Of Love and Friendship

Tom Clift on bass. Photo courtesy of Steven Young Photography

This is a cautionary tale.

It is a story of love, and trust, and friendship, and sad lessons. And time. Because we always think there will be enough time….

Sometime in the late 90’s, I stumbled upon a chat room for depressed people. Don’t remember how and doesn’t matter. My first reaction upon finding it was laughter.

Seriously? Y’all sit at your computers and talk to each other about how sad you are?

My second thought was: Boy howdy, this is my tribe.

So I joined. Nearly every night for months, I would log on and chat away with perfectly imperfect strangers who turned out to be some of the funniest, most intelligent people I have ever encountered. And yes, most of them were or had been clinically depressed. At that time, my life… my soul… was fairly balanced. But while I had learned strategies to keep the darkness away, I had not yet followed my journey into therapy, so I never knew when suddenly I might be spiraling down, trying to hang onto hope. These people, with their love and compassion and kindness, lifted me. Nightly.

One of the individuals who was frequently in the chat room used the handle botTom. (My handle was Savannah, the suicidal sister in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.) Among those chatting, botTom stood out for three reasons: He was kind. He was funny (in a gentle, clever way). He was articulate. (God, I love a man who can spell and punctuate correctly.) And he was incredibly smart.

It happened one evening that folks in the room were discussing the winter weather, and I mentioned that I was blessed to be enjoying the sun in Southern California. BotTom sent me a private message: “You’re not in Georgia? Are you visiting? Or…?” It took me a sec. Then I realized….

“No,” I told him. “Born and raised in and can’t escape CA.”

Turns out the same was true for him. We decided to meet for lunch and get to know one another. He had described himself perfectly, so when I saw him outside the restaurant, I felt immediately at ease.

“Tom?” I said.

He held the door open for me as he said, “Is your first name Savannah, then?”

I am still tempted to tell people that’s what the “S” stands for….

We talked for two hours—about how we both grew up in Orange County, about how we came upon our blessed tribe of fellow depressives, about love found and love lost, and about cats—specifically, the two Siamese cat children that remained after Tom’s girlfriend moved out.

Somewhere toward the end of that two hours, we established that Tom was a musician. I absolutely love that he was so low key about this. It would be another year or so before he happened to mention that he had toured with The New Christy Minstrels and had played with this or that well-known person or band in the L.A./Orange County areas of SoCal.

Tom’s music, my writing, were almost never a focus of our conversations. We met up or called infrequently to check in on each other, and our exchanged “How are you doing?” was intentional and meaningful. He knew I was living with adult children and grandchildren and working fulltime and trying to write my second book. I knew that he was grabbing gigs wherever he could get them while working a low-paying day job and struggling to afford rent in Orange County.

Life is hard, and depression is a sly companion, slipping in while you’re busy keeping your eyes on all the chainsaws you’re juggling. We kept tabs on each other’s mental health, and after we became Facebook friends, if he saw something there or on my blog that indicated I was struggling, he would message or call. Those two Siamese cats—his sweetest and truest companions—lived to the age of 20. When each one passed, I checked in often, as Tom was so heartbroken in losing them, I thought we might lose him.

Over the years, I saw Tom perform a couple of times, once on a magical night at the L.A. County Fair. He was doing the gig solo, just Tom and his guitar. I’d forgotten to bring a jacket, so by the time I’d finished my Australian potato and a margarita, I was shivering and my fingernails were blue. (This detail having been recorded in a personal journal.) But I loved hearing him sing. He sat with me on his breaks, and we laughed together about “fair people.” I confessed that I was absolutely one of them.

In 2017, Tom’s sister Jill, his last remaining sibling, passed away. As will happen, her passing put my friend in mind of his own mortality. At his request, we met at a restaurant with two of his friends to discuss his last wishes. At that meeting, Tom asked me to be the executor of his will. Of course I agreed immediately, feeling honored that he trusted me in such a capacity. I urged him to have a proper will drawn up, naming me as such. We went on to discuss such things as the disposition of his remains and who would get his guitars. “If I still have any by then,” he said. And we laughed.

Because of course he was expecting to live a long time.

Fast forward to 2025. In January, Tom and I exchanged exasperated messages via Facebook. After the pandemic lockdown, we had taken to meeting up for cultural experiences, touring the Mission Inn in Riverside, visiting the art museum, and indulging in other pleasant outings. But when my old dog was dying in 2024, I had to curtail those meetups for a while. Then Tom’s phone became unreliable, and he was not receiving my messages. Somehow, finally, his phone was sorted, and I was free, and we started trying to make a plan to see each other.

