Wednesday, January 23, 2008

a real friend of mine is dead and i am in shock and can't even cry for him....

i had a true friend, his name was o'dell, he was from the deepest south, where whites and blacks still find it hard to exist together, yet alone be friends....i met him when i was a sophomore in college - 20 years ago?! he was the date of a girlfriend at bridgewater college to either our homecoming or winter formal dance....he and i clicked....he had always wanted to be a teacher and he had always wanted to come to new york city.....

o'dell became a teacher and worked for nearly 18 years in new york city. new york city became his great love. he romanced new york while he taught her children, and helped to raise another generation of kids to live and love without remorse....for almost 18 years, the little children in his 2nd, 3rd and then 5th grade classes loved mr. o'dell as they called him....he was a gentle giant to them...a very darkly complected man who might have scared them if he was walking along the sidewalk and they didn't know that he had the heart of a butterfly and the gentle nature of any bird newly hatched and aloft in a nest, featherless and flightless, only protected by the lofty height and the anticipated promise of nourishment from whatever the powers that be might bring him....

o'dell was shy, much like myself, more so in many ways actually. where i am one who has always forced myself to try to blend, to attend and even to exceed others just to prove to myself that i am almost as good as them in any way and therfore worthy of love and respect, o'dell always new he was worthy of more than love and respect and would accept nothing but his worth or better from anyone. for quiet and gentle, he was a fierce fighter for himself and his friends and his children.....

the biggest thing o'dell has ever taught anyone, including myself, and i wasn't technically ever a student of his, is that black and white aren't as defined as they would appear and they don't always combine to create gray like they do on a palet of paint...instead, he brought his childhood and the deep south, a dark, hot, dry and angry place filled with fear and nightly fires to the northern city schools of new york. by listening to his life unfold in every lesson, thousands of children learned that they were no more right by hurting each other than the men and women who had hurt the great great grandparents who slaved in the fields 200 years ago....he displaced the notion that white men are the great oppressors of all men....he discouraged the concept that black men have a right to be angry for injustices that history holds but no one owns outright....he made peace and foregiveness central to growing up and being alive....ask any of his "kids" what they loved or remember most about o'dell and they will tell you that he was their father for a year, he made sure they had lunch every day, he made sure that the man they called "father" wasn't hurting them anymore at home or that the woman they tried to hide behind didn't fall to the floor in tears after trying to put herself between the child and the anger they lived with....he coached them in what it means to love someone...he told them if they never got flowers on their birthday or a valentine in february or if they never heard the words "i love you" from another human being, that love was unescapable and that they would have him to turn to until their last breath if that was the only place they felt secure of self and loved in life....

o'dell didn't ever overstep the boundaries that teachers have been crossing for eternity....he never once raised his voice in class except in excitement....he didn't ever put his hand to a child in retaliation for any wrong doing....he never sent a child to the office for making rude comments in class or for doing the wrong thing, he instead made that child stand in front of the class and apologize to all the kids for wasting the time they should have been using to learn....he made them understand that learning sets a soul free and only a free soul can take a person to absolute freedom....

without ever asking for love, o'dell was loved by every student, every teacher and almost every parent he ever met and left an impact on....the few parents that didn't love him probably wish that they'd been able to participate in his plan for apologizing instead of the city and state's plan, because they were the abusive and the deranged few who hurt or molested their children and didn't show remorse, or worse, respect for someone who put his own life at risk daily by approaching them directly to confront and change the situation....o'dell had stepped into harms way on more than one occasion that i'm aware of personally...but o'dell's sense of right and wrong and his absolute conviction of good over evil never allowed him to falter when he was out to save a child. he didn't get paid for this, this was just something that needed to be done and he knew if he didn't do it, no one ever would, and he also knew the cycle of abuse would repeat in the next generation, and again after that.....

one of the things i can remember o'dell telling me as recently as last september or october was that one his greatest personal accomplishments in life was that in all his years teaching in new york city, not a single one of his students had ever been picked up and sent to jail for any reason....i don't think that many, if any, public school teachers are able to say that in this city, especially in the neighborhood where o'dell taught...one time i think he told me that only about 7 of the kids in his class in any year would probably graduate from high school, but that entire number would also graduate from college. he never looked at it like the other 23 students were lost by not graduating, instead he considered that they were somehow saved and inspired by having learned survival doesn't mean stealing and caring doesn't mean not-beating you today....

