My Brian The Night Owl

S.R. Karfelt/The Glitter Globe

Book dedications are private things. The story is for you. All the months of writing and editing, editors, and revisions, covers, and formatting—it's yours, yours, yours.

The acknowledgements are thanks to all the people who helped make that book possible.

But the dedication. That's private. Between the writer and someone special. I'll tell you I delighted in this one, slipping it through quietly and waiting.

I don't make anything but books. There will be no handmade quilts or paintings for people I love. This is all I've got. So for me it's heartfelt and the most I can give.

It was a delight when Brian saw it. He sent me a message right off, and not much more than a month later he left this world of books, chaos, sickness, and friends you can call at 3:00 a.m.

I will miss him forever.

My Brian.

That's what Dear Hubby always called him.

“Your Brian” to be precise.

Brian was a night owl like me. I'd play this game with him. After I wrote until the words blurred on the page, whether it was three or four or five in the morning, I'd call him and try to wake him up. Not once did I ever wake him. I don't think it was that he woke up fast and faked it either. I doubt he ever faked anything, and usually I'd hear sports on in the background, or he'd get another call while we were chatting.

Brian was like the guru of the night owls. I wasn't the only one he talked to at night.

Once in awhile dear Hubby would ask, “What the hell were you two on the phone talking about until 5:00 a.m.?

Nothing, I'd respond. It's the truth. We talked about nothing for hours. Spent a good deal of time laughing about nothing too. Usually we'd hang up when the sun came up. He'd lament having to get up for work in a few hours, I'd lament the fact that no one respects a night writer’s need to sleep until noon. It never stopped us from doing it again.

Every day lights go out around the world, flitting to the other side, and leaving those of us who warmed ourselves in their presence the only witness to what was lost.

Brian wasn’t mine. Plenty of loved ones and fellow night owls lay claim also, and what a fortunate lot we were to have spent so much time with him. Even if it was talking about nothing. It meant absolutely everything.