Mr. James
Chlebda, Heaven
July 29, 2014
Dear Jim,
There’s a pink
tinge to this morning’s sunrise in the remnant of yesterday’s clouds hanging onto
your mountains. Maybe some of that’s
smoke – I haven’t checked the news for fires, preoccupied with getting these
things into words.
It’s been a week
since you took your last breath. The
news triggered James Taylor’s "Fire and Rain" in my head, that devastating first
line “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.” It was only hours in my case - your sister
Karen texted Betty Blanks, who found the message on her phone during a break
from court in Kings County. She was
crying when she called me. I didn’t cry
until we hung up. Even though we knew it
was coming, your death hit hard. I’ll
love her forever for getting up to Stanford to see you the weekend before. Her reports from that trip have consoled me
over and over.
When I emailed John
Dofflemyer, he wrote back and called you “a force in many people’s lives.” That cowboy poet and fellow publisher who
knows his ropes also said now you can operate with a freer hand. I’ve been gratified to find that’s true. I don’t know what you’ve been doing with the
others, but your presence here with me has been a blessing.
When I emailed
Jeremy Hogan, he began sending YouTube clips of the Grateful Dead and
Creedence, John Lennon’s "Mind Games." I
didn’t know 'til later that when he got my email, he left his office, went out
to his car and cried for 45 minutes.
Then he began an outpouring of words about how you saved his life, how
you were the pivot point between being lost and becoming a
photojournalist. I hope you’re enjoying
the force of his flood of love and gratitude.
Other people have
said now you’re with Wilma. I don’t know
about that, but give her a hug for me if you see her. I think you’re back at Back 40, communing
with your brother floras and sister faunas, the granite and gneiss, unconstrained
by property lines and deeds, not worried about the drought. That’s where I feel your heart beating,
anyway.
Sunday morning I
found a crow’s feather on the ground on my way out to the car. I stuck it in my hair and took you to church
with me, where I read the Scriptures aloud, five parables from Matthew about
the Kingdom of Heaven – what it is, what it’ll be like. I still don’t know about all that, but I know
better now than I’ve ever known before that when you walked this planet, the
kingdom of heaven was near. You brought
it with you, sowed seeds of kindness and appreciation, love and respect
everywhere you went. Some of those seeds
are on their way to being trees, nest sites for all those birds you love. The
pearls of great price you found on every nature walk, in every poet’s corner,
every encounter with the unconformed and wandering souls who became your
friends – those pearls are shining now, right here on earth.
It was hard,
imagining what you were facing up there at Stanford: the antibiotics no longer
keeping the pseudomonas at bay, the prospect of surgery to swap out those lungs
you did your damndest to protect these past fifty-seven years, the need to take
on a whole new and unknown medical regime to fool your body into keeping the replacement
breathing apparatus someone else didn’t need anymore. It was hard, but I imagined you daily. When the Bee carried that great story about
the young Clovis woman climbing Half Dome with her new lungs, we sent it right
off, hoping the vision of being back in your mountains would help you cross
that high desert of fear. But that
afternoon the doctors took you off the lung transplant list.
I still don’t know
all the reasons – do you? Betty said…
Kay said… Karen said… but I don’t know.
Last time we got to talk, you said “I guess now I have to go through
this other window.” I got to wail “We’re
all grieving that you have to do that,” probably the most real thing I’ve said
in a long time. And you said, with your
characteristic love, “And I’ve been grieving that I haven’t been able to talk
with you when you’ve called, Trudy-bud.”
You took my breath away. You get
the last word on this.
So, yes. My heart’s still singing “Oh, I’ve seen fire,
and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days
that I thought would never end. I’ve
seen lonely times when I could not find a friend. But I always thought that I’d see you
again.” Despite my initial fear of that
dead loss, that, in my life, you would go blank, here you are. Thanks for sticking around all these years,
and these last few days especially. Thanks for leading the way now.
Love,
Trudy
Editor’s
Note: Jim Chlebda
was editor of Southland Magazine,
then publisher when it became South
Valley Arts serving Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern Counties between 1990
and 2000. He published Valley poets with
his Back 40 Publishing, most notably the Okie poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and
Modesto poet Lillian Vallee (see www.back40publishing.com.) He was a grateful recipient of excellent
health care at Valley Children’s Hospital until he moved to Sonoma County and
shifted medical service to Stanford. He will
be missed by many.
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