rest in peace Ed Burks

"Some time ago, Edwin Burks came into the clinic to register for Patient Assistance Program. I remember this amiable man well--I was the first person he met at the clinic, back during the front desk days. As usual, he was grateful I could help him, although I conveyed my distrust of PAP to him too. I wanted to make sure this man never got screwed over.

As he got up and shook my hand, he said, "Thank you for helping me so much. You know, even though they put you in the back, I still think you're the most important person here."

And I am a tissue. The wind is crumpling me, tossing me gently on a current of fine words. I love these people. I love this city."

I wrote these words in a memo pad back in April 2006. This is one of only a few documented memories I now have of Ed Burks, Common Ground Health Clinic client, volunteer and stalwart, a great friend and wonderful, wonderful man, now dead of cancer as of Wednesday, July 1st, 2009.

Ed always, always, always brightened my day whenever I saw him. Incredibly kind and good-natured and quick to a compliment, and always armed with a few stories once you plied him with drinks. He always told my co-workers at the clinic that it was because of me that he decided to pitch in and help out (or rather that I roped him into it). At the time when I wrote that journal entry, I was conducting case management for 150 clients in need of medication assistance. By the time I left New Orleans 8 months later, he was the one in charge of the program. He did it with gumption, moxie and grace.

It was only through some communication over letters and email that I learned how quickly his life had taken a downturn. In the last months of his life he was in pain all the time, bound to a hospice bed, confined to an outlook of misery. And so it's strange to say it, but I'm glad he's no longer in pain and no longer tired of being immobile and useless.

Yet he has passed and I am still here and for whatever reason this seems wrong.

It is not unusual in New Orleans to lose people you love. I was there but 15 months and saw three close friends and neighbors die of color cancer. Another neighbor was shoved into the path of a bus and flattened. Horror. No other word for it. And one of the first things you learn in that city is to hold it close, hold fast. But I moved out and lost touch and so with Ed's passing I feel guilt. I wish I could have told him so much. I wish I could have told him I'm OK, he was always worried about me in a way. I wish mostly I could have let him know that it was a two-way street--I was the one who got him to love the clinic, but he was the one who got me to love the city and its people. I owe him big time for that.

No chance now but what can you do. Just mourn and remember I guess. I love you Ed. I miss you and I thank you, you give me more life. Rest in peace.