Kirby the Doodlebug

Tyrone Kirby Wayne Graham 

“Hi Kirby, How’s my Doodlebug?”

“Fine. How are you?”

“We’re good.  We’re going camping I wanted to know if I could borrow your tent and the stove if you are not needing it?  

“Sure. When’ ya going?”  

“This weekend – Ok if I pick it up on Friday?”

“Sure no problem, I am off Friday it is the beginning of a month’s vacation for me! I really did it right this time, Tajime, I did not overwork, and I won’t be starting this vacation exhausted!  I am just going to take it easy.”

“Wow, that is great! I am really proud of you, congratulations!”

“Hey,” Kirby says, breaking the chit-chat of details.

“Did you just call to tell me you Love me?” as if he already knew the answer.

Kirby startled me by being so direct. His boldness drew me towards him.  I could not help being swayed by his bluntness into answering sincerely.  

I did a reality check in my heart to my true feelings. I found nothing more prominent in my heart than my love for him, a love I always felt. 

Though we saw each other a few times a week Ice Dancing together which felt very romantic; and I still massaged his athletic body nearly every week; which kept us in contact and sweetly connected, we had not been together as a couple for a while, so I had not told him as often how much he meant to me.  

It had been eight months since his heart attack while he skied a cross country race up at Tahoe.  I nearly lost him at 37 years old!  Nearly losing him then snapped my love for him, into focus. He meant a lot to me and that came more clearly into focus in my heart and mind on a daily basis, but I did not always express it directly to him.  I saw my chance to speak it clearly out loud to him now, and I took it.  I answered him straight up.

“Yep”. I said as clearly as I could.  “Kirby, I just called to tell you I love you.”

A gentle pause followed as if he took in what I said the way people consider something deep and meaningful, or when they savor a delicious dessert. I heard him inhale to insure his entire presence and his words were full of meaning. 

“I still love you, too, Tajime.  Very much.” 

I instigated the next pause. I needed it to inhale his love to all the cells of my being; every bit of that message was rich and vastly fulfilling as if it contained every loving moment we experienced together for nearly five years. 

From the night we first walked out on the twelve-inch wide parallel planks out at the bay lands, through all the times he showed up as a dedicated parent to my child, and a patient considerate partner to me.  

I remembered our first long conversation on the walkway that connects the electrical towers, set hundreds of feet apart over the tidal marshlands. We sat for hours in the middle of the night, sharing snippets of our lives. 

The stories he humbly told me painted a determined, strong, caring, and considerate young man, and over the years, all I learned then of his character, verified this from my knowing him.  

He told me of one of the most embarrassing moments in his life; when he rolled a borrowed pick-up truck sideways into a muddy ditch on a winding road while on a date. After he helped his date climb up and out of the driver's door – a straight-up exit, her long white gown, too narrow for her to make the leap from standing on the driver’s door to the embankment tripped her before she thought to raise her dress to make the jump. 

Determined to drop her off back at home on time, he just couldn’t take her home covered with mud “cause it just wasn’t right.”  So he took her first to a friend’s house to wash her dress for her before taking her home.  

Kirby shared another story about how he earned an Eagle Scout award at twelve years of age for saving someone from drowning in a rushing river.  He ran alongside the wooded water’s edge till he could jump in to catch a man before the current dragged him into some rapids.  The man had swallowed and inhaled water and needed resuscitating. 

Kirby’s account of saving a person’s life sounded matter-of-fact and heroic, yet he expressed it free of bragging or boasting. All I learned from experiences with him brought an even deeper appreciation for his being a really good-natured, caring person.

From the moment I first saw him carefully cutting and wrapping chunks of exotic cheese squares at WholeFoods Market during the grand opening of their first California store, I had a deep appreciation for the care, time, and attention he put into all he did.  He came from Texas as one of the original dedicated WholeFoods management team members when they first expanded to Palo Alto and he possessed the precious manners of a complete gentleman.

All the moments we shared for the five years we had known each other were full of a gentle, kind, considerate caring love for each other; a love that never went sour even through us being apart or readjusting our relationship to a precious and close friendship.  

We had a sweet tenderness towards each other; the kind people grow into over a lifetime; a kindness that is born into friendships made as children; he felt like family to me.  Kirby existed in my inner circle of closest people to me, one of the few men in my life who never harmed me, never played tricks nor deceived me.

He had "deer-eyes" gentle welcoming lovely brown eyes to his soul gazing back at mine; as we both appreciated our love; a love that comes to those who are open to deeply trusting in the good nature of another human.

Suddenly within this phone call, I knew: I knew I had come to a place of knowing, believing, and choosing. This is it God, this is the one I want to spend the rest of my life beside. I soaked in the clarity of his letting me know he still loved me.  It felt good and right in a way I had been too afraid to let in so easily and thoroughly until now.

“Yeah, I know, I feel it too,”  I said. “Kirby, I just love you – I always have.”

Suddenly I just knew more than anything as if I had just not truly acknowledged it before: I knew that I deeply loved and trusted Kirby so profoundly, that it became crystal clear in my heart: I finally knew I want to marry this man. He felt like the best friend I had ever had, which for me became a more important basis on which to choose a life partner than anything dreamy, romantic or imaginary.  Finally figuring this out, I felt empowered and whole; happy and content.

And with the clarity of that desire, I felt my soul pondering question... to spirit, to god,  to the powers that be: Are we going to marry?  Do we get to be partners? Do I get to keep this one?  Do I get to grow old with this one?  Oh Dear God, I hope so!  If I could have that dear god, I would be so happy!  God!  Do I get to have this man – for keeps?!? 

