Mosaic of memories

Ann, a Tobagonian woman in the community, is an early-morning riser, as am I.

Sometimes if I am out early and she is up and outside, I stop and we have engaging conversations.

She reads my articles on occasion, sometimes chats with me about them, or might ask if I know what I will write about next. She often poses very simple but out-of-the-box questions about life, and has thought-provoking perspectives.

On the morning of October 23, I received a phone call from her. Having not seen or spoken with her in ages, I wondered what was up.

After greeting me, she revealed that she needed to talk with someone and did not know to whom she could reach out. Who would understand? I had come to her mind. Her tone resonated with a note of shock, as though she had discovered something that she was trying to process.

She asked me if I knew BC Pires and that he had died. I told her yes on both accounts.

The synchronicity of events struck me. Seconds before her call came, I had clicked on a link someone had sent (via WhatsApp – a 1988 video (a Gayelle Aids special) featuring a young BC sitting in a bar, drinking beers and addressing youths on condom use.

Ann began to tell me of her connection to BC. Every Monday she would wake up and search for his Trini to the Bone feature online, making sure to read it around 4 am before heading out to exercise. She told me that she did not feel that she could call any of her friends about the news of his passing, because they did not read the papers and therefore would not have "known" him as she did.

"I felt so connected to this man!" she exclaimed.

On the occasion on which she called me, she had consulted the Newsday, prepared to read yet another of the articles that she had read with weekly devotion over the years, and wondered, "But why they talking about how this man is dead?"

It had come as a shock to her, since (from her perspective), he had not even written about having had an illness.

When I told her that he had indeed written about his journey with cancer in great detail in his TGIF column, she realised that she would not have come across those articles, as she read only the Trini to the Bone feature (Monday) and not the Thank God It's Friday ones.

She confessed a long-held wish to me...that one day BC would come to Tobago, want to meet her and would interview her for his Trini to the Bone feature.

"I am saddened by his death," she said, her voice sinking, perhaps with the deepened realisation that she will never again have a new BC article for her Monday morning fix...and that her Trini to the Bone dream would not be realised through the man who had brought those stories of everyday people (told in their words) to the masses.

"I devoted my time to reading him," she said. "I read your articles sometimes, but I always read his. Maybe now that he is gone I will devote myself to reading yours."

We laughed.

I found her phone call quite moving; not just because of her sentiments about BC and his Trini to the Bone profiles, but also that she had felt inclined to discuss her feelings about him and his death with someone she felt might understand.

I told her that while I knew BC on account of us both being in creative circles and having common friends and associations, and his wife also being a friend of some of my friends, I did not know him in a close or deeply personal way.

Many of my friends did, however, and after his passing, my social media feed was (and, as I write) still is full of written and visual tributes to and memories of him.

For this reason, I asked her if she would be okay with my sharing what she had said. She gave her permission. I told her that I felt those who knew and loved him (whether as a personal loved one, columnist or otherwise) would no doubt be heartened in some way to have another small piece to add to the colourful mosaic of memories.