A devil in the angels' playground
I'm just gonna blurt out what happened. I can't tell it nice, tell it with sparklers and bubblegum. I'm too worn and weary at this border between yesterday and tomorrow. But I want to ask you a favor, ok? Please do the one thing I ask at the end of this post. Please. Please. I promise you won't regret it. I promise.
I attended Patrick's memorial yesterday. I sat in the front row of fold-up seats pressed into the sand on the edge of a garden ocean. I wore my biggest Avon purse slung over my shoulder, slung over a Curious George t-shirt. I wore my kilt, too, and in the right hip pocket I carried a cassette tape. I had a secret in my left hip pocket, and a couple of secrets stuffed in my big purse.
I sat and listened and tapped my feet as the two people before me spoke, as special music played on a boom box, as people rose and fell to speak small memories, recite small poems they brought. The salt air barely moved, and every once in a while a lone woman or a young family would wander by our gathering, give us a silent look. I'm honoring Patrick's request and keeping the events secret forever, well, all of it but one moment, the moment I got up to speak.
Everyone kept their eyes on the speakers, on the rolling water, not on one lonely girl sticking her hands into a huge purse and pulling out tap shoes and an old-fashioned tape recorder. I slipped my feet out of my flip flops and into my tap shoes, buckled the sides and adjusted the big black bows. I reached into my pocket and removed the tape, stuck it inside the machine. It was time.
"Patrick was my best friend."
I stood in front of a hundred sad people and I said it, said the one line Patrick asked me to say in his memory, and I hit the play button and the Bruce Springsteen song Thunder Road burst into the courtyard. I danced.
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold
Thunder Road
I felt a little stupid, just tap dancing with my small beginner moves. I didn't care what anyone thought, I danced for Patrick, and somehow for myself. And I felt him, felt his presence in the cement below me, as if tapping against it released him from the earth, sent him to heaven, tapped him to heaven. Some kind of wind carried from the ocean and the Jacaranda trees surrounding us rustled and the dust rose at my feet. I kept dancing, and then, one by one, every person - man, woman, child - stood to join me, danced in all the ways they knew how, dacned for Patrick, for themselves, for me, for the ocean, it rocked the block, people, rocked the block. And as the last few seconds played, I reached into my left hip pocket and tossed a handful of gold sparkle confetti into the air, into the dance and the water breeze carried it high, let it drop over all of us, all of us.
When I got home last night I found a basket of yellow flowers on my doorstep. I opened the card, and here are the words:
"Dear Birdie,
I hope the delivery people don't fuck this up. You should have just returned home from my memorial. I don't know what you are planning, but I know you're going to crash my party. And I want to thank you for that.
Love,
Patrick
P.S. If you think I'm gone for good, you're crazy! Keep watching the sky."
And hey, it's a Saturday, it's a new day, you're alive, I'm alive, we might only have one hour left on this planet, all of existence is such a mystery. So please do something for me, for Patrick, for yourself. Find a good rockin' song and crank it up and the hell with what the neighbors think! Tap dance, people, or waltz or whatever trips your trigger. But please please just dance. Just one song. Please do it for Patrick.
8:16:56 AM 
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