Dear Frank Ocean,

I’ve never written an artist, never felt the need to, but I felt that I had to this
time. I had to let you know that you saved my life. I don’t say this to you
lightly, or in metaphoric terms. I mean it literally, as straight up as a person
can say it to another person. You saved my life. I live alone six months out of
the year, and without your music on this one particular day, I would not, in all
honesty, be writing you today. I would be dead.
On december 7th, 2011 I woke up in my bed, in my house, that sits on a 5
acre farm in Ontario, Canada. I had been dreaming, and in the dream I was
digging a grave. My father, who is still alive, asked me “Why are you digging a
grave?” My response was, “I’m good at digging graves.” Unsatisfied with my
answer, he asked again, “But why are you digging it? What for?” I stopped
and said, “Because Sisco is dead.”
I’ll have to explain. My father breeds German Shepherds, or at least did many
years ago. Sisco is our Alpha male, a large, pure black German Shepherd
that resembles a wolf more than he does a dog. When I said that he was
dead in the dream, I became confused at saying it because I knew that he
was fine. So in the dream, I set down the shovel and followed my dad to the
barn. He opened the door and out came Sisco, bounding around me, barking
and playing. Healthy.
At that moment I woke up, my heart racing, and I knew something was wrong.
I went down into the basement and put on my cold gear. As I said, it was
December, and this is Canada. Usually when I leave the house the dogs
begin barking at the sound of the basement door closing. That day there was
nothing welcoming me on my familiar morning walk. I could only hear the
styrofoam crush of the snow under my -40 rated boots, the swish of my cold
suit’s legs rubbing together, and my own breathing.
When I opened the barn door and flicked on the light that buzzed as it
warmed up, I looked to my right, into the first kennel and Sisco was laying
there still in that way that no living thing can mimic. I called out to him, but I
knew before I touched him. My dog was dead. At this point I didn’t believe I
was awake. “I must still be dreaming,” I thought. I let the other dogs out,
watched them, let them back in, and went about my chores. There are
chickens on my farm, too.
After a while, after the shock of what was happening and the grogginess of
sleep had worn off, I understood this had really happened. I’d dreamt I
thought he’d died, and now I woke to find he was actually gone. It was
unbelievable, so operating on some strange coping mechanism, I took a
shovel and walked out beyond the barn, further into the 5 acres and found a
spot to dig a grave. As I worked, breaking the top layer that was thankfully not
too frozen, I thought about Sisco and how the day before he was fine and
gave me no reason to think he was ill. He played, and barked, and ran as he,
I admit, hadn’t in such a long time. It wasn’t in his nature to play, he was
dutiful, a protector, a friend. A wave of intense deja vu crashed over me as I
dug.
At 4 feet I stopped digging and returned to the barn. I brought our
wheelbarrow close to Sisco’s kennel and placed a lining of straw in it. He
being a large dog, 95 lbs or so, I struggled with his body and lay him down in
the wheelbarrow. I left the barn with him, tears filling my eyes as the rhythmic
squeal of the wheelbarrow’s tire bearing played against the steady pulse of
my footsteps on cold snow. When I reached the site I lined the cool, dry,
sandy grave with straw, then lifted Sisco from the wheelbarrow and began
lowering him into the hole. I slipped a bit as I knelt, his weight too much for
my arms. I dropped him and he lay at the bottom of the grave awkwardly. I
couldn’t leave him like that, so I reached further down and some how
managed to turn him. I knelt at the edge of the grave, and stared at him, his
nose to his tail, a peaceful, Fibonacci spiral of forever sleep.
I had no words then, only memories. So I spoke my memories to him. I asked
him if he remembered when he first came to this farm as a pup, how father
brought him into the house as a surprise. How he followed me around the
yard tirelessly, his pink tongue lolling, a white patch on his chest that was
eventually swallowed by the darkness of his black coat but could still be found
if you parted the fur. And if he let you. I asked him if he remember how when I
started university when mom and dad began taking winter sabbatical to their
home in the Philippines, leaving me to mind the farm on my own, I would
come home and be paranoid someone was in the house. I asked if he
remembered me getting him from the barn and going into the house through
the basement and us checking all the rooms as a team until I felt safe. I told
him that if he didn’t remember, that I did. That I would always remember him.
I cried more at that moment than I had in a very long time.
When I was able to pull myself together, I told him that I loved him and began
the grim work of filling the grave. A few minutes into it, I felt a pain flash
across my chest. “Great, I pulled a muscle,” I thought. I got up from my knees
and walked over to a bench we have out there that we sit on when we watch
the dogs play. I sat on it, and realized I couldn’t get comfortable and that I
was short of breath. I pulled my hood back because at this point I was very
hot and uncomfortable. At that moment I realized I was sweating buckets. “I’m
overheating,” I remember thinking, my vision blurred a bit. My heart was
racing, I could feel it pounding, along with the muscle I’d thought I’d pulled. I
thought, “I’ll just lay in the snow to cool down, I just need to relax.”
My brother, August, earlier that summer had put me onto your album
Nostalgia. We had not spoken in a while, him being very busy with work. But
when we talked he said I had to listen to your music, that he was sure I would
love it. I remember when I first played Strawberry Swing. I was in the garage,
just about to work on my 95 pathfinder, getting it ready for winter. I remember
being entranced by the guitar picking, I remember staring deep eye of the
speaker cone the music was coming out of, the bass rumbling it to life. I was
instantly a fan.
So to relax, before I lay down in the snow to cool off and rest, I pulled my
phone out of my snowsuit’s breast pocket and put on Strawberry Swing. I lay
down as the guitar was plucked, and closed my eyes. Through that 3 minutes
and 55 seconds, with my eyes closed, I saw my mother and father, I saw my
girlfriend Alissa, and I recalled segments of the book I’d been working on for
the past year. This was it, my life was passing before my eyes, and here I
was, laying in the snow, dying. I didn’t know it then, but I was having a heart
attack.
I don’t know what came over you, what made you add the alarm clock at the
end of that song, but I owe you a great debt. That sound, that familiar,
nostalgic sound that irked me, shook me out of my falling into sleep. It woke
me, triggered something in me, something that said, “WAKE UP. YOU’RE
GOING TO DIE OUT HERE.” All in capitals. My eyes flashed open, I saw blue
sky, wispy winter clouds, then rolled to my stomach. I slammed my gloved
fists into the snow, and somehow pushed myself to my feet.
The rest is inconsequential to you, and maybe if someday we meet, I’ll tell
you the rest. But suffice it to say, I made it to the house, called 911, was
rushed to the hospital, had surgery, and lived. I needed to tell you this, I
needed you to know that your music saved my life. Without your music,
without your choice to put that alarm clock sound at the end of the song, I
would’ve fallen asleep and never woken up.
In the past 6 months I have been resting, recovering. In that time I’ve been
working on my book and look forward to someday sending you a copy. Thank
you, Frank Ocean. You’ll always have a fan on a 5 acre lot in Ontario,
Canada.