i found out on saturday, from an acquaintance who had been one of o'dell's students his first year teaching in new york city, that he had heard o'dell died right before christmas....i saw o'dell right after thanksgiving when i was so heartsick and alone that i needed someone's shoulder to cry on....he invited me over as he had a million times before and we sat over cups of really bad coffee (he learned to make coffee in the teacher lounge of a city school - he seemed to think that's what coffee should taste like), while i spilled my lonely and empty heart to him....he was silent but paying attention, and listened to me through jags of tears and flair ups of anger that came from a deep hurt that he knew so well himself...he hugged me and told me that if someone couldn't love me for me and that they only wanted a part of me or two parts of me that were "perfect" and the rest was just something that needed drastic change or replacement altogether, then in fact, they should have ordered a pizza because that is the only time you can get what you want and only use the parts of it you like and discard the rest...the fact is, you can't love a pizza....but a person is not a pizza, and all the parts are worth loving....i thought it was funny when he compared someone not loving me for some reason or another to me being or not being a pizza....it made me laugh...which lightened my heart which i had thought was almost empty by then.....

when i left o'dell that night, i stopped and had pizza....the fact was, i didn't want pizza, so i ordered the two slices i thought i might make myself eat, but in the end, there was no part of that pizza i wanted and i threw it away before i got to my apartment....and that was when i realized how simple and true o'dell's words were....i am far too delicious and good for someone not to want all of me, yet alone for anyone to even try to throw part of me away....and i wasn't hungry anymore, somehow my soul was fed for the night and i was sated....and smiling....and i got home and didn't cry when i went to bed right away....

that was the last time i saw o'dell. i sent him a holiday card, one of the handful that i'd made. i left him a voicemail on his mobile phone over the holidays thinking he'd gone back to see his family down south as he loved to do for every holiday...i didn't hear back from him and put him on my list of folks to call in the new year....the last time i saw o'dell, i was begging for his help and he didn't ask for a single thing in return....he hugged me goodbye....i think my hugging him back was halfhearted and exhausted at best...i never got to tell him how much he meant to me and how much i loved him for being my friend....i never got around to asking him how school was or how his life was going and had he been dating anyone new....i was so selfish and he was so much himself that for that night it was ok....

yesterday, i called his school and told them i was a friend who'd known him forever and hadn't been able to reach him, but could they give him a message for me....and they told me that they were sorry, but he had passed away....the lady on the phone didn't have all the details to share with me, but she told me he didn't show up for work the entire week before the christmas holiday and he didn't call in sick --- o'dell missed only 1 week of school his entire career because he had a death in the family and had to be out of town --- the school finally sent someone to his apartment and with the help of the police, they finally got in and found him dead....o'dell died of an overdose - someone left him alone in his apartment, dead or dying, and didn't even have the courage to call 911....o'dell would have had that person stand infront of his entire classroom and explain why that would be wrong to do and how things might have been different if they had only made an anonymous call for help before leaving....o'dell's death might not have been completely in vain because atleast then his students would have seen the value of a human life taken from them and perhaps more, they would have had the idea reinforced that hurting others and themselves with drugs or weapons is wrong....after all, o'dell was a grown man and made grown up choices that he dealt with....but his choices were never to be repeated by his kids....if he told you to do something, it didn't matter if he did it or not, he told you to do it right and ignore all other influences....do as i say, not as i do....o'dell you taught me so many things, about myself, about friends, about life and suddenly about yourself and about death...i wish you were here.....i don't know where you are given my discontent with man, with cities and with god right now, but wherever you are, i know there are children being guided along to a better place and there is definitely a brighter light in the heavens because i assume you must be up there...i know the streets of my city are darker without you here and my heart has dimmed with the loss and the inability to help you not get hurt....

goodbye o'dell - i love you and hope i will see you again whenever my time here is over, but don't sit around waiting for me because i'm not rushing to meet you, this is one time i'm going to have to make you wait, and i have no idea just how long i'll be, but i'm sure that you'll understand if i run late in finding you - but this time my friend, you will just have to wait.....

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About Me

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New York, New York, United States
part mad-scientist (it's kind of like being an angry bovine only i'm still not that heavy!)