Always love,

Suz

The sugarless truth is I am down, depressed for the first time in my life. Yes, it’s hell. It makes me feel powerless and stupid, unable to do anything right, or well, or meaningful. And it’s strange. I don’t understand how I kept myself up last April when Coyote died only to wake up one morning last September in this other-world of darkness.

I guess I ignored reality until it tracked me down.

I mean, at first, there was so much to do. Decisions to make. Business to attend. Forms to fill out, copies of his death certificate to mail, answering my cell to say I was doing just fine. And I was.

Then “Pow.”

~ ~ ~

“You won’t even miss me,” Coyote said that last week. “I’ll just fade away like all ex-husbands.”

I was on his redneck yacht, on my hands and knees cleaning the big brass and glass coffee table in front of his blue leather couch that was his home during those last seven days.

“Kiss my ass, McCloud,” I said, taking the bait he knew I would bite.

He was in full-grin by the time my eyes rose to see him say:

“Gotcha.”

More than anyone in this life, Coyote could drive me so nuts, even on his death couch.

“Oh, no you didn’t because me not missing you makes the assumption that I think about you a lot now,” I said.

He laughed.

“My Suz, Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong. Do you know how much I love you?”

I stood up, sat down on the edge of the couch and wrapped my fingers around his sickly thin neck.

“Do you know how much I want to throttle you, McCloud?”

“No, but it sounds kinky. Count me in.”

That grin of his, again.

I couldn’t resist it then and can’t have it now.

I miss him so.

~~~

Where I am now feels like something dark and heavy is pushing my shoulder blades together and squeezing.

Yes, I’ve been to the doctor. Yes, I’ve been taking anti-depressants for months. No, they don’t work. Yes, I’ve totally quit both smoking and drinking because it wasn’t fun anymore without a smoking and drinking partner. No, I don’t feel a bit healthier.

If I had to pinpoint the moment my emotions went south, it was last June, two months after Coyote went to Heaven too soon and the home we shared for so many years flooded.

A toilet pipe burst in our master bedroom bath, up on the third floor. No one was home for several hours, allowing the geyser to pump out enough Metro Water to triple my normally $30-a-month bill to $90 for that one afternoon.

Trust me, that’s a lot of water.

The eight-inch-high tide ship-wrecked the house. The Big Brass Bed he bought for my birthday – and wrapped in an avalanche of red ribbons. The sofa sitting area and my big beautiful inlaid wooden desk. On the second floor, the pool table, piano, living room and biggest guest bedroom. On the basement floor, the entire guest quarters with full kitchen and bath. And all eight storage closets along the way.

The water took it all. Antiques. Coyote’s collection of mountain-aged instruments. Prized baseball cards. Electric guitars. Books. Amazing Malenda Trick signed artworks. A mountain of DVDs ranging from my years as a reporter on PBS-TV’s Tennessee Crossroads to Coyote’s years hosting Elvira, Mistress of the Dark movie nights on the old Channel 17. Photo albums. Clothes. Awards. Baskets. Beds. Love notes. Memories of us.

When I walked into the watered house, all the tears I didn’t cry in April wept when a photograph of Coyote and me on our wedding day floated across my right ankle.

~~~

I have no clue when this darkness is going to lift.

Heaven knows in this non-economy, disgusting politics as usual, joblessness, hungriness, cold and wacked-out world, hope is a God-sent blessing.

My heart goes out to any of you who have had or have depression in your life. I never understood it before. I would have been much better at trying to help if I had the proverbial wisdom I didn’t have but now do. If you need me, send me a message with “Susan” as the subject to CoyoteMcCloud@aol.com and I’ll do whatever I can to help.

Everything lost in the flood won’t ever come back but the basics will because of my longtime friends at Tennessee Farm Bureau. Their people have held my hand through my dark state-of-mind without shaming or complaining when I screwed up filling out several thousand forms and files – the darkness makes me dumb and numb.

I will get better.

Somehow, coming out and letting friends know why they haven’t heard from me in so long feels like it may be a step out of the shadows.

I’m still (slowly) editing Coyote’s autobiography – sometimes it just hurts too much to visit his life, alive, with him gone.

I am almost done with his other book, the story of his visits In & Out of Heaven during the last seven days of his life. That week was, without doubt, the most profoundly amazing time of my life, hence why I am compelled to share it more fully than I wrote here in the column “Life.”

