Tommy Kirby – So full of life, love and pure imagination, that he deserves his own special place where we can connect with him – here, meow and always.
A couple of days ago as my wife and I were cleaning… I ran across the keys to Tom’s old apartment. He gave us a copy when we visited him several years ago so we would remember we were always welcome. We had such a good time with him visiting all the sites of New York. He was a gracious host. CJ proposed to me on that visit.. Tommy took the picture capturing that moment.
There have been so many important moments in my life.. And Tom was a part of most of them. He did my hair and makeup for my senior prom, we moved him to Austin. We moved him back from Austin to Dallas, he showed me how to really decorate a Christmas tree… And actually gave me my 1st tree in my 1st apartment, he was there at my 1st wedding, he gave me decorating ideas for my first house, he held my child as an infant, he encouraged me after my divorce, he encouraged me as I came out of the closet myself… He took the picture of CJ’s marriage proposal to me and celebrated the moment with us, he played piano at the home we live in now… And there are countless moments in between. There was laughing.. So so much laughter. There were tears from both sides. There was admiration of are… And so many evenings listening to him play the piano. So so many cherished memories.
New memories may be postponed until another time… But I can and will continue to honor my friend in my life.
Tommy… I hope you know how much you continue to be loved.
I have been thinking about Tommy’s upcoming birthday a lot. I wanted to celebrate it in some way, wondering what he would want me to do for him. I have been missing his laugh. It’s one of my favorite laughs in the whole world. It’s just so freaking genuine. He had a variety of laughs, and I loved them all, but the one that brought a smile to my face in this very moment is him BUSTING out. It’s the BEST! Pure joy!
I believe what Tommy would want for his birthday is for everyone to be able to laugh with pure joy. My gut tells me he’d want me to do really truly stupid stuff just to make him laugh and to make everyone else laugh. I think it’d be easiest for me to make him laugh though because I always felt free to be a total goofball around him. I can imagine him now telling me to go for it and write totally insane stuff, but at the same time I feel all sentimental and not quite up to being a TOTAL goofball on his page yet.
BUT, I do know of a way Tommy can be his true, hilarious, yet genuine and sincere self to all of you…. if you use your imagination a little.
Tommy LOVES Joan Crawford & the movie Mommie Dearest. I say that in present tense because I almost feel like he’s up above urging me to say this in the present tense.
If you’ve ever heard Tommy imitating or performing Joan Crawford, picture his face, his expressions, his smile, his goofy laugh, and his sincerity and love within that laughter, and while thinking of all that, watch this video of Joan Crawford going to the door to accept her award on Oscars night. The speech starts after a minute into the video.
No doubt in my mind that Tommy would love to give this speech to all of you right now for his birthday, and of course he would do it in his own one-of-a-kind Tommy style – Hilarious, but also sincere, and with love. XO
I woke up to the song “The Tide is High” playing in my mind this morning and I instantly felt like it was a sign from Tommy. We used to sing / play that song together in the early years, and I remember us laughing together while we changed lyrics.
Blondie – The Tide is High:
There was another Blondie song that he seemed to love more than “The Tide is High” though. It was called 11:59. I had never heard 11:59 before he kept talking about, so I finally listened to it and learned the lyrics so I could sing it with him because he loved it so much.
I remember over the years if people were singing along to “The Tide is High” or any other Blondie song, Tommy would sometimes ask them, “Do you know 11:59?” It was always kind of disappointing to him that people didn’t know it, because he loved it so much.
The last few nights this song has been popping into my head. I hadn’t heard it for many years, so I had to look it up to listen to it because I feel such a strong connection to Tommy through this song. It was one of our songs from our dance club days – a song that goes best with late night listening. We used to listen to it in the car or in his bedroom. One of us had the 12″ record, so we listened to all the versions.
When I listened to it again tonight it felt so different to me this time. The song used to feel very dreamy to us, like a magical sort of lullaby. But, tonight… hearing it without Tommy… it felt very… very sad. Suddenly many of the lyrics applied to Tommy, and I felt like I was sending this song out into the universe to him. I imagined the song reaching high up to him, and I felt like ET standing there on the edge of the cliff with his Speak & Spell when he was trying to “phone home”, hoping to be heard.
