Daydreams & Diaries

by Taylor Black

  And how will I know: do I just keep on guessing?

  When all’s said and done will I have gained what I should

  Will I have learned all I could

  About people and love, the purpose of living.

  How will I know if I’ve gotten it right?

  How I can I tell if I fought the good fight?

  Where can I find what I’m to take from all this

  Will I know right away or is it a hit or a miss?

  I guess I will have to wait to the end

  And discover whatever I’ve gained from it then.

  When I finished reading the poem, I can remember my eyes tearing up.

  “Is it that bad, Dad?” Taylor asked, startled by my reaction to her poem.

  “No, no, Taylor. Don’t worry, you can still write,” I said.

  “Well thank God for that anyway,” she said and rolled her IV stand to the bathroom to vomit once again. “I don’t know what I would do without my poetry.”

  * * *

  April 22, 2001 was a tragic day for Taylor and Karly as their friend Justin overdosed on OxyContin and cocaine. A wealthy boy from Sailfish Point. He was dead at 19. “He can’t be dead,” Taylor cried when she heard the news. “He was on probation, he wouldn’t do this.” But the tears on her face belied her words. She didn’t write about it for two days and then only briefly.

  Taylor’s Diary

  April 24, 2001

  JUSTIN IS DEAD! He died 2 months to the day before his 19th birthday. I can’t think straight. It doesn’t seem real! These past two days have been one big haze. I don’t even know how to grasp it.

  Taylor’s Diary

  April 29, 2001

  Well, the week from hell is finally coming to an end. I can’t believe Justin is dead. I am so sad I can’t even cry. He was such a big part of my life and now he’s gone. I had to go to his viewing, that was so hard. When I walked up to his casket it felt like I was having a heart attack. I keep thinking that it can’t be true. I mean it’s Justin. Invincible diesel Justin. There was a thing @ the beach for him that was really nice. Then on Friday his funeral was @ St. Joe’s. I didn’t go to his burial but I got home from his funeral and just started writing a 5 pg. letter to him saying goodbye. So, later that afternoon I went and put it on his grave and stayed w/him awhile. I keep thinking that he’s gonna wake me up in the middle of the night w/one of his infamous calls. And then he’ll tell me that it was all some misunderstanding, that it wasn’t really him lying in the coffin and then I’ll bitch @ him for me making me so sad. Every night I hope he calls.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: When the Bluebirds Sang

  A week after Taylor died Justin Endicott’s mother sent me a note that Taylor had written to her at her son’s funeral the spring before.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Endicott,

  I was compelled to write this poem about Justin because to me he was the bluebird of happiness. I am truly heartbroken about the loss of such a unique person. He impacted my life enormously and I have never, and definitely will never, meet another soul like him. I am sorry for your loss and for the loss for all the people that he impacted. He was an amazing person and he taught me so many things about life. I find comfort in knowing that a true angel is watching over me now. Sincerely Taylor Black

  P.S. I put the poem underneath his hand. I hope he likes it.”

  And there was the poem in her typical couplet rhyme style:

  Once I heard a bluebird singing in the night

  Undaunted by the darkness, without a trace of fright.

  He was unlike the rest, who slumbered why he played,

  Alone in the midnight, an enchanting song he made.

  I listened while he told me, things that struck me deep,

  I watched him as he danced while the whole

  World was asleep.

  But then as dawn was breaking slowly into day

  I gazed with my heart as my bluebird flew away.

  So, like any proud parent, I kept Taylor’s poem after Mrs. Endicott sent it to me. Justin’s death had really ripped Taylor up, the spring before she died. Taylor was sitting in the Lazy-Boy when Karly called with the shocking news. She began to cry and hyperventilate. Her knees were rubber and she couldn’t stand up from the chair without my assistance due to the shock of learning of Justin’s death. I was able to get her up and hug her, hold her close as she sobbed for her lost “bluebird.”

