Les Phillips Blog

     Barb with her husband Myron, 2009.

Yesterday evening, I got around to reading my email. Hidden amongst the blizzard of news alerts and Facebook posts were two short notes that brought me to a full stop.

Barb Ayres, a good friend who I’ve known since high school, had died unexpectedly. She was a photographer, artist, protector of animals and caring human being. The emails were from her sister Marcia. Barb’s other sister Susie posted on Facebook, “12/21/2011  The darkest day of the year.”

I first met Barb around 1965. After all these years dates fade and sequences of events become jumbled. However, I clearly remember the first time I met Barb. My buddies Ed and Lloyd were going to see their friend Barb. Ed and Lloyd were musicians and they needed a third to make up a jazz trio. I got to play Lloyd’s acoustic base, even though I didn’t have a clue how. It was a torturous 30 minutes while we played for Barb, Marcia, Susie, and their parents. I plunked along, laying down a whisper accompaniment of wrong notes.

Afterwards, I got to meet the Ayres family and immediately fell in love with them. They were everything that my family wasn’t: lively, fun loving, and joyous. Their home became my second home, a place of shelter, light, and acceptance.

Over the years I would learn that Barb and her family had had their trials, heart aches, and triumphs: like most families. But that only made them more dear to me.

I lost track of Barb and her sisters for many years. I had left my home town of Columbus and seldom looked back. I reinvented myself, got married, and followed several careers.

Then three years ago I got a Facebook message. Barb had found me and asked how I was doing. It started, “Why, you old scallywag! I was sure you’d be in a Mexican jail by now…and here you are,,,RESPECTABLE. Shame on you.”

In that instant we picked up where we’d left off almost 40 years earlier.Through Barb, I reconnected with Marcia and Susie and the warmth of Ayres family embraced me all over again.

Over the years, Barb struggled with illness and pain, which can either break or make a person. She was intimately aware of how hard life can be and no doubt she had her dark nights of the soul, but Barb responded by growing more compassionate and resilient. Her art was shaped by the challenge of her health. On occasion, she became her own photographic subject, as when she had Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (RHS), a rare and dangerous virus, later facial Postherpetic Neuralgia (PHN) a condition that occurs if the RHS does not go away, and brain surgery.      Barb’s Many Faces

When she was younger she worked as a writer and graphic designer. Photography was an important outlet for her creative energy. She had a passion for the photographic equivalent of found art: antique images, family photos, or photos taken around her home. Her montage were colorful and exuberant, insightful and wickedly funny.

Barb would write me to discuss our projects, the nature of creativity, politics, and the latest news from Columbus. She always wrapped it in wit and wisdom.

Despite her illnesses, Barb had been actively engaged with the Columbus Museum of Art, the Women’s Symposium Winter Caucus, the protection of animals and other efforts to make the world a better place.

On Tuesday, 12/20/2011 Barb wrote in response to an entry I had posted on my wife’s Caring Bridge page. It was part of a thread we had started on 12/18. Barb began with her plans for a 16×20 canvas print that Myron had given her as a gift.  She was excited about the challenges of picking the right image and how she might prepare it for the canvas.

She then mentioned her concern for Becky and me and how the stress of our circumstances can be a killer. She wrote about a book that she was reading, Forty Tales from the Afterlife, by David Eagleman. She said that she’d sent me a copy.

A few hours later, Barb was at dinner with Myron and family when she choked on a bit of food. An EMT and a doctor who here dining at the restaurant tried to remove the blockage and were only partially successful. Barb was place in ICU and listed as guarded to critical.

On Wednesday, 12/21 I received the book had sent me with the note wishing us a happy holiday.

A few minutes later, I read my email and learned that Barb had died at 11:11 a.m. that morning.

With Barb’s passing, a light has gone out.

But rather than dwell on what we have lost, I suspect Barb is encouraging us to move on, continue to share the light of love and the music of laughter.

I will miss you my dear friend.

All images by Barb Ayres.

Corrected 03/17/2012 – I originally said that Barb had Bell’s Palsy when in fact she had the much more serious and rare Ramsay Hunt Syndrome. She is mourned by the members of the Ramsay Hunt Syndrome group on Facebook.