Remembering Roy

He was growing old, no hair, very few teeth. A youthful essence that rushed out to meet me at full speed. There was nothing shy or reserved about Roy. My husband and I ran a small event advertisement on the internet. We were opening our home to other authors and poets. Roy showed up at the first meeting. Right away we knew he was someone special, I could feel it in my spirit. Oh, he'd been around and had earned several degrees from the University of Hard Knocks. He was a student, he was a teacher and excelled at both. Roy was an easy man to love. If he considered you his friend, there were no walls, no games, just the very real exposure of a man who had lived and learned and wanted to share his wisdom with you, and anything else you needed as well. A good man, a shirt off his back man.

He had been through enough sorrow to kill a lesser man but he was still standing, still fighting. From our first meeting, Roy regaled us with stories of misspent youth and adult trauma. Roy could make you laugh and he could make you cry with the outrageous reality of his true stories. If you judged his book by the cover, you'd most likely see him as a good old boy from the South, whose main chore in life was just to survive. You'd judge him that way but you would be so wrong. Roy was one of the most intelligent men I ever met. He could tell a down-home tall tale but he could also explain functions of the universe both physical and esoteric with more clarity than a physicist! He had studied these things all his life and what he had absorbed far outweighed my understanding.

We'd known Roy about a year when he confided in us how he had been living. For a long time he had been living in an old, abandoned mobile home, no water or electricity, no heat or air conditioning. We had a house with extra bedrooms and would have been happy to share it with him but he didn't tell us his problem until he had qualified for assistance with a new apartment. We were so relieved that he would have a good, safe place to live. Around the same time he inherited some money from his dear friend. His friend had been sick a long time and Roy had often been there faithfully taking care of him. With the small inheritance, Roy got some new teeth and was learning how to eat with them. We went out to lunch together frequently and what a joy it was to see Roy enjoying his food that he could finally chew. A few times we ate at our house. When we'd ask Roy what he liked to eat, he'd always say, “I eat most anything. If I don't eat it, it ain't fit to eat!”

At our meetings Roy always sat in the recliner, it was just designated to be his chair. I still have the chair but we almost never sit in it. There's a reverence around it because it was Roy's chair. We managed to get one of Roy's books published. I'm so glad we did.

We were looking forward to a long friendship with Roy, but fate had other plans. One afternoon at our writer's meeting, he complained of a painful headache. We tired to take him to the doctor. My husband offered to take him and to pay for the visit. He wouldn't hear of it. We found out later that he had gone to a Buddhist monk for prayer. He got better and thought the headaches were behind him. When he finally made it to the doctor if was discovered that his arteries were blocked and a date for surgery was set. My husband talked to him on the phone the night before his surgery. Covid was raging and we weren't allowed to see him in the hospital. The next morning during surgery he suffered a massive stroke. The doctor told his daughter there was no hope for him to improve. Roy died a few days later. His daughter asked me to write his obituary, I wrote it while tears fell down my face. It felt like I had lost a family member. Every time I pass by that recliner I feel Roy near me and I picture his smile and hear his voice right in the middle of one of his ribald stories.

You are so missed, Roy. I know you are somewhere solving all those mysteries you longed to understand all your earthly life. You are mentioned often and loved much.