Guitar notes echo of memories

Page 7

Tansi, ahnee and hello.

There's an old guitar that leans up against my wall. It's nothing great to look at, all nicks and scratches and badly in need of a luthier's hand. I don't play it much but I keep it close by and on occasion I'll put it in my lap and sing a little something to myself late at night.

It's a classical guitar of some obscure make or another. The nylon strings are old and need replacing too, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. For now that old guitar comforts me by its presence just the way it is.

My friend Dave game it to me as a present. Dave didn't play guitar but he'd had it around his family home for years and he wanted me to have it when he learned I played.

It's probably as old as me and maybe I relate to all the nicks and scratches, bumps and bruises riding on its surface. I don't know. But I do know that that old guitar and I will be roommates forever.

See, Dave died early this summer. He put a bullet through his head and left this world forever. He never called, didn't tell me of his private agonies, didn't say goodbye. Just one loud crashing finale and then....silence.

But he's in that old guitar somewhere. A certain note, a quiet passage will remind me of him when I play it. Or the way the sun reflects opaquely off its surface in the mornings or the moonglow through the window late at night. He's in there and it's all I've got besides the memory.

We met in treatment, Dave and I. See, we're both alcoholics. His battle ended with a bullet and mine, though less a battle these days, remains the most important issue

of my life.

That old guitar is my reminder.

We were two different kinds of Indians. I'm an Ojibway from northern Ontario and Dave was a Sikh from East India. Though our beliefs and cultures were worlds apart we shared a friendship and a disease. We helped each other through early treatment and when we saw each other back in our civilian lives, we carried on as friends.

We worked through our pre-conceived notions of each other and discovered common ground. I remember laughing when we talked about our gods and how we both agreed that whether we called him Creator, Allah, Jehovah or whatever, our prayers would work just as well if we called him Buddy, Bill or Hank. He had a great laugh, that Dave.

Our fears were common ground as well. Succumbing to alcohol or drugs was the biggie of course, but there were all the usual foibles of human beings everywhere. Fear of abandonment, rejection, looking stupid, fear of failure, fear or fear itself. Some things are universal and they are what tie us together as human beings.

We learned that together, Dave and I.

The pain our disease had brought upon our loved ones was a common theme as well. We shared remorse and grief, hope and gratitude, forgiveness and surrender. We talked of all these things and in those moments when our tears were our exclamation marks, we transcended geography, time and culture and discovered ourselves in each other.

I don't know whether Dave was sober when he pulled the trigger. Somehow I don't think so.

Somehow the enemy had caught him up, imprisoned him again and he died while escaping the only way he could. It's a subtle foe, as cunning, baffling and powerful as a million Hitlers, and it killed my friend.

For a while I hated it for that. Hated it with all the pure invective born of years of struggle, heartache, rebellion and recoveries.

But as summer eases slowly into autumn I find myself gazing at the sky a lot and thinking about guys like Dave and guys like me. The victims and the survivors. I don't think of if in terms of winners and losers anymore. Just victims and survivors.

When I play that old guitar I talk to my friend. Somehow its damaged surface is the perfect vehicle for reminding me of what I need to do to survive these days. Within those nicks and scratches, dents and gullies is a lifetime of metaphor, a road map of the battlefield.

Some of us are victims and some of us survive. We grant each other ome degree of grade when we give of ourselves and our lives become a balm for each others; souls when we share our common histories. Some of us know that intuitively and some of us wrestle our way to that knowledge.

Me, I've got an old guitar and quiet nights to remind me. Another kind of Indian from across the sea helped me back to myself one time and I believe he hears those notes when I play them, follows the melody wherever it might lead, nods his head somewhere and smiles.

Meegwetch, my friend. Meegwetch.