“Trying” being the operative word in that previous sentence.

On March 29, Tom tried to call me while I was driving up to the mountains and had no cell reception. When I arrived at my destination, I received the following text message from him:

          My gabby thing is dying and so

          am I wo n

          the be long

"My gabby thing." His phone? Was he joking? Or unable to bring to mind the word "phone"? Was he trying to tell me he was dying? I didn't want to believe it was true.

I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up. When I began my drive home, I tried calling again. No answer. I tried several more times that evening. No response. I know now that he had been hospitalized that day. That he had been suffering from advanced gall bladder cancer for months. That he had been sent home that same night and placed on hospice care. But I didn’t know it then.

My phone rang the next morning at 5:30a.m. while I was walking the dogs. It was Tom, so I immediately picked up. “I can’t reach my water,” he said, his words slurring. “Can you come?”

Every once in a great while in our lives—maybe only once or twice—we are called upon to do big things, tasks that require special sacrifice or uncharacteristic spontaneity. This was one of those times for me. I wish with all my heart I could write that I took the dogs home, got dressed, and drove the hour to Tom’s apartment—a place I had never been before—and given him his water. Instead, my very rational brain took over and began a series of questions. To my “Are you sick?” he responded “A little bit.” He wouldn’t tell me how, and finally told me a nurse would be coming any time, and he didn’t want to talk anymore. I made him promise that he would have the nurse call me as soon as she arrived so I could determine what was going on and whether I needed to cancel plans and go to him.

No one ever called. Tom died a few hours later. This, I learned from a post on his Facebook page.

The days and weeks following his death have been complicated and sad and frustrating as hell.

He never made a will, as far as we can tell. At least, one has not been found. One of his nieces, because she is next-of-kin, has been tasked with taking care of everything—his apartment, his belongings, his finances… his guitars—all while she is grieving his loss.

As we all are, all of those who knew him and loved him. I am meeting his friends and bandmates for the very first time, and they are amazing and wonderful people… and Tom told no one, until the very last hours of his life, that he was dying.

So grief is mixed with guilt, and I push back against it, because guilt, other than making us ‘do better next time’ or apologize when we need to, is a worthless emotion. I will struggle, though, until I see Tom on the other side, with this:

You had one job, Murphy. The dying man just needed you to drop what you were doing and come to him, something he had never asked or expected of you before, and you failed him.

It's fine. Of course it’s fine. He has crossed over, and he no longer feels any pain and he is joyfully singing with his friends who went before.

But….

My friend, we always believe that there will be enough time. None of us, however—no matter who we are—have a guarantee that there will be.

 

A Brief Reflection

 

This is what I know:

Sometimes it’s not the huge problems that get us down, it’s the accumulation of many successive small ones.

Also what I know:

One dog, one leash = easy peasy.

Two dogs, two leashes = a tad more challenging (especially if Dog Two is still learning how we do this, how we walk on one side of Mom, how we don’t pull out in front of her and suddenly slam on the brakes or back up into her because, while it may amuse the neighbors to see her fumble and nearly fall and dance around to regain her balance, it is not—it is never—the correct thing to do).

Two dogs, two leashes + one bag of poop = a bit of a struggle. Does the stinky bag go in my right hand, the one not holding the leashes? It’s 40 degrees, though, and I was planning on keeping at least one hand warm in my pocket (because adding gloves to this leash-training scenario—and I do have gloves—really warm, really expensive gloves—is just out of the question). Or do I try to hold two leashes and the stinky bag of poop in one hand?

Did I mention there is also wind? And that’s it 5:30a.m.? And dark? So yeah, it’s the pre-dawn hour, and we’ve had high winds for days, and the gusts are blowing Dog One’s little floppy ears up so that every few minutes one of them folds over, exposing her ear canal, and the wind chill makes it I-don’t-know-how-cold-but-way-way-too-cold and I know how my ears would feel (but I’m wearing a knit cap plus a hood), so I stop each time to flop her ear back down to protect her tiny ear canal. But we’re training, see? So that means this:

“Maya, wait. Good girl. Sit. Good girl. Maudie, sit. Wait. Good girl. No—wait. Good girl.”

When they are both seated and waiting and I have set the bag of poop down and fixed Maya’s ear and picked up the bag of poop and secured both leashes (with very cold, very stiff hands), we begin again. Moving forward.