Diana Lynn, one of Coyote’s morning-mates back at Y-107, The Outrageous FM who also is the administrator of this website, will also be posting here next week some of Coyote’s personal memorabilia for purchase to help finance his legacy, Coyote’s Animals, a fund for non-government subsidized shelters for animals of all kinds.

Oh, and one FYI. Facebook closed the “Coyote McCloud” page last year, so it you’d like to connect, please use Facebook’s “Coyote McCloud Memories” page. And please tell anyone you know who might like to follow along.

I’ll hush with a thank you for your awesome friendships and a 2012 New Year’s wish that all of you are happy and safe in the place you want to be and that it’s sunny and warm there in your heart.

And please, no worries about me.

I will find lighter days, or as Coyote, with that grin of his, would say:

“Suz, remember what doesn’t kill you makes you longer – but you’re plenty tall, already.”

Always love, my friends.

Suz

Living in his world, dog biscuits became “bickettes,” a mouth was a “moo-fass,” my weekly list of “Random Notes” became his list of “Rancid Goats” and things of importance became “Da’ House” for our home, “Da’ Jag” for the car he got me for my birthday and “Da’ Boat” for his redneck yacht.

Now I am sitting here alone feeling quite rabid after finally getting my gumption up to watch the first edited DVD of “Da’ Video” from the party at the Hard Rock Café Nashville where his friends and fans spliced together decades of memories to celebrate Coyote’s life last April 10, four days following his death at age 68 from the devastating devil of alchololism that turned his liver into a useless little concrete blob.

On that note, damn-it McCloud, it’s just not fair that you aren’t here to watch this video with me. Only you could find a way to make me smile despite it. See, Da’ Video makes me crazy crying because watching it means that you really have left “Da’ Building,” so I can’t wake you up to tell you to say something funny because I’m feeling mighty bummed and it’s all your fault.

Actually, double-damn-it McCloud. Why did you have to go and die on me and all the good folks who love and miss you? Was the booze worth leaving life early, really? Really???

… Sorry. I’ll start over.

Da’ Video of Coyote’s Hard Rock Party is banging.

Everyone who is Anything-Radio is captured on the silver disc, along with us Everybody-Elses who for one reason or another fell in love with Coyote McCloud somewhere along our way.

But, like always, it’s Coyote who is the star.

Pictures show him as a boy, a skinny college kid, even a soldier. A hauntingly sweet letter from his cousins who adored him as young Bill Lehmann for the same reasons we all did – his laugh, his kindness, his nuttiness, his love of animals, his uncanny twists on the smallest things that turned regular life into high-test. Old videos bringing him back to life riding a radio sound board like Michelangelo air-brushing the Sistine Chapel. A flash of his single surviving son Clay Lehmann cocking his head back in a grin that leaves no doubt his Daddy left it to him. The heavy wooden carved coyote howling at an unseen moon that we saw in that ritzy art place out on the West Coast in Carmel-by-the-Sea that cost way too much for me that Coyote bought anyway. Stories upon stories emceed by solid-gold radio protegee and friend Hawk Harrison and told by a variety of Coyote’s on-air radio partners Diana Lynn, Karla Lawson, Cathy Martindale, Buck Naked, Scott Shannon and others. And more stories from other friends along the way like Adam Dread from Joke of the Day, Capt. Ron from the G-Dockers at Elm Hill Marina and his best musician pal Billy Anderson who brought his guitar and used a song and his red eyes to say he already missed Coyote so much it was all he could do to hold his guitar pick. His step-children Derek, Holly and Kelly Greene who grew up with a disc jockey step-daddy who loved them best he could as well as their river-dog Ralph, named by radio listeners. The band Sons of the Beaches reviving oldies tunes Coyote craved … and then more stories by people like Joe Savage and so many more I can’t remember now because my wet eyelashes are weighing down my brain.

What really got me was the look in McCloud’s eyes in the photograph of the two of us with our Old English Sheepdogs Bogie and Dixie that took almost five hours to burn into celluloid. The big framed pastel-tinted photograph had hung above our fireplace forever but I had never seen the happiness splattering Coyote’s eyes when after four hours we had finally gotten all four of us to stay still long enough for the poor photographer to turn it into the family portrait Coyote was determind to hang above the mantel no matter what one steamy summer day a long time ago.

