A Tami New Year

A Tami New Year

There is no New Year that comes that I don’t miss Tami.
She taught me the home-spun New Year’s Day fashions of the proper South. No matter what was happening in our lives, we gathered at her old beach-side house for Hopping John, collards and black-eyed peas. Tami always did the cooking. I brought the wine.

I’ve not cared for New Year’s Day or Easter, either, since Tami passed away. There used to be a candle burning in the window, on New Year’s Day and Easter, at the old house in Murrells Inlet. I’d watch it and the beauty of nature across the salt marsh, pondering Tami’s and my life together.

Tami Jane Wallace Hyatt and I were quite accidental friends. We probably would never have met in those twenty-two years in South Carolina. But I had taken a fancy to the sounds of a Japanese composer named Tomita. Tami owned the music store closest to my office. I’d bought a few things there, on one or two occasions. When I walked in and announced, “I want everything that has ever been produced by Tomita,” she replied, “OK. Wow. It’ll take me a while to get all of that.” She looked up my request. Phoning me the next day to inform me that there were seven albums and tapes by Tomita. Did I want them all? I repeated, “I want everything that has ever been produced by Tomita. She laughed, telling me she’d call when it all came in.

A month after moving into my own weathered beach house on the coast of Garden City, Tami was pounding on the door. She delivered a stack of tapes and, ultimately, a love that would change my life and our worlds. Over months and years, sharing sunsets and chardonnay on a tattered ocean porch, Tami became my best friend in the truest sense of that meaning. She was the first woman to have either claimed or held that position.

Tami was like the weather, storming the kitchen door, unannounced, with a package to lift my spirits, or a problem that needed fixing to lift hers. Sometimes, she simply wanted a hug to instantly change her disposition or mine.
She was the Mail-lady, arriving across the miles that infrequently separated us, or from around the corner. Slipping silently under the front door, a tiny red heart and arrow that always said “I Love You.” And I knew that she did.
She was the ultimate Easter Bunny. Insisting on pink, blue and yellow helium balloons; a sit-down traditional brunch of Eggs Benedict for a dozen untraditional friends. Tami never allowed me to do anything constructive except hiding the eggs. I’d watch as she colored my home and my world and my life. Etched into my heart, Easter remains a holiday I can’t get excited about, with or without a dozen untraditional friends.
Tami was in the answering machine, enunciating her phonetics in a way that told me if she needed me, or simply needed to be reminded that I needed her. Her message was always short. “Uncle Ricky-y-y-y,” she’d drawl. The pitch of her “y” was all she used to communicate her mood.
She was the future. She saw inside herself the urge a family would experience long after she was gone. She tirelessly molded separate lives and sometime-strangers into a single light, fashioned to brighten our paths. I’m sure she knew, even then, that we wouldn’t stumble. Not with each other at our sides.
She was Our Love. She cleverly assigned us to ourselves and to each other. She knew we would carry the torch she lit for us. It still burns, its unflickering warmth drawing us together at the beach for Thanksgiving, as it has for so many years.
Now, though, there is yet another empty chair. Tami’s mother, Helen, my cherished “Princess,” passed quietly a year ago, succumbing to that same overpowering cancer that took Tami ten years before. We miss Tami as Helen missed her. For our Princess to not be joining us at the beach on Thanksgiving doubles that empty spot that I can’t shake.
Tami was my friend. She moved too far away for me to touch, but not so far that I can’t feel. The strength of that love is something that I’ll carry with me into eternity.
She was a Gift, unwrapped sometimes, adorning my life at all times. She’s with me, in every child’s laughter, in any Easter lily I see anticipating bloom. In all those Carolina mountain-tops, in the sand at Myrtle Beach. And in the pictures of my Godson, now 21. I so vividly recall her lying on the sofa one weekend, not talking. We savored what we called our “Easy Silences.” She had come to rest, to decide if she would have the child that was growing in her. If she did, her life would be drained by a two years. I selfishly wanted her to live the five more years the doctors claimed we could keep her. She, unselfishly, wanted to leave behind her legacy. He is the noblest gift she could have ever given to all of us.
She was my Tami. Her love, never daunting, is the shared strength of a deeply loving Carolina Mountain family. I am forever grateful for being painted into that picture.
Tami Jane Wallace Hyatt was purely a once-in-your-lifetime friend. Wise beyond her years, she carried strength enough for all of us. She knew, long before we did, how short would be her young life. And yet, she spent her last two years shaping us, preparing us for what would follow. Even in her death, she showed us bravery.

Tami was the most unselfish, self-less person I have ever been granted the undeserved gift of knowing. I miss her beyond words and I miss her Mother. It seems too much that a family would have to give up both of them.

The light that Tami lit inside of me, and that her Mother carried proudly, still burns brightly. It was both Tami's and Helen's unconditional love. I hold that love perpetually in my palm, but mostly in my heart. It lasts forever as long as you keep it in a warm place.

Tami taught me that.

For Tami ~ November 3rd, 1957 ~ February 5th, 1987.