Category Archives: Gratitude

More Framing

I have been corresponding with the widow of my recently departed friend.  It has been a small but tangible comfort to both of us.   I mentioned to a friend the role she seems to have played in reorganizing his friendships after they got married, helping to root out his long-time best friend and old friends like me.  I literally saw the man five or six times since his wedding close to 30 years ago.   It was not that I didn’t get along with the wife, I did, I remember her as gracious and hospitable the two times I visited them at home not long after their marriage.   That said, it seemed clear that she had other plans for his social life than getting to know and welcome his old friends.   This is not uncommon in married life, sadly enough.  My friend wrote back “she sounds like a real bitch.”  I wrote back “not anymore, if she ever was.”      

Shall I be angry, and sad, and lament all the music unplayed, the laughs unlaughed, the help I might have been able to give them during his long, terrible death?   Pointless, all of it.  There is plenty to be sad, angry and full of lamentation about, but how does it help anyone?   You know what helps?  Giving and taking comfort now.  It is all that remains to us that is useful and good after a rare disease mercilessly rips someone we love out of our lives.

Breathe

Though events and feelings may mercilessly conspire, pressing in, it is always a good practice to remember to breathe.   Not the breathing we do automatically, autonomically, but a slow, deep, deliberate breath through both nostrils deep into the lungs and out like the one I’m going to take a moment to draw right now.  

It is often forgotten, and I had to check on-line just now to be sure, that one of the meanings of inspiration is drawing breath into the lungs.  Nothing, I believe, is more inspiring than that.

in·spi·ra·tion     noun

1.  an inspiring or animating action or influence: I cannot write poetry without inspiration.
2.  something inspired, as an idea.
3.  a result of inspired activity.
4.  a thing or person that inspires.
5.Theology

a.  a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul.
b.  the divine quality of the writings or words of a person soinfluenced.
6.  the drawing of air into the lungs; inhalation.
7.  the act of inspiring; quality or state of being inspired.
When things are heaviest, and darkest, pause to take as many slow, life giving inspirations as you need to keep going up the treacherously slippery hill that is life sometimes.

The Whole Person

In death, for the first time, generally, we can see a person’s life for what it truly was.   The journey complete, the entire life emerges more clearly than it can ever be seen while it is in progress.

Melz, it becomes clear after his death, was the remarkable individual that none of his friends had ever seen angry, or bitter, or speaking badly of anyone.   I only knew one other person, Howie Katz, who this could be said for.

Melz was uniquely talented, and unassuming, something of an introvert, and possessed a rare grace.   He played the piano as easily as we the living breathe, like a fish swims or a bird flies.  He coaxed beautiful music out of the keys with Fred Flintstone fingers.  

That much we all knew when he was alive, but the ethereal gracefulness of that thick fingered, heavy limbed man is what remains with me now.

From the Mouths of Pishers

I got the news of Melz’s death just after noon on Thursday January 2.   At 3:02 I was sitting on the floor in a circle of boys, ages 8-10.  As I calmed them and opened the laptop to show them three, yea, three new pieces of animation, I mentioned that if I seem sad or not myself today it’s because I got the news three hours ago that an old friend had died.
 
“I’m sorry,” said Amza, 8.
 
“How old was he?” asked someone else.
 
“He’d just turned 58,” I said and a chorus of children said “that’s young!”
 
From the mouths of pishers…

Tucking Melz In

At the cemetery, which was called a burial park, and looked like a snow-covered golf course, we walked across the graves and their snow-covered plaques marking where the dead were buried — no headstones here — toward the rectangular cut out of earth where our friend’s pine coffin would be buried.   The day, which had been sunny and almost Springlike during the perfect funeral service, had turned grey and the temperature dropped at least 15 degrees.  Collars went up, hats were pulled down, gloves came out.

After shoveling some dirt to finish covering the pine top of Melz’s pine coffin, I spotted  a very successful friend of the deceased.  The young Melz had dreamed of being Fellini, and was in a way, he had a video company and directed and edited short films for business that I’m sure were artful.  He was a very talented  and tasteful guy.   Melz’s friend and colleague who waved to me as I turned from the grave must be talented too, he sold his first great idea for several million dollars, I learned recently.

He and his wife smiled as I made my way over to them.   We spoke briefly about the miraculous perfect game pitched by our mutual friend the rabbi as he sent off his best friend from childhood.   81 pitches, all strikes, 27 Ks.  Nobody has ever painted a masterpiece in fewer strokes, every color and gradation perfect, unforgettable and untouchable in its architecture and balance.

“If he dies before us, who’s going to do our funerals?” he asked, puckish and urgent. 

“Shit,” I said, “you’re right, we’d be fucked.”   Then in an inspiration as sudden as one of Melz’s ridiculous absurdities thrown into the conversation, I said, “wait, I’ve got it, and you’re just the man for the job.  We get Sokoll on tape doing our eulogies. We get final cut, so we can tweak him until it’s perfect… it’ll be great.  I’ll send you my eulogy right away so you can get to work.”

Later, when we presented our concerns, our friend the rabbi promised us he’d do his best to outlive us so he could do our funerals live.

“Let’s go tuck Melz in,” said his wife gently after a round of smiles.  