I hope he was as happy as he looks because I know he wasn’t drunk because I poured out all his vodka that morning in exchange for the puppies and my agreement to go get the picture done.

Da’ Party Video lasts a moment or two shy of two hours but at least to me, it went by before the clock moved nearly as fast and I realized why I have been so blown away by the avalanche of love since he went swimming to Heaven.

He set me up. He convinced me he was “just a disc jockey” and the only reason he did the gig was because he wanted to make people smile and it was the only job opening in the world where somebody actually sings your name when you get to work …

“Coyote and the Zoo Crew, Coyote and the Zoo Crew, in the mornings, in the mornings, on Y107777777777!”

He told me he didn’t understand why people wanted him to write his name on their T-shirts, ball caps and sometimes arms, legs and back but he must have known, or why was a fat black Sharpie mandatory console gear in whatever car he was driving? What he didn’t tell me and what I was too busy as a newspaper reporter to ask was that he was bringing up four separate generations of listeners who loved him so much they raced up and down the radio dial chasing him from station to station year after year because nobody could set up a song like Coyote when his voice went from zero to 60 in less than 10 seconds fairly screeching different versions for different times of day of:

“Mama, lock up your sheep, the Coyote’s on the howl tonight …

(Let there be Music!)

Seven o’clock in the city night time,

the Coyote McCloud Good-Time Rock & Roll Show is on the air

Got me some

Good lookin

Home Cookin’

Black Bookin’

Fast Tastin’

Drag Racin’

Kids are Facin’

Hair Rasin’

Good timin’

Ridge Runnin’

Stump Jumpin’

Egg Suckin’

Nitty Gritty, Low Rent, Rock & Roll … ”

Coyote had been writing his autobiography for two years before he died. I’m his editor and while he said he didn’t care too much about the title, he wanted the byline to be: Coyote McCloud with Susan Thomas. Said that way we’d always be together – and that nobody could blame him, totally, if they didn’t like Da’ Book.

I remember him laughing about that just now as I heard him laughing on Da’ Video.

I think it was that laugh that taught me to love his crazy way of dressing up words because both things made him downright “pup-a-dorable” — a trait as magical and illusive as the instinct of knowing the exact moment to tug when the worm on your fishing line is square in the gullet of giant channel blue catfish burrowed in the muddy bottom of Da’ Lake.

But it made me love him, changing me forever from Susan to “Da’ Suz.”

Trust me. Da’ Video is a keeper.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Coyote asked me that question three weeks ago last night, to which I responded:

“What in the hell are you talking about, McCloud? (I rarely called him Coyote unless I was mad enough to spend three syllables.) “I’m not in a cage.”

I was sitting on the floor with Sawyer Black when Coyote, all wrapped up in his favorite tan corduroy comforter, leaned slightly backwards away from us as if I should have known what he was talking about and said:

“Life.”

Before his lips could close around the word, the world I have known all my life collapsed around one thought – if I ever tell this story, the people who “get it” will get it, the people who don’t won’t and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

So, for anyone reading these words, please know that while my heart wants you to read more, I “get it” if you move on to whatever comes next in your life. But more importantly, for those who are willing to give me a chance, I will try to tell you why I am smiling tonight instead of crying myself into a bottomless pit because I miss Coyote so much I can feel my blood burning.

It all started one month ago today, Wednesday, March 30, 2011.

Wait … there is simply no way to tell the whole story in this space. I have to cut to the chase. Just the high points. Okay. Breathe …

I was in Florida.

I had been traveling in circles from my house here – home to me, my new husband Clay, our two toy fox terriers ZeZe and Zeus and my 87-year-old mother who I tend to – and Nashville where, to give friend Bobby Miller a break, I tended to Coyote on his redneck yacht – imagine a floating mini-mansion drowning in guitars, autographed pictures of Coyote featuring everyone from Pat Boone to Steven Tyler, Sawyer Black’s toys, our pied cockatiel Jesse and cigarette smoke.

I was sitting on my Florida couch when my mind screamed:

“Go to Nashville, now, and tell McCloud you love him.”

That, in itself, should have told me something strange was happening because I had never quit telling Coyote I loved him long after the official split, my re-marriage and, by that point in Coyote’s fight with his dead liver, I was telling him by phone several times a day within clear earshot of my utterly unselfish, loving young husband Clay Joiner.

