What does the fox say?
I was looking up another word for ‘fox’, and the only word I found repeatedly (other than ‘vixen’ and that doesn’t work because it refers to a female fox) was Reynard. I looked a little further into this word and it became more fitting for the person I want to talk about. Reynard typically refers to one of two things–a clever fox in medieval fables or a British manufacturer of racing cars. My friend the Fox was our local MacGyver, especially with cars. He was also a race car driver for a time in his life.
This friend was a very reckless man that struggled with substance use throughout his life. There were long periods of sobriety and I met him during one of those times. I recall him telling me that he did not expect that I would stay sober for a year, I was too young. It is the first interaction I remember with him, not the words he used or how I felt about it, but I remember that he said it to me. That was in 2005 and he was wrong.
Like I said, he was venturesome, foolhardy at times. I haven’t spoken to him in a few years but thought I was keeping up with him on social media (turns out I was watching the wrong page–stupid, I have all three of his profiles). He was in a car accident this summer (2025) that had him still in the hospital in the fall. At some point fairly recently, to the surprise of no one that knows him, I’m sure, he left the hospital against medical advice. He removed IVs and whatever else was attached to him and left. I don’t know how long ago this was, but he died of sepsis on Thanksgiving (November 27, 2025). I have no idea what made him leave the hospital like that but my first thoughts were that sounds like him and I bet he wanted a cigarette. Those weren’t only my first thoughts.
He taught me a lot. He had a teaching voice. I don’t mean that he sounded like a teacher, but he had a specific tone and cadence when he was teaching me something. Thinking back on it, it would have made me feel like anyone else was talking to me as if I were stupid, but that was not the case with him.
There are a lot of small things that he taught me, but there are two things that always come to the forefront of my mind when I think about him. The first is that choosing to love someone is a reckless, dangerous decision to make. It is no different than climbing on the back of a Harley. You may have the time of your life, or you may experience a crushing blow (often both). The second was about small appliance therapy before rage rooms became popular.
The first came about on the back of a Harley, in the wake of heartbreak. The story of the heartbreak is not important here, it is sufficient to say that it was the worst I had experienced and my friend came through for me. He took me for a ride on his Harley while my other friend wrote me a letter telling me things that she loved about me and left it in my apartment. On that ride, some things happened. First, on a dark highway, he leaned forward and yelled at me to steer the bike. I panicked and then did it (I didn’t know it at the time, but he was holding on to the highway bars to keep control of the bike. He was reckless, not an idiot). Later, on a major highway (I-45 N, for any interested party), we pulled over and he took some pictures of me on a large statue of a horse, and we ran out of gas. The closest gas station required us to walk the bike about half a mile the wrong way on the feeder road (access road for those of you not in Texas) to get gas. During this ride, I had the thought that falling in love is as dangerous as getting on the back of a Harley. I have never changed my mind about that.
Small appliance therapy was something that we did at his house. I don’t know if anyone else did this there, but I did. He used to keep old appliances on hand in case they were needed. I really don’t remember how often we did this, but one is recorded online and on my body. I don’t even remember why I was so angry, but in the video he said that I was angry at myself. That was likely the core of the problem, for whatever decision I made. Maybe it ties into the next paragraph. I was wearing a dress, so I put on some of his jeans and boots. Even so, as I was swinging this thing by the cord, it stuck in my leg by a sharp edge and a piece of the plastic is still lodged in the top of my thigh. I spent a lot of time that day trying to remove it but was never able to. This activity was expressed with someone else by buying a set of dishes and throwing them, smashing them to pieces. I’m not entirely convinced that this was a healthy way to express anger, but it was better than taking it out on other people and it was fun.
For a long time, I have attributed something I learned to a single person that is not the Reynard, when the truth is more complicated. I learned two things from two people and melded them together into one lesson, only remembering one. The one was simple, ‘feelings are not calls to action.’ The other part was Intellect over Emotion. I don’t know how the first came to me, only who it came from. I only know how I/E came to me because of an old journal entry. I was speaking with him about a man I had been dating. This man told me that he could not stay away from his ex, that any time she came for him, he could not say no. He said this was why he had her blocked and it was why I had her blocked, as well. My ego got the best of me, though. I thought that I was the better choice and that there was no way he would chose anyone over me, so I unblocked her and made it known that I was seeing him. Do I even need to say what happened? This man is not my husband, follow the logic. I let my feelings override what intellect and experience told me. He told me, he knew what would happen, and I knew this was the truth but I had a feeling that I followed instead. (As an aside–they are married now. They seem good together and I’m glad it worked out the way it did.) My friend the fox had a somewhat similar experience, but he was a different actor in the play. If either of us had used our intellect and our experience rather than how we felt at the time, the outcomes would have been different. Mine would have happened eventually, but not like it did, as a direct result of feelings calling me to action. For him, I think there were some things that would have been very different in a lot of lives if he had made a different choice.
This grief experience has been different than I am accustomed to. I usually withdraw, refuse to engage with anyone I care about. I have been withdrawn for years, just gradually getting further and further away from everyone. I have been reaching out this time, albeit cautiously. I am remembering how sensitive I can be and that my walls were not only due to fear of loss.
If these are the things that he has taught me, even if this was all he taught me (and it is not), how much has the world lost in his death?
Dolor Comedenti 
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