Then Dog Two sees a bunny.

Sigh. I am grateful that I did know that this little cattle dog will chase any and all small animals running—or flying. Had I seen her in action, I would have dismissed her as untrustworthy around The Queen Feline, and I would not have adopted her. Whew. Ignorance is bliss.

Not in this moment, though. In this moment, as I try, with freezing fingers, to hold her and Dog One and the bag of poop, ignorance is… well, it’s clearly evident.

As the bunny goes into statue mode and Dog Two rears and lunges and jumps at the end of the leash like a Blue Marlin on the line, I whisper, sotto voce, “Maudie! No chase!” That’s as loud as I can correct her, of course, because I do like my neighbors and a few of them like me and it is 5:45a.m. by now.

When the bunny’s brain has finally shifted from “Freeze!” to “Flee!” and it dives under a bush, we can move forward again, Dog Two still hypervigilant, though, searching every yard for the rascally…. Well, you get the picture.

It’s about the time when I fully regain control, priding myself on being an adequate pack leader, Dog One and Dog Two trotting nicely along, the bag of poop swinging back and forth with their stride, my right hand just starting to warm up after the bunny encounter, that my nose starts to run.

If you’ve hiked or dined with me, you know this: If it’s cold, my nose runs. I am never without a pocket pack of tissues because, if the air is cold, if the AC in the restaurant is set below 72 degrees, my nose is running.

Here’s the existential dilemma in this scenario: How long would you keep walking before stopping to blow your nose? I mean, you see what this entails—both dogs stopping, sitting, the bag of poop set down again, a tissue extracted, the mission executed….

How long would you keep walking, snot beginning to flow to the edges of your nostrils? (Okay, sorry for the visual there, but can you feel how uncomfortable it is?)

I go another 30 feet, then with an exasperated sigh, it’s this again:

“Maya, wait. Sit. Good girl. Maudie… Maudie… no, sit. Sit. Wait. Good—no, sit. Wait.”

Finally, we’re moving forward again. For a half mile, down the back side of our loop, around the corner, and around the next, we are golden—the wind is at our backs, there are no bunnies, and my nose isn’t running.

Until we turn the corner for home. We are six houses from home when my nose begins to run again, and I am eyeing the distance, and considering my options, and that’s when we see—okay, I don’t, but Dog Two sees—a small animal dart across the street.

Whining and yipping, she bolts to the end of the leash, and because I didn’t see the critter, I wasn’t ready for it, and I almost—almost—drop the leash. Which in this case would have been very, very, very bad. Why? Because as soon as it all registers—the small animal running, the heavy scent in the air—I realize that the critter she wants to chase is a skunk.

Holy smokes.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan tells Edmund, “We can never know what would have happened.”

No, we cannot. But I have a pretty good idea in this case what would have happened had I not held onto my silly little cattle dog. But I did. I held onto her all the way back to the house and in the door, whereupon I immediately grabbed a tissue and blew my nose and exhaled loudly in enormous relief as I unleashed my hounds.

This is what I know:

Nine times out of ten, at least in my life, expecting a task or some endeavor to be routine will not be so; it will be fraught with small challenges that need to be faced and dealt with in the moment.

What I also know:

It’s all about moving forward. Unless you see a skunk in the road up ahead. In which case, it might better serve to pause and consider your options. But when the danger has passed, keep moving forward.

Guest post: Writing as Legacy

I recently had lunch with Donna McCrohan Rosenthal, past president of the California Writers Club (CWC) and also past president of the East Sierra branch of the CWC. She and I have both been at this a long time, both began writing and publishing decades ago. As we chatted, she shared with me a short piece she had written for the SoCal Writers Showcase, an online publication that presents work from members of CWC.

Donna's piece was lovely in its sentiment, and beyond that it honored some of our old friends who have passed away. I asked her if I could share it here, to further bring attention to them and to the Showcase. She graciously agreed. The remainder of this post is what Donna wrote. I couldn't agree with her more:

We decided from Showcase’s inception that we would occasionally include pieces by colleagues I like to think of as “active deceased” – those who live in our hearts and minds, who advanced the mission of the CWC on every level, and so meaningfully whose written words stay with us long after these dear friends have gone.

