Goodbye, Gary

Dammit, I don't want to write this post.

But from the moment I read an entry on my friend Sarah's Facebook page, I knew I would have to. Sarah wrote that she would miss her friend Gary, and especially hearing his voice. I tore off an e-mail to her immediately, begging her to tell me that Gary, the front desk receptionist/greeter at NPR, had found a new job.

But I knew he hadn't. It was just a way to give myself a couple more hours to NOT think about Gary being dead. You see, Gary was so full of life. He was a big, tall, burly man, who probably would have told you himself that he oughta lose 50 or 60 pounds if he wanted to live longer.

You just had to feel Gary's vibe to know why I'm hurting so much right now. He kept it real, and he made you do the same. When I first met him, I was almost a bit scared....he had this booming voice, and he looked like he could slap the taste out of your mouth if he had to. I was quite small and meek during those early exchanges , until one day he said something funny, and I think I must have laughed and said something like, "You KNOW you ain't right, don't you?" From that moment on, Gary was my buddy.

For a while, I didn't know Gary was so tall, because I only saw him sitting down. But then, once my own family members started passing, whenever I would return to the office from bereavement leave, Gary would get up, come around from behind the desk and give me a big bear hug. He'd let me know he'd been praying for me. It warmed my heart so much that one time, I brought him some of the ribs my sister Julie had frozen and brought out to DC on one of her visits. When I saw him the next day, it was probably the ONLY time I've ever seen him speechless. He just couldn't find the words for a while. When he finally did, he said those were the best ribs he'd ever eaten. "That meat just fell off the bones," he marveled.

The hug he gave me when my sister died had something else in it. (No, not just an extra ounce of sadness that there would be no more succulent ribs.) It was a bit longer than the other hugs. It held a silent acknowledgement that we are all getting older, and we are all losing people we love, and we just can't curl up in a ball and spend the rest of our lives pissed off that these people are gone. Like Gary, we have to get up from behind the "desk" of grief, walk around it, and spread out our arms to embrace whatever remains in life.

Gary used to jokingly berate me about "runnin' my ass all over Africa"and not bringing him anything back, so when I was in Nigeria back in March, I saw a brass bracelet I thought he'd like. I polished it up until it shone like the sun, and then I brought it in one morning. "I OUGHT to keep this for myself," I mumbled as I reached inside my bag. "You better hurry up and give me my bracelet," he said. His smile when he saw it was all the thanks I needed.

So........what more can I say? Only this: the thought of walking through the doors at NPR without seeing Gary's face ever again makes me ache inside. I just can't handle it right now.