may not have been, but it did not matter nearly so much as the fact that I felt safe with you, at a time in my life when I felt safe with almost no one. (Linda gave me a few names of other doctors to call. Already, I feel sorry for them, considering the tests I put you through.)

If you carry into the next world some C.V. concerning your accomplishments in this one, please feel free to include among the numerous details this item: that you helped to save my life. S/He can call anytime for a reference; I haven’t moved and am not likely to, until such time as my living here might also come to a natural rather than unduly hastened end. Perhaps also in the context of vacation. (The grammarian in me feels compelled to note, here, the root of ‘vacate’ in this word; damn if you didn’t take this most recent ‘vacation’ quite literally.)

Rest peacefully, Dr. Gilliam. My best, also, to your partner Roy (another fine and gentle soul), and to your children, friends, colleagues, and patients.

We were all quite fortunate to know you.

___

More on Dr. John Hilliard Gilliam:

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Obituary
Bipolarity: The mental health community has lost a hero
Dr. John Gilliam: Memorial page

Valley:

I found out from an old friend that someone with whom we went to high school, Jeremiah Johnson, died in February in an apparent snorkeling accident. Jeremiah was a good kid, and I knew him better than I knew most of my classmates at Kapa’a High, in part because he lived in the same tiny north shore town as me (Hanalei, not Kapa’a as the Honolulu Star-Bulletin incorrectly reported), and in part because he was simply approachable, authentically kind. Those are rare traits in teenage boys (as I knew at the time, and thus had a quiet little crush on him, though nothing ever came of that), so it doesn’t at all surprise me that he went on to become a fine man, a school teacher who was on a field trip with his students when the accident occurred. I’m still pretty shaken up about this, and I’ll have a lot more to write about it later, though probably not for this blog.  His family has my sincerest condolences. This is an unimaginable loss for them, and to many others as well.

An applicable wisdom-pearl swiped from, of all places, a bulletin board at Shoney’s last night: To the world, you may be just one person, but to one person, you may be the world. I know for a fact that Jeremiah would have been ‘the world’ and more to many.

Peak: 

I had a writing breakthrough, which there’s no need to get into now except to say, with gratitude, that it happened. (Partly in response to sorting through my myriad reactions to the above sad news, so, thank you, dear Jeremiah.)  As I explained to a friend this morning:

There is a direction I’m headed with in all this, but you know what happens when I stop to explain that direction? Right, I don’t actually get around to proceeding in said direction.

Valley: 

There was a misunderstanding yesterday between various family members involving my youngest girl Annalisa’s breakfast. (That in itself wouldn’t be relevant, but for its consequences.)  The misunderstanding: I’d thought Jeff was getting Annalisa’s breakfast for her, he did but then asked Mariarosa to grab it out of the microwave for him, she either didn’t hear him ask that or pretended not to, but in any case left it in the microwave and then dashed off to catch her bus, meanwhile Annalisa was playing in the kitchen when I thought she was eating, following which I sent her to brush her teeth, then found the breakfast in the microwave, then had to have her eat it and brush her teeth all over again, making us about ten minutes late getting her to school. 

Anyway, it was a good thing, because at some point in the morning, a dog got hit by a car in front of our home. In the chaos of our morning, none of us heard it happen. Then we all left the house, Jeff in one vehicle, Annalisa and me in the other. Jeff saw the V-DOT worker with a dump truck scraping animal remains off the pavement, then looked up in time to see what had already been placed in the truck: very clearly what had once been a Rottweiler, with a chain still attached to its neck. Evidently, he or she had been chained up long enough to get pretty pissed off about it and broke loose, only to get slaughtered on our street by what Jeff assumed to have been several different cars, based on the pavement markings and the condition of the corpse.  (And here I will pause to post a link to the Richmond SPCA’s article about how you can support anti-chaining efforts locally. Please read it, and pass the news and ideas on.)

Somehow I managed to not see any of this, even though I was in the vehicle right behind Jeff. I just navigated around the dump truck and focused on getting Annalisa to school as quickly as possible. Then he called me on my cell, to make sure Annalisa hadn’t seen it, and I had to ask, did she see what? Ugh, heartbreak.

But if Annalisa hadn’t been running 10 minutes late for school, the truck wouldn’t have been there in the street - only the dead dog would have been, and for all I know, in my rush I might have hit the poor thing, too. And if Jeff hadn’t told me, my next step after dropping off Annalisa would have been to take Lynyrd for a walk right past that spot. As some of you know, when Lynyrd was first rescued by our friends Karrie and Mark, he was found on the side of the road guarding the corpse of what appeared to be his traveling buddy: another dog. So even if, after walking by the scene, I had been oblivious, Lynyrd, I am quite sure, would not have been. With his hound dog’s nose and life experience, it’s a damn sure thing he knows what death smells like.

Peak:

So instead of walking him near our home, I took him to Barker Field, the dog park here in Richmond I had stumbled upon only yesterday. And not only did he have an awesome doggy time, but he actually met a few doggies who looked like him. Their humans told me the breed was American Foxhound, and that they can be any combination of tan, black, and white in color. A subsequent internet search turned up lots of American Foxhound images that look an awful lot like Lynyrd, though most of them have black markings along with the tan and white. So our apparent ‘mutt’ may actually be a specific breed, this or some related variety of hound. Though I wouldn’t care if he was from Jupiter, I love him so.

Here he is, apparently obtaining important information from one of his fellow hound pals.  (Alas, I couldn’t get any pictures of them together where one wasn’t sniffing the other one’s butt or doing something equally unphotogenic, so this pic will have to do.)

One more peak:

At the library yesterday when my cell phone rang, in order to avoid disturbing other patrons, I left the table where I’d been sitting with my 12-year-old, alternately typing from a handwritten version of a story I’m working on, and quizzing her for her Civics test. Husband and I then chatted, me using hushed tones, from the hallway. Then I looked up, and noticed that Mariarosa had turned my laptop’s screen toward her and was optometrically devouring it when I busted her and, ’library quiet rules’ be damned, loudly scolded her from across the pretty large room. (This is not the first time she’s been busted on similar charges.)  Upon my return to the desk and my devilishly grinning child, I informed her that she is simply not allowed to read anything of mine until and unless it is published, and even then I’d rather she didn’t. To which she protested loudly. Then I offered this further clarification: by ‘published’ I do not mean ‘blogged,’ and I explained how I can, in the future, IP-address-ban her impudent ass if I so chose. To which she protested even more loudly. Then I looked over to where the librarian was, expecting the Stink Eye, and found to my surprise that she looked like she was suppressing a guffaw. Here’s to my daughter’s and my disturbing the peace.

—

And so, three cheers for life going on. Jeremiah taught biology, the life science of all life sciences. I’m pretty sure he’d understand.

And now, I have a happy doggie to walk.