The World is Short One Brilliant Force: Terri S. Shrum

Terri was beautiful, bawdy, full — an embodiment of the perfect, wry turn of phrase and the resulting laughter. The timing is cruel because the world needs more of that right now, not less. Terri was with us as we talked about her, but also in how we connected, belly laughed, and barely had breath to catch each other up on our lives — having just met, but recognizing that we’d found another “one of us.”

What a gift.

What a gift, indeed. I’m so grateful for Michael reaching out to a stranger. Because he was brave, I could stop running and just sit in the grief for an evening. And I’m proud of myself for taking that leap. Because it would have been easier to keep ignoring it. And of course, there was more laughter than grief when we got together. We were chosen and connected by Terri for a reason.

On Wednesday morning, just hours after getting the news of Terri’s death (well before I was ready to talk about it) I had a conversation with a very dear friend about dear friends, about his feeling a shortage of them. But that’s a temporary problem. It’s just a question of reaching back out when you’re ready–there are so many friends to be made, each of them capable of renewing your understanding of yourself, and your faith in yourself.

Terri won the Writers@Work non-fiction prize the year we met for a stunning, short essay, “Bird Dog.” Her sentences, her craft, her sparse details, her fucking pitch-perfect unsentimental delivery. She doesn’t tell you how to feel about any of it, she just looks back through a long telescope and makes you feel it. Here’s the opening of Bird Dog. You can read the whole thing here.

In the fall of the year I turned eight, my father used me as his dog. It was dove-hunting season, and I suppose it’s what a hunter does when he finds himself with a dearth of good bird dogs and a surplus of daughters.

We loaded into his truck while it was still dark, the engine running rough in the gravel drive. I didn’t have a jacket warm enough for the bite of the morning, so he wrapped me in one of my mother’s coats, belted with rope, the sleeves left long to warm my hands. I was the eldest of his children, so my father called me Sister when I was on his good side. He called me Sister on this morning, and told me we were going to have fun. I believed him.

We drove out past the paved roads, and parked in a field where there were other men with their dogs. They greeted my father, illuminated by haloes of headlights, all of them with rifles and speaking in rough morning voices. While they talked, I tried to play with the dogs, but they were hunting dogs, not pets, and they jumped and scratched and often knocked me over altogether. Soon, Dad made me stop playing with them, because, he said, we were making too much noise.

He made a blind from downed corn stalks and brush on the edge of the field. I watched him gather the dry stalks and stuff larger openings with weeds. When he was satisfied with the structure, he let me go inside. I could peek out and see a pond. It felt like a play-house, a place where elves would live. Sitting on the ground inside, he took a can of shoe polish from his pack and rubbed some under his eyes. He rubbed it on me, too, and told me I looked like a real hunter, and that I had to stay quiet. The polish tickled on my skin, but I didn’t say anything. Quiet, from my dad, meant quiet.

So go read the whole essay. And then sit down and write a story that starts, “In the Fall of the year I turned ______…” Just tell it, with the details you remember. It doesn’t have to be long or flowery, it just has to be specific. That’s all. 20 minutes. For Terri. For who you were. For friendship.

Here’s to more laughter than tears, whatever hand life deals you.