  I had shown Taylor a photocopy of my poem which I gave to Mrs. Freimuth when Bobby died and Mrs. Freimuth had it printed and passed it out at his funeral. The spring day after Bobby died, I slipped my hand-written poem into the Freimuth’s copy of their Philadelphia Bulletin, for I was the neighborhood paperboy and in those days I put the paper inside the storm door so it wouldn’t get wet. Looking back now, perhaps I gave Taylor the idea to write her own poem to Justin. I noticed I suffered from couplet-itis when I was a young writer as well.

  A Friend of Mine

  Gone is he, a friend of mine

  One who was so true and fine;

  To new horizons, he must go,

  And leave his cheerful laugh behind,

  The frontier unexplored is so,

  He must explore and find,

  The trueness of the Divine.

  Gone is he, a friend of mine

  One who was so true and fine;

  No more will I hear him say,

  Little wits as was his way.

  Death has given him one last ride

  To his Lord he will abide.

  Departed, he, a friend of mine,

  On one rainy April morn.

  A guy named Bob who had been born

  Some 16 years before his death.

  A nicer boy I know not now.

  Jesus spoke of greater fame-

  ‘Death,’ said He, ‘Is an aim,’

  For true life in the kingdom divine

  Death then is a friend of mine.”

  I never wrote another poem that I can recall, except some substitute lyrics for songs like a Weird Al wannabe, but my mother kept that among her keepsakes and I found the original when we were going through her things when she died in January, 2003.

  So Taylor, when I came across that old poem of mine written in, I believe, the spring of 1963 I didn’t see Bobby Freimuth, I saw you, writing your poem to Justin and slipping it under his hand at the viewing. I saw you alone, visiting his grave in the weeks after the funeral.

  Of course I never thought when I wrote that poem back in 1963 that I would ever have a child or lose a child to cancer like Mrs. Freimuth did, but perhaps if God’s world had no time, my soul knew back then and I wrote the poem to comfort a future me as much as give comfort to Mrs. Freimuth. Bobby Freimuth, my Monopoly buddy who would shake the dice and say, “I’m barking for free parking” as he rolled the “bones” across the board. Somehow the past was connected to my future, and Taylor was another Bobby. That was certainly what Taylor might have believed. The karma of it all.

  Taylor’s Diary

  May 5, 2001

  I think about Justin everyday and I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t want to think about the fact that I have cancer. But I think I need to think about both of those things. I met Todd’s friend Dave tonight. He worked at Sailfish Point and started talking about Justin as a boy. Both of his parents have been diagnosed with cancer and both are in remission and he knew Justin. There are no such things as coincidences! I ended up talking w/him for more than 2 hrs. I guess cause I’ve been avoiding everything God was sending a message saying, “look, here’s a lesson you need to grasp.” So I think I need to dig into that some more. I just hope I don’t unravel.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: All Dogs Don’t Go to Heaven

  Taylor always had an ambivalent relationship with Rhett Butler Black, a black dachshund who, at the time of his initial “kidnapping,” was six years old. For the first six years of Rhett’s existence he had been a bane to Taylor, and a blessing to Courtney, who was the family’s dog love
r. To Courtney, Rhett could do no wrong or so it seemed. Rhett was an irksome mutt to Chad because Rhett, not liking Taylor’s brother, had once climbed up into the open cab of Chad’s truck and left his calling cards on the driver’s seat, both the number one and the number two “cards.”

  I certainly had no luck with dogs. I took Courtney’s previous dog Gretchen out for a walk one night and she died on me, keeled over and croaked. Bad heart it seemed. I returned to the house with a dead pooch in my arms and from that time on I became rather fatalistic about animals in my life. But Rhett, like the girls, went back and forth between two houses and, on occasion when Pam’s neighbors complained of Rhett’s barking, Courtney would bring him to sanctuary at my house. But Rhett and Taylor never seemed to hit it off and Rhett, on more than one occasion, had left his calling card in Taylor’s room.

  The girls had named the dog after the fictional blockade runner from Charleston in Gone With the Wind although our Rhett yapped as much as Charles Hamilton, I thought. But what child would ever name a dog “Charles Hamilton.” I mean the wimpy guy died of measles for heaven’s sake!