Heck, I was still Coyote’s Power-of-Attorney and I had never stopped doing the dirty work of paying his bills, with his money, every month.

But the command was so compelling, I jumped up from the couch so quickly my puppies barked as I rushed under the shower, stuffed one change of clothes in my otherwise empty briefcase, jumped with wet hair into the Jaguar Coyote bought me new for my birthday in 1992, sped to the Orlando airport and was the last one to board the plane. On landing in Nashville, I rented a car, sped to the marina, fairly ran down the long G-dock and onto the boat.

“So it wasn’t a ruse,” Coyote said, grinning. “You did come back quick.”

Breathe …

I looked at Coyote and knew it would be my last trip to Tennessee to see him.

He was still walking to the bathroom and back to his couch on his own, albeit barely walking, but as soon as I “took over,” I could see his body relaxing toward death. After the first full day, he never got off the couch again, with Bobby and me doing all the work.

“Give that back,” Coyote snapped when I moved a stack of newspaper crossword puzzles that had bloomed on his coffee table as his strength had withered.

“Kiss my ass,” I snapped back. “Here I am doing everything and you’re yelling at me? I don’t think so McCloud. Get f’ing over it. I’m cleaning the boat and if you want a f’ing puzzle, I’ll bring you a f’ing puzzle one at a damn time.”

“Okay,” he said. That damn grin.

Breathe …

Hours slipped into days and nights, with me living in the dark blue leather recliner and Coyote lying on the matching couch. The TV was always on but not always the volume. Reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office and Criminal Minds looped the noon sun and midnight moon. Neither of us could pick a single laugh out of that week’s Saturday Night Live because it wasn’t funny. Stories about our old days were.

My walks with Sawyer were always chilly despite sun or star temperature, with the cold lake water biting our faces. Sawyer loved it. I shook.

With the first column he had finally let me write to tell everyone he was ill then a week old, days were eaten by me reading Coyote’s emails and Facebook entries until I felt like I was swallowing gravel. He adored every one of them with or without clear memory of the fingertip that sent them.

Neither Coyote – nor Sawyer – ever snored, ever, so I spent hours staring hard at both of their chests. Just checking.

It wasn’t like I thought he was going to die any minute, at least at the start of what would be our last seven days. Only when he took up calling his body a “bag of bones” did I get the hint he was on his way out. Bt his mind was sounder – by a Kentucky Derby without a finish line – than the too many times I had tended to him sopping with vodka.

…

We had already talked through the tough stuff so just talking was everything. People we liked. Places we’d been. Crazy things. Private things. And on occasion, members of his family on G-Dock would stick their heads halfway in the always half-opened-for-Sawyer glass sliding door to give us a hello and offers for anything.

They would have bought the world and brought it to us but not even their love cold buy what we needed.

“Coyote” was not drugged out of Coyote.

My bad. I don’t do math and despite instructions from inside-and-out beautiful hospice Nurse Holly, Coyote was only taking about one-fourth the amount of pain meds offered. Ouch but not really because he just didn’t hurt much except when humidity touched his right foot where fluid footballed because of that damn dead liver.

Good news was that he was happy, nearly always smiling even in his sleep and doing what he liked best in this life, talking.

“Suz,” he said, waking me from my nap. “I can’t believe we’re still here.”

…

It took me a moment to get out of the recliner and climb over sleeping Sawyer to kneel beside Coyote’s face.

I did not recognize the low-beam glow falling across his otherwise jaundice-yellowed blue eyes. At first I thought the sheen was coming from the TV behind me before realizing my body was blocking the light.

I used to be a newspaper reporter. John Seigenthaler taught me how. Watching the words come out of Coyote’s mouth and feeling goose-bumps firing down my spine, I knew I was way too tired to remember everything, so I took notes, writing down the day and the exact time off the clock on the microwave oven over my left shoulder.

“McCloud,” I said loudly, making sure both of us were awake. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re going to love it, Suz,” he said, as if he had a surprise waiting for me. “You’re going to love it.”

…

Details came in uneven, unplanned spurts. Most often, Coyote was either just slipping into or out of sleep. I was his stenographer, never asking a direct question about whatever his eyes were seeing so that I could capture his words, unblemished.

“The water is so shinny there, it’s like soft drops of diamonds,” he said, cupping his left hand and using his shaking right forefinger to roll around what I envisioned as tiny beads of mercury.

