Dylan Stafford

Dear Sister Lisa,

It’s the 4th of July, 2019, three years since you passed away. I promised to write you each 4th, to catch you up on my life and to tell you how your life still makes a difference for me. Here we go sister.

Top headline: Mom doesn’t cry so much anymore.

Your death was hardest on Mom. She still tears up. She still gets sad. But it is better.

Remember your beads?

Mom still has your bags of beads for making necklaces and bracelets. It took time before Mom could even look at your beading equipment without weeping, let alone work with it. Now, she is beading and beaming. It’s a miracle.

How is Koko Buddy doing, the new puppy we sent to you?

We didn’t want to send him to you. It was an accident. On Easter Sunday, Koko Buddy bolted out the front door. Before we could grab him, he had streaked into the street and was struck by a passing AAA truck.

All the neighborhood kids were playing in the yard. They heard the tires screeching and they all saw Koko get hit. Our neighbors’ kids had bad dreams that week. Jackson and Christian had bad dreams even longer.

I ran to the street. I lifted Koko as gently as I could. I talked to him and told him to hang on as our neighbors rushed us to the closest animal hospital. We had him in doctors’ care within 15 minutes of the accident. If there was a chance for saving him, that was it.

But it didn’t go that way. Two hours later, standing in the hallway, the doctor told me that Koko was dead. He asked me if I wanted to bring Koko to Marisa and the boys and I said yes.

The doctor wheeled Koko Buddy on a little cart into the family room. He was under a blanket, covered from the shoulders down. He looked like he was asleep.

The boys stroked Koko’s head, their faces sagging with shock. Marisa’s face was empty and sad.

We held hands around Koko. I prayed out loud for all of us. I prayed—not to ask that bad things don’t happen because that’s not how life works—but rather, I thanked God for giving us the strength to deal with tragedy when it does happen.

And that’s when I thought of you Lisa, adding to the prayer, “And Lisa, please welcome Koko to heaven.”

Lisa, thinking of you helped me take care of my family on Easter Sunday.

I know how much you loved dogs. You always had that high-pitched way to talk to dogs that instantly made them love you. The image of you squealing and greeting Koko in heaven comforted Jackson and Christian, and me.

You’re still part of my life Lisa.

About a month ago, I had a dream about you. In the dream, I was at dad’s ranch house, only the house was covered with green, Stephen King-like moss.

I was puttering in the dream kitchen when I heard you.

“Nunna!” you called out in your full, everything-is-right-in-the-world voice, the human version of your welcome-squeal for dogs.

“Nunna, there you are,” you said, sweeping in, not a care in the world, looking over my shoulder, into the mixing bowl.

“Lisa!” I said, flabbergasted, with a million thoughts overloading my brain. Is it all a mistake? Has there been a giant misunderstanding? Are you not really dead?

You looked at me peacefully, your face calm and your brown eyes sparkling. You reached out, your long delicate fingers taking my hands in yours. You took a breath, to start to explain the giant misunderstanding.

And then I woke up.

It was early, well before 5:00am, but I wasn’t going back to sleep.

Kind of like today when I woke up at 4:48am. Today I woke up to the neon thought I gave my word to write to Lisa on the 4th of July, and if I don’t write before everyone wakes up, I might not write at all.

We’re on family vacation in Colorado. With a cup of coffee, I’m on the porch watching the pre-dawn sky lightening. Humming birds are drinking from the feeder. The Rocky Mountains are standing steady in the background.

We still miss you Lisa. We all miss you. The first day of vacation here, brother Jon and I were talking about missing our sister. He told me about seeing something in a store, and having the thought—for one brief second—Oh, I can’t wait to tell Lisa about this. And for that blessed second you were alive and he could still talk to you and it was beautiful.

I told Jon about my dream of you at the ranch. And I told him the second half of that day’s story of you.

Later that same day, I was sitting in traffic talking to mom on the cell phone.

“And Mom, in the dream, it was like nothing was wrong. It was like it was all a big misunderstanding. I was so relieved. And Lisa was about to explain everything. And then I woke up,” I said.

All day long I had been remembering the dream. The dream was a visit from you. Telling Mom about the dream was keeping the visit alive a little longer, and that was good.

And then you visited me again, you rascal.

At a red light on Overland Avenue, I noticed the car in front of me. It was a grey Ford Escape, one shade darker, and newer, but your same model.

Ha!

You’re in heaven, petting Koko Buddy, listening to Mom and me talk about your dream visit. And as I looked from the Escape logo to the license plate, you sent one more zinger, your wonderful sense of humor.

