This has been a hard one to post. I wrote most of it a couple weeks ago, but for some reason, have been putting off posting it.
I’m writing this tribute to my friend we lost recently, MsBoye
Nagle. When we hear warnings that death can come for us at any time, this is it.
I’m sorting my feelings by writing.
It is Christmas Eve, when we remember our shades, our
ghosts, and now she is one of them — who will always be one of the special,
joyful ones. Poet, actor, teacher, coach, mentor, MC, activist, Brahma,
cheerleader, friend. She’s still eerily near the top of my email inbox. Most of
all I hate writing and reading this because I’m talking about her in the third-person,
like she’s a past event, like she’s a stone monument already, when I still
think of her in the second-person: MsBoye, when are we finally hanging out?
When you have time? I’m sorry I made you wait. I was busy doing stupid things.
When are we going to work together again?
I, in the first-person, feel like a fool that she had to
leave for me to say these things. Ineffectual words, like throwing water against a wall. Is this all posturing, or am I going to do better?
I have to explain that I’ve only ever known her in two
dimensions, on my computer screen. I joined Art Spark Texas’ disability-centered
Speaking Advocates program, where she was teacher, as a lockdown thing to do.
We spent more time together working on the True Tales of Disability Advocates podcast, and over
the years at the Lion & Pirate Open Mics, but it was always remotely. This
was the year we were going to meet, when we were going to hang out. You’d think
someone with a progressive illness like me would have a better respect for
time: As the sands fill the hourglass, they’re also burying more and more of my
body. But at this instant, if I could
pull one of my arms free, I’d shake a fist not at fate, not at the doctors, but
at myself. Maybe I’m having my Ebenezer Scrooge-morning-after moment. Maybe
MsBoye is teaching me something still.
I learned a lot from her about embracing others, and
embracing myself. That my story is good enough to tell, so to let it spill —
just set a timer and write, write, dash, race to the end. She was always quick
with a compliment and encouragement, and hearing her say time and again I have
a British sense of humor, made me feel a kinship with her.
I’m certain she made everyone in this room feel just as
special. Some possess that rare gift, and others like me are just lucky to fall
in with them.
She was one of a kind, and, as our friend Birdman said at
her memorial, completely genuine. It was moving to hear how she enriched and
supported so many with her many talents and interests. She lived her life
thoroughly. It’s mind-boggling when someone with energy like that simply ceases
to be. But does she really? Because she is playing out in each of us who knew her
– that’s the kind of impact she had, demonstrating an impact that we all could
have.
Our friend Thom Moon compared her to a long line of the
great poets through the ages. She belongs in that pantheon. For her work, for
her ways, for her spirit. According to Thom, the great poet-spirit was like an
undying flame that gets passed on through time — that she carried the same
flame as Homer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth (who our friend Eric Clow read from),
Byron, Nikki Giovanni, Andrei Codrescu and others. So, to Thom, she’s always
with us, and if that’s the case, then I get a chance to say, “Heartfelt thanks
to you, my friend. I miss you.”