We walked over to the grave and continued shoveling, burying the pine box that contained the used up shell of the body that once housed our friend.  There was odd comfort in this tucking of Melz in, and I took some more of it, a second round of shoveling, trying to fill the rest of the hole.

Perspective

I am always stunned, though of course, I should’t be, at my age, at how a few facts on the ground can change one’s perspective.  A thought that gives real hope can be the catalyst.  An intelligent comment by a supportive person.  A satisfying conversation with an actual human being on the phone, taking the time to answer all of your questions and sell you the product you need, with a 45 day money back guarantee.  A piece of solid new information that ends the wondering, which can be as exhausting and unproductive as a tongue poking and probing a disquieting new hole in a molar.

If we are lucky enough to have another person in our life to provide a few of these things, when the impulse for most of us is to try (and fail) to solve the problem and then worry along with the worried party– and a hell of a party that is– we should feel truly blessed.  

I vow to always try to be that person who gives what is needed to others in need, though it’s a mighty hard vow to keep, I vow it again, to always try.

If we are lucky enough to remember how quickly and stunningly our perspective can be shifted, from fear and worry to hopefulness, we are lucky enough indeed.

“Justice is Dead!”

His parents gave him a virtue name, Justice.  When Justice was a baby he was diagnosed with lymphoma.  There are pictures of him as a less than two year-old, bald round head, undergoing chemotherapy, methatrexate.  He’s now ten and a vigorous kid.  When he’s in a good mood he can be very funny.  Once early on he asked me to get him a gun so he could shoot himself, a glimpse of what he and his parents have been through already in his short life.  You can see a short video of his heartwarming story here.

His friends Natalie and Noelle co-produced the brilliant “The Evil Witch on the Second Floor”.  In one scene, in the Evil Witch’s classroom, a flight of hidden stairs in a closet leads to her secret torture chamber.  Another flight takes us to the death chamber below, the chamber of doom where the Evil Witch shackles her victims as they lay dying.  The faces of the Evil Witch’s other victims are crossed off in their framed pictures on the wall.  

Two of the witch’s slaves carry the coffin of a newly dead kid, it says “R.I.P. Justice” on the side.   They toss the casket into a chute marked toxic.  I didn’t notice Justice’s name on the coffin when I passed by when they were shooting it.  I was disturbed by it when I edited the animation that night.

When the group sees the finished footage a week later, Justice’s best friend shouts out “Justice is dead!” as the coffin is trotted across the screen.  “Yeah,” I say “what does Justice think of that?”  and Noelle immediately yells out “he liked it!”

And Justice, who has a raspy voice for a small ten year-old, when I ask “Do you like having your name on a coffin saying R.I.P.?” says “yeah, I like it. The Evil Witch can rot in hell.”  I understood later that maybe these young friends were celebrating a peer’s survival, giving the finger to Death in the most direct way they knew how.

Meanwhile, in an expensive home in the suburbs of Boston my old friend may already have gone over the precipice, falling into the pit of relentless cancer.  Nothing anyone can do for him now, but call him again tomorrow on the land line, in case he feels like picking up.  

Justice is alive, an inspiration to the rest of us, and a reminder– spend your life well.

There’s no place like home

I’ve got to be quick, because there is not enough air in here and I’m told it’s beautiful outside and I need to stretch the legs and breathe.  I am just thinking about the games we learn as kids and how much deliberate and focused attention and hard work it takes to unlearn the bad ones.

It’s a tiring story, but my father was a tormented soul.   Great, dark sense of humor, but essentially a well-defended fortress against all potential invaders.  Everyone was included in this category.   If I had a problem being raised by someone like this, it was not something he was obliged to concern himself with.   That was his position for our long, difficult relationship, his answer to every attempt on my part to have him lower the bridge so I could cross the moat: I was the one with the problem, not him.  A position he apologized for quite sincerely hours before he died.

He gave me the gift of belatedly acknowledging that my painful childhood was largely the fault of an adult incapable of being a better parent.   He acknowledged that I was right to be hurt and saluted, for the first time, my many attempts over the years to improve the relationship.

While he was alive and on his feet, however, he’d fight to the death any suggestion that on his deathbed he’d have the regrets that could be so easily seen by anyone who wasn’t him.

I Love Music (Just as long as it’s groovin’)

The O’Jays, a group of singers who knew a few things about how to work a groove, had a great hit called “I Love Music”. It’s here, for anybody who wants to hear it right away.  It speaks so well for me, as it pumps through the computer speakers,  that I have almost nothing to add here at the moment.

But it would not be like me to hold tongue or pen, especially now, trying to remain conscious not to speak ill of anyone, and having only good things to say.

Here at 2:27 goes that great guitar, sallying into the mix like a saxophone.  I’m no expert, but when I hear a mix like this I know what moves me– and I’d spin this disk again just to hear that guitar break.  Then at 4:19, presumably that same guitar player starts making with the jazzy riffs.   Hot damn, the bongos and everything, that percussion section, the piano, bass– all kicking in to make that joyful noise.  Here come some strings and the vocalists come back, everyone leaving room for the others.

I started off nodding along to a mix of a recent jam session very well recorded in a basement in San Francisco, wondering idly where this love of a groove comes from.  Part of the answer is this track by the O’Jays, it seems to me.  Also beloved to me, that space in between the instruments, where they put their parts down against the others, listening intently as they dream their own dreams.   Best image I know of the best way to live your life.