27.Feb.2001
the death of JJ Reneaux
--
ir�rev�o�ca�ble
"unable to be changed nor called back"
When I was 15, JJ Reneaux came to my school to stare me in the face and pull out a rebellious soul of something young and fierce. Whereas I don't think she knew she was doing it, she kind of just did it. She had that effect on a lot of people.
At 15, I was content with being almost comatose with my thoughts; they were filled with deranged, wistful fantasies involving a band that lived 4,866 miles East of my sturdy house in Nichols Hills, Oklahoma City, USA. JJ managed to pull this out in me, for two minutes, early February 1995 in a dimly lit cafeteria-meets-gathering hall of my very small Episcopal school. I wrote something pensive and desperate about a particular boy I wanted, and I said:
"Now my dream of going to London is being replaced with going to Louisiana, as long as David is by my side."
In 1997, she came back to a stronger, more vocal me. We actually sang together, and I touched her guitar. Once. It was slippery and smelled of lovingly used dark wood. My best friend, Sammy, informed me of this right before I ran across it online:
"Reneaux died in the early hours of February 29, 2000, after nearly a year's battle with cancer. She leaves a grief-stricken family: a daughter, Tess (16); a son, Jack (11); and her husband, Max, all of Athens, Georgia; her mother, Ruby, and a sister, Chandice, of Detroit; a brother, Robert, and a sister, Linda, of Dallas. She also leaves a much larger family of artists and musicians who mourn the loss of one of America's most unique storytellers."
I don't know what it is. I mourn for the loss of her, and ... and I think, I think I mourn for the loss of some kind of youth in me somewhere.
The house I grew up in is being sold, and none of the furniture can be taken because it belonged to my grandmother, and it has to pay for her hospital/funeral bills.
David is also quite gone, and I haven't spoken to him nor seen him dance in years. It solidifies all that has changed, and all that I can be no more, and it's ... sepulchral.
Unable to be changed nor called back ...
--
time & machine