When I returned to my desk at work on Monday morning, I pulled open a drawer to get a paperclip and saw a misplaced note covering everything in that drawer. My courtroom went through many relief clerks in the 2 weeks of my absence, so I don’t know who shifted this paper. Or maybe it shifted itself. The handwritten note reads:

I am bereft!
I was promised a Cindy-fix this morning! Oh, the agony of promises broken and expectations shattered.
But I am NOT defeated[,] I shall return, and CLAIM what is mine, opposing forces be damned!
Are you going on vacation too? (I saw [Mr. W] this morning.)
XXO
F. Tuck

Clipped to this note are some random scraps of notes and 2 poems I’d written on scratch paper 3 years ago when I was in major emotional turmoil. The second of these poems alluded to when I’d wished for death as a relief, and yet had been denied that escape. The lines read, “I have begged you thrice this year for relief/Threw up my hands and my life in defeat/And I am still here.” And it is relevant and fitting and yet ironic that these two things are joined together.

No doubt if a coworker who knows about Mr. W were to chance upon this note, he/she would’ve thought it from an admirer. Cindy having an affair? With some F. Tuck guy? No. The note is signed off with a joke nickname, short for Friar Tuck. Because Steve, the author of the note, had referred to himself as “Friar Tuck” a few times in his comments on this very blog. He had also commented a few times as “Stevie Wonder.”

Steve passed away two days before we left for China. He was a Spanish language interpreter in the building, who had become something of a personal friend. His dramatics are often funny and sardonic, his theatrical background and training coming through in his interpretations of heated family law testimonies. They were really reenactments of the parties’ bickering arguments in open court. He was also amazingly perceptive, clever, witty, and philosophical. Plus, he had good taste in men with his little crush on Mr. W.

Rumors of the situation of his death flew rampant in just a day. “Died tragically” was all the “official word” told us. We knew he took 3 days off work to mourn the death of his beloved Georgie, we knew the day he was due to return, he did not. We knew he’d passed away the night before his scheduled return. Beyond that, was speculation. His neighbors heard a gunshot, called the police, who kicked in the door and found his body, claimed one rumor. I went around saying it just doesn’t sound like Steve to have, much less use, a firearm. Another rumor claimed he’d slashed his own throat. Although this is slightly more believable than that he’d shot himself, it’s also not like Steve to leave such a mess. I pictured his immaculate home, and how traumatized he’d described himself regarding the death throes of a lobster he’d stabbed alive years ago.

We were unable to attend his funeral, which took place while we were in China. Many people from work went, and described the event as a “very classy” affair. Well, Steve would have it no other way. He was reportedly dressed in a tuxedo and white gloves in the open casket. That put both rumors to rest, although it brings up the likelihood that he’d slashed his wrists instead.

The judge’s secretary brought back a music CD that Steve’s parents had given out to funeral guests, a collection of love songs arranged and sung by Steve some time ago. I listened to it while doing some grocery shopping yesterday, and mourned the incredible talent lost. The album, entitled “Love in Our Key,” was Steve’s contribution to the gay community of slightly gender-altered love songs that he’d grown up on and sang constantly, “the songs we have loved so long and waited so long to hear in OUR key, no ‘transpositions,’ no apologies.” Such was explained in his CD jacket. Classics like Gerschwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me” and Les Miserables‘s “I Dreamed a Dream”, sung in the male voice, about love for another man. The album is quite ingenius.

I couldn’t sleep until nearly 5 a.m. when the sun was already coloring the skies. I walked the halls earlier and imagined seeing him in the back corridor of a courtroom as I had so often seen before, seeing his beaming face as he cooes “Dahrrrrrrrling!” at me in greeting, rolling the Spanish “r”s in a way that I’ve never been able to do. I imagined him smiling at me over the top of his glasses and pointing at me up and down while humming in musical accompaniment to his approving gestures, and saying, “The outfit works for you!” The sight and sound of him are so clear in my head I can’t believe I won’t see it acted out in 3-D anymore. We were supposed to give him another ice cream commission to try out. I just wish he’d given things a chance to get better, and given himself a chance to heal.

In loving memory and commemoration:
Post #494 re watching Brokeback Mountain with him, and a dialogue in Comments with him. This one hits me a little roughly because I had told him, written right there in black and white, that I’d pull him out if he got too emotionally sunken, and I had failed to do just that. I had no idea he was going through stuff until it was too late. If only I hadn’t been so busily rushing somewhere every time I saw him recently…
Post #521 re the ice cream he made at my commission.
Post #525 in which he left nice comments.
Post #572 in which I referred to a funny thing he said. This is chilling as the joke he made was about slashing his wrists.
Post #580 in which he left nice comments.
Post #583 in which he left nice comments.
Post #584 re resolving an issue with Mr. W in which Steve left nice comments.
Post #597 in which he loaned me the movie “Iris.”
Post #599 in which I reviewed the movie “Iris.” He was disappointed in the way I didn’t enjoy Iris’s character the way he had worshipped her, altho he didn’t comment on this on the post.
Post #623 with a brief summary of Georgie’s situation.