“It’s so warm.”

…

By the afternoon of the last night, I knew Coyote was talking about Heaven.

I do not believe he knew because he sounded so damn normal, exactly like the voice he used to hype yet another getaway to some marvelous place he had purchased the tickets to before asking me to plan ahead to the likes of Big Sur out on the West Coast or islands like Jamaica, North Eleuthera, Jamaica, St. John and Kauai, the Hawaiian island that was our hands-down repeated favorite place of all.

What I do believe is that as his body weakened and his words grew slower and softer, he believed we were still married and he had already bought to tickets to yet the next paradise for us to explore.

“It’s the best,” he said in total eagerness. “Even better than Kauai. Wait and see, Suz, we won’t ever want to leave.”

… …

About 3 a.m. that last Wednesday morning, Sawyer and I went for a walk.

Coyote was still awake when we got back.

That’s when he asked me what I was doing in a cage.

“What in the hell are you talking about, McCloud? I’m not in a cage.”

That’s when he stared at me and said:

“Life.”

And that’s when I knew if I ever told this story, some people would “get it,” others would push my words away and that I couldn’t do anything about it, either way.

I also “saw” in my own mind what I believed him to be saying.

From a distance, this Life we are in looks something like a white globe suspended and surrounded in a blue sky bursting with shiny diamonds. We as humans are put on Earth when we are supposed to be here and taken out when we are supposed to go back to the blue. While we are here, we can only control the most general things, such as good over bad; whatever we choose to do is directly reflected back on us; and that the final score card does matter, most especially to us because Life is like a pop quiz that brings us in crying and takes us out fighting until we can see the diamond waters waiting for us, once again.

… … …

Three weeks ago this coming Sunday, four days after Coyote gave me his last kiss and “goodnight, I love you,” I was back out on the dock at three a.m. walking Sawyer to grassy banks next to the parking lot.

I had gone to Coyote’s goodbye party at the Hard Rock and couldn’t sleep. I had done okay at the café as Coyote used to say “meetin’ and greetin’ and gettin’ the hell out of here.”

Looking down at Sawyer talking to him and looking up at the very quiet stars, I got real mad and my mind started cussing McCloud because I was absolutely worn out, I believed myself to be one of the people who “got” what he had told me about but he knew how I love to find pennies in any parking lot and Sawyer and I had found nothing while surveying every inch of the marina lot we walked on our walk.

“I’ve worked so damn hard, McCloud, you could have at least let me find a penny so I would know you know I did good.”

That second, I heard something that made me stop and look back over my right shoulder. It looked like a rectangle, two-carat diamond shining beneath the moon and streetlamp. I stepped back and grabbed it.

…

Tonight I’m holding it in my hand.

Anyone can tell you it’s a shard from some kind of glass that shines blue and green depending on the way light runs through it. My guess is busted plate-glass – at least for the folks who don’t “get it.”

To me, it’s a drop of Heaven that Coyote tossed down to me to say I am doing things right, that he’s where he should be and that I’m where I should be until I get to go see him and everyone else I have loved and thought I had “lost” to death.

“Okay, McCloud,” I said out loud to that early morning sky while touching the smooth glass to my lips, “you can go swimming now.”

…

I know what he said. I know I was tired – but I took notes. I also have answered, at least for myself, a question that’s haunted me since I was a kid and saw an old black and white movie about Houdini. In it, they said he promised his wife that when he reached “the other side” nothing could stop him from “contacting her.”

I believe I know why he didn’t – or why she didn’t notice if he did.

Outside this “cage” of Life, things are so incredibly good that bothering to think about this Life on Earth is borderline boring, if not downright forgetful, reinforcing Coyote’s claim that when we got there we’d “never want to come back.”

But I also know McCloud. He knew how to enter a room but never knew when to leave.

Now, I’ve got a drop of Heaven to prove it all.

In my mind, at least part of the surge had to be traces of Coyote’s ritual Friday-night trek to the Tiki Hut, with Sawyer Black on his heels.

If you’ve never been to Elm Hill Marina’s G-Dock – and I would never advise going without an extremely up-close-and-very-personal invitation unless you like jail-bars-blue – the only way to explain the Tiki Hut is combining Andy Griffith’s Mayberry with pin-pulled weapons of mass destruction. It is a floating front porch, a place to go after work to catch up on the latest news, tell the tallest tales, lap up a paper plate of barbeque and most of all, party with friends.

