Postcards from Lonnie – A Book Excerpt

Chapter 1: February/March 1994
Card 11

QUESTION: You’ve talked about the last 10 years. What about the next 10 years? How do you see yourself?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask Lonnie this question. He rarely focused his attention beyond his next meal or beer or place to sleep. Besides, I had no trouble conjuring visions of Lonnie’s future, and none of them were much to look at. But I had asked him to look back, and now I wanted him to look ahead. I was curious whether he would even have a forward view, and whether his forward view would resemble what I imagined was ahead for him.

It didn’t. After Dad died, Mom and I were on the front line of Lonnie’s hazardous life. While we constantly braced ourselves for the worst — the phone call from the police or the hospital — Lonnie worked his interior magic on his future as he did on his present. His positive view is what anyone would want to see in their future “many people who love and/or are gentle with me,” and people who can help each other get old. He does allow for a pessimistic view, but it is only one option, and even that option ends well, with him an old grump “that people have fun with.”

Lonnie had plenty of dead friends. People on the street died of diseases or exposure, fell to violence, or simply disappeared. Lonnie also had plenty of dead relatives. Our dad died in his mid 60s in 1988, a loss that devastated both of us. Our grandparents on both sides, two aunts and an uncle had died. But the loss that clung to Lonnie the most bitterly was his daughter, Abigail Dawn. She was three years old when she drowned in the bathtub. At the time, Lonnie and Magda, the baby’s mother, were divorced, and Magda was in a relationship with the man who later would become her second husband. When Lonnie wrote this postcard, Dawn had been dead for nearly 20 years.

It has always been tempting to say that his daughter’s death was what put Lonnie over the edge and sent him into alcoholism. It certainly added to his momentum. But he was well on his way before the baby came along. He and Magda were musicians, making their living in the rock music world, where alcohol, drugs and recklessness surrounded them constantly. Lonnie’s freefall accelerated, while Magda found her way, somehow, to a safer and saner path.