WOW!! Completely invigorated at the thought: I had finally come into alignment with my partner, the future for us felt wide open!  I could not imagine how we were going to figure out what came next; which of us would ask the other to marry, to get us back together, nor when we might step towards getting married or even if he would see it as right and good for me to propose to him if he did not. 

I already had the engagement and wedding ring set that he began purchasing as a high school student.  He bought it with the intention of giving it to his high school sweetheart.  It took him nine years to pay it off, and he and his girlfriend were not together when he paid it off.  

It has four rubies and a good size diamond in a “Princess” setting – two rings that interlocked together.  He no longer wanted the ring once she left, but the jeweler talked him into completing the purchase with the faith that he would in time find someone else the ring fit perfectly.  He bought it and saved it for nearly fifteen years by the time he gave it to me. It fit me perfectly. I loved it and wore it every day.  

However, when he gave it to me, he neglected to pop the coupling question.  It had always been my dream to be chosen by a man who really knows me, for my goodness; goodness he could see, feel, and trust.  

Yet Kirby never asked me to marry him, he never gave me the chance to say yes.

And months after he had given me the ring, when we had peacefully drifted out of being a couple, I tried to give the ring back to him.  He asked me,

“How do you feel when you wear my ring?”

I said, “I feel loved”

“Then I want you to keep it.”  So I did.  And I continued to wear it.

I went into WholeFoods nearly every day to get lunch as I worked a block away, and when I did I always found Kirby to hug him. Everyone could tell we still loved each other, and often asked, “Hey, what’s going on with you two?”  To which I happily replied, “Kirby and I?”  While shrugging my shoulders unwilling to stress over their concern, “Oh, we just love each other” 

Had he asked me to marry him, the day he gave me the ring, I would have said yes and stayed with him.  But all he could say at the beach in the fog when he pulled the ring out of his fleece parka and opened the black velvet domed box he stashed in his pocket,

“Here, this is for you; I just want you to know... I am serious.”

I patiently waited for months for him to pop the question and it never came. I impatiently pulled away from him in defeat.  Perhaps now we were both finally more ready, and more sure; I know I certainly felt sure; I could only hope he recognized my confidence and it matched his.

I never made it to his house that following Friday afternoon to pick up gear for the weekend. While on my way, I weirdly stopped at my friend Denise’s house.  

I talked with her for a couple of hours, that afternoon while she cooked.  

While I sat and talked with her, my intentions and purpose unwound and got lost. Just before 4 pm, I got disoriented at Denise’s and forgot what I needed to go get, suddenly did not feel good at all, and weirdly drove home with my eight-year-old daughter Jevana and went to bed at 6:30 pm. I do not remember even having dinner; she went into her room and I climbed into my bed, in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. 

We both fell deeply asleep.  Jevana slept through the night.  

At 10:30 pm I eventually awoke from a very deep nearly undisturbable sleep, when I heard an increasingly loud insistent knock on my front door; a door twelve feet from my bed.  The knocking went on for a while before I placed in time and space that someone at my door insistently would not leave until I answered it.  

I got up in my long flannel nightgown that draped to the floor like an angel’s gown.  In my sleepy state, I discovered Jamie, Kirby’s best buddy, and Jamie’s girlfriend Carla.  Their eyes were quite red, and Carla held his arm as if she were holding him from falling over, I thought Kirby might come up the stairs right behind them.  Was he sick?  Did he need my care?  Was he in the car waiting?  

Jamie’s voice so low his words barely came out slow and full of breath and very little sound, as if he could hardly make himself say what he knew he had to tell me. He spoke in a way I could tell he was not kidding when he said, “Kir- Kirby passed away... today”

“NOOOOOOOO!” I screeched, “No! NO NO NO NO NO No no no no no no no no no!!!!!  

I screamed in horror, as they both reached for me to hold me up from collapsing right there at my doorstep.  Unable to take it all in and digest what this really meant. 

I needed to know this nightmare would shortly end and I would wake up and find myself back in my cozy bed relieved.  That did not happen.  Reality punched me hard.  They showed up to tell me the worst news any lover can imagine hearing: Kirby drowned while windsurfing in the bay.  

And I just could not believe the man I loved, his tan Olympic swimmer’s body, so athletically fit, had drowned in the bay earlier mid-afternoon, right about the same time I got disoriented. 

I wept uncontrollably for a long time.  

Not one of my cells wanted this information and I could feel the mutiny of their orientation to each other disallowing communication to adjacent cells. Jamie said it took a really long time to wake me.  He and Carla stayed with me until my friend Denise came over to hold me.  I cried in her arms most of the night, raw unfiltered sadness loaded with gut-wrenching pain I had never felt before. Pain I knew I would never really welcome.  

The deepest troubled cries I had ever had, came out of me.  And strangely this did not disturb nor awaken my daughter sleeping in the next room. Glad to not have to face my daughter’s pain until the next day – she weirdly slept through the ruckus – all my weeping and moaning in agony burying my face in and out of soaked down pillows, alternating between desperate pleading questions of why, and cursing the powers that be that took him away from me. 

"Ahhhhhh!  Why him!? Why Now?  Why me god!!! What did I do to deserve this now!?"   

My heart filled with rage for the irreconcilable difference between the place of knowing I had finally arrived, ready, willing, welcoming partnership, and my now knowing that partnership would never be.  

All we would ever have had already passed. 

Kirby's death marked the beginning of my coming to terms with something way greater than me and what I dream of or want.

Rest in Peace, Tyrone Kirby Wayne Graham – March 14, 1956 – October 1, 1993