  Rhett’s only saving grace, as far as I was concerned, was his penchant for climbing the rubber tree in the backyard. I thought he must be half-cat for he was as sure footed as a feline.

  But one day after watching The Princess Bride, Taylor got the idea of kidnapping her sister’s dog. In the film a “rodent of unusual size” or R.O.U.S was mentioned, and the ugly giant rat reminded Taylor of Rhett. So one day after school Taylor got home before Courtney and emailed her the following ransom note:

  Courtney,

  So you thought you could escape me? NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  I have your little Rooskie Doodles (which was one of Courtney’s nicknames for Rhett). Yip yip yip! That’s him now. He hasn’t taken much of a liking to his muzzle and little doggie chains that hold him as I allow rabid squirrels to dance in front of his cage, taunting him without end. Well, by now, you know the drill. I DEMAND $100 BAZILLION or I always wanted to know how weinersnitzel (sic) soup tasted and the old man (Dad) here is fattening up your precious little doodlebug every day. So if you ever want to see the little rat again I expect my $ in the next 24 hours. I think that is only fitting that as I write this, The Princess Bride is playing in the background—a sure sign that R.O.U.S. has only a short time left.

  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  Signed

  Xxxxxxx

  Over the years Taylor repeated the kidnapping of Rhett, grabbing the dog and her bike and cycling to the other parent’s house to drop the dog off.

  I admit I was complicit in the kidnapping of Rhett and encouraging Taylor’s mischievous creativity. She put a great deal of love into a practical joke, I thought, and sometimes now I envision her playing practical jokes in heaven, putting one over on St. Peter perhaps.

  Later, after Taylor died, my sister-in-law visited Cassadaga, the Psychic Capital of the World in Central Florida, and informed me that Taylor was on the other side helping young souls in the transition from life to death. Like her mother who was an M.S.W., Taylor dreamed of being a social worker and, I like to think, perhaps she was now a “Soul-cial” worker. I don’t dismiss anything anymore. I have had God work in my life and, I truly believe in angels. They may even walk among us. Or fly if you prefer.

  Rhett died a few years after Taylor, but the movie title All Dogs Go to Heaven was made before Rhett came along, and if the movie makers had known Rhett they probably would have changed the title to Most Dogs Go to Heaven. Somehow I think Rhett might be yapping his lungs out in the Other Place, for he was a hell of a dog.

  * * *

  Although Taylor went to public school, she was a member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and one day she was asked to speak to the parochial school’s 8th graders about what she had gone through and how her faith had sustained her.

  Taylor’s Diary

  May 9, 2001

  I spoke at St. Joe’s Middle School on Monday morning. That was the earliest I’ve been up in 6 months. There were 2 classes of 8th graders. I thought I was going to have trouble talking about it but it turned out surprisingly well. (Karly came w/me but didn’t say a word of course.) Then later I spent practically all day getting an MRI. I got the results of the spine back yesterday and they were clear (no sign of cancer spreading). But I don’t get the results of the brain back until tomorrow.

  Let’s cross our fingers! It’s only 2 weeks until graduation on the 24th. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone by and I’ll be going to college in the fall (at least hopefully if everything goes right). I feel like I’ve come to a block in coping w/Justin’s death. I’m now @ the stage where it doesn’t seem real and every time I think about it. I quickly change my thoughts. I just don’t know how to cope w/a thing like this.

  Justin has been such an important part of my life. He taught me many things and he definitely had a big impact on the person I’ve become. I just don’t understand why he had to have such a short life.

  Of course as Taylor’s father when I reread that diary entry I just substituted the pronoun “she” for “he” in the last sentence of her entry.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Drumsticks and Brain Tumors

  Until one summer vacation when we made an ill-fated short cut across the National Mall in Washington to get from the Air and Space Museum to Natural History, Courtney and Taylor were carnivores. Unfortunately, Courtney was accosted by the PETA guilt-Gestapo. The PETA people showed her a number of ghastly images that were foul as well as fowl, and from that day on Courtney has not eaten a piece of chicken. She still eats seafood, but if it lives on land, she doesn’t eat it. Thanks a lot, PETA.