The customized California license plate read “MY T GD.”

I laughed out loud and told Mom. “Mom, you’re not going to believe this,” I said. “I’m behind a grey Escape, like Lisa drove, and the license plate says Mighty God.”

Thank you for the visits this year Lisa.

We each still think about you.

Mom and Marisa are beading up a storm. They are making necklaces and bracelets. There is some weeping, but there is more art. It’s a miracle.

I still cry in church over you. Certain hymns. Being with family. Reflecting. If I’m crying, Christian will look up at me and say, “Don’t be sad Daddy.” Jackson will pat me on the shoulder.

I still say “Hi Aunt Lisa. Thank you soldiers.” as I pass the National Cemetery on the 405 on my commute to UCLA. I still look up at the sky and think of you in the clouds, the myriad of patterns like your many moods.

And mostly, I think of you in twelve-step meetings. You got me sober Lisa, 18 years ago now. You were the person with the patience to pierce my prickly pride and show me a better way to live. You spared me from ten to twenty years of the slow and predictable descent of alcoholism.

You gifted me a sober foundation. A house can’t stand without a foundation, and you took the time to give me a foundation for my life.

Upon that foundation, Marisa and I have built a marriage. Within that marriage, we have our two sons, Jackson and Christian, respectively, each a miracle: one, the miracle of overcoming supposed infertility; one, the miracle of the blessing of adoption.

Upon that sober foundation, I have built a career in education. I have a constancy of character that lets me work at a big place like UCLA. I get to see the blessings of supporting people growing and developing.

Upon that foundation, I have the ability to be there when my family needs me. Marisa looked for a year to find our Koko Buddy. He was our boys’ first pet.

Nobody warned me about parenting your children when they are distraught. Nobody told me how hard it is when you can’t make your kids’ pain go away. In the weeks after Koko Buddy’s death, the boys would melt when we talked about him. Being sober, I had the patience to keep nurturing them.

As you know Lisa, I turned 50 this year. Marisa jokes, “You’ve been getting ready to turn 50 for the last three years.”

So I’m 50 Lisa. And I’m peaceful.

I get to be married. I get to be a father. I get to have a career. My life has many blessings. And those blessings rest on a foundation of being sober, of asking God to guide my life one day at a time. That foundation is your ongoing gift to me.

Your body is gone. The closest we get to your actual presence are intense, brief lightning bolts, like seeing you in a dream visit, or thinking of you in a store.

Your body is gone, but your spirit is here. You pass gently through my life like clouds overhead. Your love of art lives on with mom and beading. I stand firmly on the foundation of your gift of sobriety.

I love you Lisa. Your family loves you. We all do. Daughter. Sister. Cousin. Aunty. Friend. Writer. Artist. Necklace-maker. You were many things to many people. Thank you for the years we had together. Thank you for leaving me with a way to live a good life. Have a happy 4th of July. Give Koko a hug as you watch the fireworks from heaven Lisa. We love you.

Howdy Sister. Happy 4th. How’s heaven today? We are still missing you down here.

This is my third Independence Day letter to you since you died (2017 letter; 2016 letter.) I woke up early, and it’s 5:30am as I sit down to write to you.

All year, when I thought about you, I wrote notes to help me write this letter. Now, day of, I have no idea where I put those notes, so I’m writing to you from what’s on my heart.

You’re still dead.

Shocker.

It still doesn’t seem real to me.

We are in year two of Making America Great Again. I’m in year two of living life without you. I’m not sure how to measure how great it is, whether we have more Great or less Great, but I know for sure that I miss you.

And, I know for sure that Tom Petty died this year. He was great. You loved Tom Petty, were always giving me his CDs. He’s still living every time I hear one of his songs on the radio, and, I get a little bump of remembering you. That’s great.

Remember when you were a freshman at Texas A&M and I was a senior? Remember when I took you to see “The Accused” with Jodi Foster? What a fun movie–not. Somehow, I thought that you seeing that would protect you. And remember another light-hearted RomCom, Silence of the Lambs? Tom Petty’s “American Girl” is playing in the background when the girl who gets abducted–and later gets rescued by Jodi Foster’s character–is driving around.

So, anytime I hear American Girl, I get this wrapped up / interconnected memory of you, Jodi Foster, Tom Petty, Anthony Hopkins and Texas A&M. It’s a mind melt.

You were an American Girl. You were my only sister.

I miss you in two ways this year Lisa:

1) I miss you in the longing that is there when I’m present to you being gone.