“So you are Her,” was my first welcome on a hot Friday night of summer several years ago.

The man said it in a voice that could have been taken as a wary hello or a warning shot, all the while pointing at me as if an alien had just popped out of its pod.

“I, uh …” was my brilliant response as I surveyed the highly protective crowd of men and women wearing their most comfortable clothes, holding everything from Bud Lites to fishing poles and obviously as laid-back as laid-back gets without falling over backwards.

“Meet Susan,” Coyote announced above the reverberating roar of passing boats and sprays of laughter.

After an in-mass once-over, a round of “hey’s” and “hi’s” mixed with reserved looks of judgment.

All I remember from that first night is an endless glass of white wine over 7-Eleven ice chunks in a red plastic cup, jokes dirtier than the muddy lake banks and ending up back on the “Bogie” – Coyote’s boat named in love of our first Old English Sheepdog Big Sur Humphrey Bogart McCloud – and the first hint of friendships that, with time, would fill a part of my heart that I didn’t even know was empty.

Tonight, as I sit at home land-locked with the exception of a few stray tears, I’m hoping everyone weathered the day’s storms as well as our boat and raise a toast to the Tiki Hut with my green ice tea that’s wrapped in the coozy someone gave me that very first night. It’s purple with yellow letters that read:

“Don’t flatter yourself; I was looking at your Friend.”

In my mind, at least part of the surge had to be traces of Coyote’s ritual Friday-night trek to the Tiki Hut, with Sawyer Black on his heels.

If you’ve never been to Elm Hill Marina’s G-Dock – and I would never advise going without an extremely up-close-and-very-personal invitation unless you like jail-bars-blue – the only way to explain the Tiki Hut is combining Andy Griffith’s Mayberry with pin-pulled weapons of mass destruction. It is a floating front porch, a place to go after work to catch up on the latest news, tell the tallest tales, lap up a paper plate of barbeque and most of all, party with friends.

“So you are Her,” was my first welcome on a hot Friday night of summer several years ago.

The man said it in a voice that could have been taken as a wary hello or a warning shot, all the while pointing at me as if an alien had just popped out of its pod.

“I, uh …” was my brilliant response as I surveyed the highly protective crowd of men and women wearing their most comfortable clothes, holding everything from Bud Lites to fishing poles and obviously as laid-back as laid-back gets without falling over backwards.

“Meet Susan,” Coyote announced above the reverberating roar of passing boats and sprays of laughter.

After an in-mass once-over, a round of “hey’s” and “hi’s” mixed with reserved looks of judgment.

All I remember from that first night is an endless glass of white wine over 7-Eleven ice chunks in a red plastic cup, jokes dirtier than the muddy lake banks and ending up back on the “Bogie” – Coyote’s boat named in love of our first Old English Sheepdog Big Sur Humphrey Bogart McCloud – and the first hint of friendships that, with time, would fill a part of my heart that I didn’t even know was empty.

Tonight, as I sit at home land-locked with the exception of a few stray tears, I’m hoping everyone weathered the day’s storms as well as our boat and raise a toast to the Tiki Hut with my green ice tea that’s wrapped in the coozy someone gave me that very first night. It’s purple with yellow letters that read:

“Don’t flatter yourself; I was looking at your Friend.”

“I can’t believe we’re still here,” he said. “You’re going to love it.”

I couldn’t say I wasn’t getting to go with him this time, at least not just yet.

“Tell me all about it, baby,” I said. “It sounds great.”

“It’s the best. Even better than Hawaii. Wait and see.”

All wrapped up in his comforter on the couch, his blue eyes were as blue as I’ve ever seen them, alive with the squinty look of when an airplane takes off in a hard rain and suddenly lifts above the clouds into sensational, sunshine.

“The water is so shiny there, it’s like soft drops of diamonds,” he said, his voice low and slow. “You can pick it up and hold it in your hands. It’s so warm.”

With his dog Sawyer Black cuddled beside me on the floor next to the couch, we had learned by Coyote’s finger motions whether he wanted a puff of a cigarette, a tissue, a pain pill, the remote control or something to drink.

Mountain Dew.

“Suz, we won’t ever want to leave.”

Coyote died at 1:40 p.m. today, April 6, 2011. He loved you all. I will post further details as soon as possible. Always love, Susan.