Even the sounds of bells at the end of this song sounded like they were calling out to Tommy:
Tommy, I know I’m not the only one trying to “phone home” to you. Many songs have been popping into my head that I haven’t thought of in years and I keep thinking it’s because of you.
I hadn’t been able to post anything lately, but I will be picking it up again. I hope everyone else is doing okay. We’re all trying to be positive and keep Tommy’s sense of humor going, and we will keep that up as best as we can, but we’re also all feeling a huge sense of loss, and the pain that goes along with that. It’s still hard for me to believe, even though the reality of it has hit me many times. I’m sure anyone who has ever loved Tommy or appreciated his sense of humor or his unique, full-of-life spirit will understand the range of emotions that comes with such a loss.
I’m sure Tommy would want me to end this on a happy note, so I sat here a while trying to find something and it finally came to me. Samson the Cat. Samson was always looking out the front door window whenever we arrived. It was very sweet the way Samson liked to keep an eye on things. He seemed to have a wise, sweet spirit. He was the first cat I ever got to know pretty well, since I grew up with dogs. Because of this, I learned Samson’s meow as THE cat meow. Tommy used to imitate Samson’s meow & I started doing it too.
Many years later, I was visiting my husband’s sister and we were talking about cats, then she and I started meowing for some reason. When I meowed, she said “That’s a Siamese!!” I said, “It is? It’s the meow I really know – my friend Tommy’s cat, Samson… and he was a Siamese! I never made the connection that Siamese cats had a different kind of meow!”
So, Samson set the standard for me. His meow is the meow I know well, and I can still hear both Samson, and Tommy meowing like Samson, in my head. Tommy has said “Meow” in many ways over the years, but the “Meow” I know best, is the Samson “Meow”.
I grew up with Tommy and we lived across the street from one another. My mom and I were talking about all the great memories we had of Tommy! She talked about a time Tommy came over and asked to borrow a stick of butter. She thinks he was probably 4th or 5th grade. Anyway, my mom asked him what he was baking. She assumed it would be cookies or something like that. Nope, he said he was making Cornish game hens. I will be honest here, I have never made Cornish game hens and my mom has not either. He was so talented and a joy to be around.
Tom(Tommy) fell in love with Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” from our recording of the soundtrack from the movie, The Sting. Nothing would do until his Mom taught him to play it on the piano. His Mom, Elizabeth, did a good job of getting Tom started on his way to becoming an accomplished piano player, beginning at the age of 3-and-a-half years. His Mom and I had purchased, some years earlier, an old upright piano that you could envision in an old-time Southern Baptist church. It probably contained memories of countless gospel songs and hymns in its beautiful oak wood. I recall it had the manufacturers’ name of “Bell” on the keyboard cover. At any rate, it was established in the designated guest room in the home in Plano, Texas. One day, when Tommy was still not 4 years of age, I could hear him playing the piano as I walked down the hall passing by the guest room. As I passed, I glanced in to see Tommy playing while wearing a beach-toy plastic bucket over his head, blocking his view of the keyboard. He explained he was checking to see if he could play without seeing the keys. He could. One of us took a picture of the “bucket test”, which his Mom should have still in her possession.
In time, Tommy learned all of the ragtime songs from the soundtrack recording.
I met Tommy in 1990 when he was 17 and I was 18. We both attended Plano Senior High together. My family and I have memories of him being in or sleeping in my closet because he would stay the night at my house, but I would have to hide him in there because he was a guy. We would stay up all night laughing, prank call people, watch movies or even putting mud masks on. He introduced me to amazing music that we would dance all night to. He also would always get a full course meal because I would feed him the leftovers from dinner. At first I got in so much trouble from my mom when she went into my closet and saw all these plates with steak bones, lobster tails, half eaten baked potatoes, etc… Eventually my mother figured out that he was harmless (such as had no romantic interest in me, lol) and considered him one of my best girlfriends. He and I were so relieved when it didn’t have to be a secret anymore and he could actually sleep in the same room with me. He stepped in to my closet, then stepped back out and said, “Now I can come out of the closet.”