2) And, I miss you in that you’re absent. Sometimes, you’re just gone, all the way gone, from my thoughts for several days. I’ll look up from my busy life and realize I’ve not thought about you for days. When that happens, I have a chance to forgive myself. My job isn’t to sit around and remember you everyday. That’s not living. And, there’s no right way to mourn. Sometimes, my mourning of you includes not thinking of you for several days.

HONOR YOU.

I’m more committed to honoring you than I am to remembering you. Remembering you is looking backwards, wanting to make something great again that is gone. Like here, in Colorado on vacation right now, where we always came when we were kids, I can’t make this “great” like some memory I have from when we were children. That chapter is closed, and remembering won’t make it great again. Trying to go back actually fills me with remorse and regret and that’s no way to build a life.

What I can do instead is honor you.

Honoring you is to live out the best of your contributions to me and to our family and to our friends. Honoring you is better than remembering you.

You got sober. You got me sober.

Slowly, one day at a time, I’m still sober, some 17 years later after the day you held my hand and guided me onto the path of sobriety. I get to honor you by staying sober, and living a life by design with a commitment to make a difference.

Yesterday, here in Colorado, with the rhythm of vacation and the chance to take stock of my life, I was captive to my own thoughts. Regrets from the past were swirling around holding hands with worries about the future. It was a perfect recipe to “get in a funk” and waste a day.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, I attended a noon twelve-step meeting. Instead, I prayed for God to remove my defects of character of fear, anger, and worry, just for today. Instead, I thanked God for filling me with faith, energy, and creativity. Instead, I called my sponsor and he reminded me that “one foot in the past and one foot in the future is a perfect position to piss all over the present.” Ha!

I love that metaphor. And it fits even better up here in the high country. I’m only a few miles away from the Continental Divide, the backbone of America, where you can put one foot in the west and one foot in the east and you can pee on both halves of America and send liquid all the way to the Pacific and all the way to the Atlantic. It is the Continental Divide that I envision when I hear the advice to live in the present, to NOT live with one foot in the past and one in the future.

And that is what’s got me bummed about America right now.

HAPPY LOSER

I’m a happy loser. I voted for Hillary Clinton. My team lost. OK. But I’m not bitter about it.

President Trump’s team won. He’s making America Great (Again). But he sure doesn’t seem very happy about being the big winner, the big Great Again Maker.

I’m looking for that Great Again. But, I’m seeing the Continental Divide.

Make America Great Again sounds like one foot stuck in the past. Being all mad at Hispanics and African-Americans and poor people sounds like worry, like one foot stuck in the future. Seems like President Trump is pissing all over the present.

DON’T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE A REFUGEE

It’s the Fourth of July. It’s our Independence Day. Our independence from being ruled by a king across an ocean who didn’t represent our interests.

You Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee. More Tom Petty.

I’m not a refugee. I still belong in America. I’m a Caucasian-American male who voted for Hillary Clinton: yup, a freak of nature. There aren’t many of my kind. Caucasian-Americans chose President Trump. A whole bunch of my family and my friends, good people who I know and love and will always know and love, voted President Trump into office. That is what happened.

I’m not a refugee. I don’t want to win at the expense of others. I want to take a knee during the National Anthem too, not because I “disrespect the flag” but rather because I love American, and our right to have a voice. That’s what our soldiers died for that makes a difference. And, I want to take a knee because from where I see it, from having grown up in East Texas, there is a difference in being Caucasian-American and African-American and living in America. There is a difference.

LISA YOU GIFTED ME

Oh Lisa. You gave me sobriety. You helped me see myself as a writer. You always loved family, no matter what.

You cared about race relations in the United States. You saw what it was like to live in Denison, Texas, our hometown, and to be Caucasian-American and live on the west side of town, and you saw what it was like to be African-American and live on the east side of town. You had the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

I miss your hands. You had those long, slender fingers. You had beautiful skin.

But your body is gone now. Your body was cremated. Your ashes are in an urn, sealed up with a little note from Mom and Dad.

It’s not great, you being gone, your body, your voice, your spirit, your smile, your laughter and your love.

But. You got me sober. You gave me a foundation of living, a day at a time, and you always said that I could be a writer.

LIFE IS SHORT. ART IS LONG.

Tom Petty lives on. America lives on.

MAYA ANGELOU

I know why the caged bird sings. I read Maya Angelou’s autobiography story last month. I always called you “my Maya Angelou” and I meant that you were a truth-teller in my life. You were a poet. When you and I were together in high school, when you were a freshman and I was a senior and we rode to school each day, you became my friend. You became my truth-teller.

