Dear Jimmy

creative nonfiction
by Holly Redell Witte

I wish you hadn’t died without answering my messages over the years. Maybe you didn’t see them. Maybe you just didn’t want to connect with me. I wish I knew. I still can’t get over that I was thinking about you one day and then saw your obituary in the NYT the absolute next day. I wanted to tell you that.

It’s not as if we were good friends growing up. You were three years older so not in my everyday circle. But, our parents were good friends so, by default, we were, too. I wanted to tell you I couldn’t remember you at camp even though I know you built the sets for all the plays we put on there, and I was at the theatre every possible moment because I otherwise hated sleep-away camp. I didn’t play sports except swimming, and I really hated having to get up so early because it was cold. Ridiculous that it was summer camp and I wore my winter jacket to the flag-raising ceremony every morning. I wanted to know if you remembered me from camp.

I wanted to tell you that my niece had your brother as a math teacher in high school. That’s probably not so much of a coincidence since we were so rooted in where we grew up that I’m not surprised he stayed close to home.

But most of all, I wanted to tell you how amazed and happy I am to find out you were a world-renowned sculptor and in cardboard, of all things. I found out so much when I watched the documentary about you, Carboard Bernini. What a great name. In a million years, from that time I knew you when you were so mysterious, I would never have guessed that all those boxes you used from your father’s car antenna business would turn you into a Fulbright scholar, get you great art commissions like designing the Jethro Tull Stand Up album cover, the one I just ordered from eBay so I can have some of your art in my life.

That was why I sent you messages at your website anyway. I want to own a piece of your art because it seems like everything our group has done is part of each other. Maybe it’s just me, but in the documentary when you talked about your existential fear of mortality, starting when you were a kid, I understood it. You were always mysterious then and I’m sure we didn’t talk much but I know that fear you have. I have it too.

I wanted to talk to you about that, try to understand it, try to see if it was something having to do with how we grew up in such a tight circle with the same exposure to our faith, to teachers, to books, when every parent was every child’s parent. I wanted to tell you how wonderful it was to watch you in your studio, carving eyelashes out of cardboard for one of your monumental figures.

But you never answered me. And now all I have are the documentaries, your artwork to look at online, lamenting that some of it only exists online because you had this crazy idea that it only served its universal purpose if you let the cardboard sculptures dissolve in the rain. I really want to know much more about that.

Dear Jimmy. I wish you had answered me.

Cheers,
Holly

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Holly Redell Witte is so lucky to live and write in La Conner, WA. She's also lucky to have had work published in Blood+Honey, Screamin Mamas, and a couple of anthologies. Some days she sees three squirrels munching on berries in the tree right outside of her writing window.