  Taylor, however, was made of sterner stuff or was, perhaps, indifferent to a drumstick’s background or its family members, and during her treatment for brain cancer and her resultant use of steroids, Taylor developed a healthy appetite, especially for Colonel Sander’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. And since the local KFC had an all-you-can-eat buffet I was able to keep Taylor in both cholesterol and calories without breaking the “Bank of Dad.”

  Ah, the smell of the plastic chairs and the gloss of the cheesy Formica tables which was the ambiance of the Colonel’s grease pit, but Taylor and I didn’t go for the atmosphere, we went for the feed, the mouthfuls of mashed potatoes smothered in the to-die-for chicken gravy, the coleslaw with the pleasing aftertaste and, of course, the secret recipe.

  But we also talked.

  “It’s good to see you and Mom talking, Dad,” Taylor said during one visit to the Colonel’s restaurant. “Of course it took a brain tumor to do it.”

  I nearly swallowed a chicken bone when she made that comment, but it was an honest statement. I think, had Taylor not developed a brain tumor, I might have gone the rest of my natural life without ever speaking to my ex-wife. I envisioned myself as a Cal Ripkin of ex-husbands with over 2500 consecutive days without speaking to my ex-wife, but Taylor’s illness had forced me to talk with Pam and work with her for the sake of Taylor; and my streak of silence was snapped and I failed to make it into the ex-husband’s Hall of Fame. What neither Pam nor I truly appreciated was how painful it was for Taylor to be caught in the middle between two people she loved, who no longer loved but rather, loathed one another. Both Pam and I had forgotten the fact that there was once love, a love that was represented in the child before me, woofing down a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Many divorced parents, I believe, made that same mistake we did: forgetting they were once madly in love with an ex-spouse. I was sorry for that now, but of course it was too late. Yet that day I recovered from nearly choking on the chicken bone and replied to my daughter, “That’s true, Taylor.”

  “I’m glad you are communicating. I need you both,” she said. “I really do, Dad,” she repeated for emphasis.

  I looked at her and smiled, but didn’t speak. She sensed I was uncomfortable talking about my relationship or, lack thereof, with her mother and conveniently changed the su
bject, “pulled a Nana,” a tactic I had used so often when she was little, one that we had all learned from my mother.

  “The steroids make me so hungry, Dad,” she smiled. “You know, most people don’t ever have anyone ever touch their brain during their lifetime and I have had people touching my brain in two different operations.”

  By that time Taylor had had the first brain operation at Martin Memorial Hospital North and, when the tumor returned, she had a second brain surgery at Duke University, performed by Alan Friedman.

  “Sometimes I will step on something and feel it in my left foot and my right arm as well. It’s like the wiring is off from people playing around in there,” she said. “It’s really weird sometimes, Dad. I don’t think the brain is supposed to be played with like mine has.”

  I agreed with her. It didn’t seem to me that God intended for people to mess around with brains as it was His territory, the seat of the soul. It should have been off limits. Taylor thought it all through very systematically, and came to the conclusion that the brain wasn’t intended to be a toy, it wasn’t something to be played around with, but then she really had no choice.

  Taylor was overly fond of drumsticks and although I have eaten some KFC chicken in the years since, I have purposely avoided drumsticks. For several years I didn’t eat a baked potato either. I guess I associated those foods with Taylor, but I had a baked potato not too long ago. However, I still haven’t managed the courage to eat a KFC drumstick. Our favorite KFC franchise closed about two years ago and I like to think that without our business it went belly up. The booth we sat in so often to “pig out” during her steroid days may be long gone, but it was still fresh in my mind and I can see Taylor across the Formica tabletop, gnawing on a drumstick and talking about her brain tumor, a bit of the secret recipe juice squirting from the dead chicken’s limb as she smiled at me. And she was with me once again.

  My brain never was the same, Pops. It was if I had a short circuit or something, as if all the nerves had been crossed somehow.