Maya Angelou grew up poor, and African-American, in our country. And she gave her art to our country.

UNITED WE STAND.

The top 400 Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 240 million Americans.

Oh Lisa. I saw a bumper sticker here yesterday that made me laugh and think of you.

“I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”

WHAT ARE WE SO AFRAID OF?

Jesus didn’t bring the Good News to the top 400. He brought the Good News to the poor, the marginalized, the refugees. He preached to the tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and lost. When you’re on top, you don’t need Good News.

Nearly 41 million Americans live below the federal poverty line and almost four in ten children in America spend at least one year of their life in poverty.*

One thing I loved about our childhood Lisa, back on Bluebonnet Street in Denison, Texas, was that we weren’t so afraid. Not just you and me, but everybody, the whole town, black and white, east and west. We were in it together. We went to one middle school, one high school. There was still sharing. Was it perfect? No. But it wasn’t mean. It wasn’t win-lose.

I’m a happy loser Lisa. I don’t have to live like a refugee. I don’t have to worry about other people seeing the world differently. They always have. They always will. I’m staying open minded, but I’m also awake.  I’m raising kids to live as part of this world.

America’s at war with itself right now. We will either survive or we won’t. That’s what happens to everything. Everything grows. Everything dies. My commitment is that we grow forward, together, and that we build a world that works for our kids and grandkids.

INDEPENDENCE DAY 2018

This idea of independence. This idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This idea of all men (and women and gender non-conforming), of all people being created equal. This idea of America being a light on the hill. These are ideas. They have a chance to be great again.

I don’t buy the Continental Divide. I’m not sold on resignation and cynicism.

I think Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were tapping into the same energy. Yup. More common than divided.

I think the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have much more in common than not.

I’m not buying what is being sold: I don’t buy that there are conservative and liberal Americans so genetically distinct from one another that they can’t sit down and work things out.

I’m not buying that age and race and sexual orientation and abortion rights and gun rights and all of this is such the divisive fodder it gets made out to be. I’m not buying it.

FREEDOM AND SUICIDE

President Trump talked about the opioid epidemic. At least he talked about it.

Americans are committing suicide. Lots of us.** Is that great? Of course not. And, it is happening.

Lisa, you always told me that it was hard to be a woman in Texas. You told me that it was hard to be a sister between two brothers. You told me that Lisa. And it looks like it is hard for a lot of people.

I’m not giving up on President Trump. I’m not going “anti-Trump” the way I witnessed people go “anti-Obama.”

But I’m not giving Trump a pass either. He’s got a bias for the rich. He’s got a bias for Caucasian-Americans and for Russians and for dictators. That’s what I observe in his actions.

We can judge our society by how we treat orphans, widows, refugees and poor people. Our current annual military budget is $680 billion, over three times more than the $190 billion we spend on education, jobs, housing, and other basic services and infrastructure.*** He’s spending more on the military, and making it sound like the poor brown people are the new enemy.

All our war is killing our soldiers, but not the way we think. In 2012, more American military members died from suicide than from military action.**** We have our priorities off in 2018. Fifty or one hundred years from now, we’ll look back and say, “Wow. We were scared back then.”

TIME FOR BREAKFAST

Lisa. This year’s letter includes my thoughts about the American experience that you left two years ago. President Trump woke up a large swath of America. More women are running for office than ever. More money is in the hands of fewer people than ever. Our Supreme Court decided corporations are people. We elected a billionaire (He claims–still waiting for his tax returns.) one of the top 400 wealthiest in America, through the Electoral College.

It is a roller coaster ride back here Lisa.

And it’s 8:20 am now, and I’ve had three hours of quiet time to write to you. We have donuts. Marisa got them yesterday. Our political discourse is ratcheted up to a dramatic temperature right now, but for this July 4th breakfast, we shall eat donuts.

WILDFLOWER

You gave me Tom Petty’s Wildflowers CD a long time ago. It’s a great album and a great song.

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong on a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free

You’re free Lisa. You’re in heaven.

Say hi to Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit today. Send some Trinity love back our way.

I miss you sister. Thanks for sobriety. Thanks for music. Thanks for loving literature. Thanks for poetry.

I honor you today, this third Fourth of July since you left.

Footnotes:

* The Souls of Poor Folk, Page 9. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/PPC-Audit-Full-410835a.pdf

**https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/06/07/u-s-suicide-rates-rise-sharply-across-the-country-new-report-shows/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d76ae48a25cf

*** The Souls of Poor Folk, Page 11. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/PPC-Audit-Full-410835a.pdf

**** IBID, Page 11.