 

I recently had the privilege of posting San Fernando Branch Monte Swann’s thoroughly engaging “Ars Gratia Artis” about his frequent forays of sneaking onto the MGM lot as a boy, Orange County Branch Jeanette Fratto’s clever and savvy “Night Duty” about an ambivalent detective, and High Desert’s inimitable Bob Isbill’s “The Importance of Volunteerism” which we should all read and take to heart.

Putting Monte, Jeanette, and Bob up on our site, I felt such elation in the fact that writing makes us immortal. Their earthly presence has left us, but their written words never will. I sensed them smiling to see this rebirth of appreciation of their talent as they spin their tales again to entertain more people they hadn’t reached before. What a wonderful thing. A gift that goes on through time.

Don’t we write for permanence? Otherwise, we could just sit someone down and talk.

Showcase can post the active deceased’s legacies. Branch newsletters can reprint them, too, and we can read them at open mic meetings, their inner beauty brightening our camaraderie just like it used to. When their stories survive, they survive in their stories.

But even if you’ve never published anything anywhere, don’t overlook recording family memories and histories. They’ll endure through generations if not through the ages.

How to Break Up with Your Internet Service Provider

 

Last week I finally--FINALLY--signed on with a new Internet Service Provider (hereafter known as the NISP). It took two tries. After receiving a "special offer" in the mail--okay, after receiving a hundred or so over the past couple years--I decided to give them a try. This was after repeated attempts to get my old Internet Service Provider (hereinafter known as OISP) to lower my bill by removing the monthly charge for a landline. ("Of course! I can help you with that!" one hour later: "I'm sorry, we're unable to separate your phone from your internet....")

Old monthly bill with OISP: $139

Current monthly bill with NISP: $41

(Boy howdy, that $41 was hard fought and has it's own story that involves me hanging up on the first representative I spoke to--after being on the phone with him berating me for half an hour. You don't need me to explain to you that's not the way to make a sale. Sheesh.)

ANYWAY, the only thing I had left to do was break up with my OISP. You know, call and cancel my service.

If you've done this before, you know that it should be a short phone call. "Yes, thank you, I just need to cancel my service...." But it's not. Because as soon as you say that--in the nicest way possible--you're asked why, and then you're directed to the "loyalty" representative who promises to lower your bill, wash your car, walk your dog, and maybe give you a back massage if you'll only stay with the company that has the "best" customer service and support. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

My NISP system was installed last week by a very happy dude named Michael who had a great work ethic and got it all handled in an hour, including pulling the ladder off his truck, climbing around in the garage, and other time-consuming tasks. It is indeed "faster and more reliable" (so far). I waved goodbye to Michael and my next thought was, How do I cancel my OISP without wasting time with the loyalty people? So (finally), here's how it went:

OISP: Good morning! This is Billie! How can I help you today?

Me: Good morning, Billie! I need to cancel my service today.

(After some preliminary identification verification)

OISP: Do you mind if I ask why you're canceling your service?

Me: I don't mind at all! I'm moving to Australia!

OISP: Australia! Wow! That's... a long way to move. What made you decide to move to Australia, if you don't mind me asking.

Me: I don't mind at all! My granddaughter just got a recording contract there, and since she's rather young, her parents were concerned about her moving so far away by herself. I'm footloose and fancy free, so I offered to go with her and live over there for a year or two. Should be fun!

(What was really fun was listening to Billie tap away on her computer, listing, I assume, the customer's reason for canceling service. She assured me right away that she could help me, waited for her computer to tabulate a closing bill, told me what that total would be and that my service would be canceled by the following day.)

OISP: Before I let you go, Ms. Murphy, do you mind giving me your granddaughter's name so I can look forward to hearing some of her music in the future?

Me: Oh, of course! You can listen to some of it now. She's done a few recordings and they're on YouTube. Look her up! Her name is Ellie Blue.

OISP: I'm writing that down....

The entire phone call took less than ten minutes. And yes, that last bit is true--my granddaughter's stage name is Ellie Blue, and she can be found singing on YouTube. (Note: If one intends to prevaricate, one should always have at least part of one's story based in fact.)

In all seriousness, I realize that Billie, the OISP, is out there working, hoping her day doesn't get too crazy with angry customers, hoping she can pay her bills or feed her kids or support herself through college or whatever it is she needs to do with her paycheck. I didn't want to waste her time anymore than I wanted to waste mine. Nor did I want to engage in that toxic back-and-forth that is sometimes required in these situations. So I just came up with a story that made it easier for her to do her job, and for me to do mine... which was get back to sitting at this laptop, making up stories. So there ya go.