Last October I wrote about someone I know who passed on.
Tribal Elder and Medicine Person, Oliver Sounsoci.
I was looking him up on the net just now to retell a story I know about him to a friend of mine and I see that his daughter Mary passed away last month. I met her but didn’t know her really really well. but I knew Oliver really well. I’ll reprint the obit I read on the internet here too, and then I’ll retell my story.
So here I will retell my story about Mary’s father Oliver. I was at an 8door sweat near Omaha NE around 1994. Oliver Saunsoci was leading it. It was 8 doors because a friend was over who had kicked diabetes a long time ago but had started drinking heavily again and was terrified his diabetes might come back if he keeps drinking and eating and stuff. So Oliver was healing him from that and any of us who wanted to could be in the first 4 doors and any others we wanted.
Afterwards we were all eating with him and his family, including Moves Camps from both sides of the Canadian border. It was a great day. I had my 64 Epiphone Caballero out and was singing folksongs and my wacky punkrock stuff with a crowd of mostly the little kids around me. At one point Oliver came up and said, “hey, mind if I play some songs too? I haven’t played guitar in a while.”
Of course I said sure.
He proceeded to play 20 minutes or so of jazz, Flamenco, and bluesy stuff that would knock both your socks off and everything else you might have on.
“Wow, you really haven’t been playing for a long time? I’m impressed.”
He explained that a long time ago Jose Feliciano came to him for help weaning himself off Ultra-Lente insulin and taking back his life. Sometimes he donated money to Oliver’s family, and sometimes he just taught him guitar lessons. That’s how Oliver learned so many great styles to weave into something phenomenal he can play whenever he wants to, even many years after not playing at all!
Now here’s the story I want to tell you.
Why hasn’t he played any guitar for the past 3 or 4 years?
That man saw a kid who was getting really good at guitar and was taking lessons by just going and learning and didn’t have a guitar at home to practice with. So he did what any man would do. (well, any man worth his salt dammit!) He handed the kid his very expensive guitar and said to use it for his lessons. And he never asked for it back. Three years later, he still hadn’t gotten around to getting another guitar, and he told us owning a new one was just less important than helping people with alcohol and illness, and making sure the children get everything they need.