It's That Time Again

It comes around every year at this time.  The start of death anniversary season.  Paul on the 20th of April, David on the 18th of May.  Then we're free and clear for a few months until the holidays.  Thanksgiving's so chaotic these years that it's not bad, but it always causes a pang without Paul and Dave on Christmas.

It was kind of funny today.  After 16 years, I don't know exactly what to do on the anniversaries.  It seems  not right not to say something, but after all this time I don't need buckets of hugs and sympathy.  It is what it is and I'm used to it by now, for better or for worse. But the hugs and sympathy are always nice anyway.

Usually on this date I post the picture of Paul being held aloft at a concert on Whole Earth Day at the university.  This year I went different.  I posted this photo of David and Paul both.

And then Paul's good friend Sarge posted the picture of Paul being carried aloft (and, fittingly, chose a picture of Robert DeNiro from Taxi Driver as her Facebook profile picture).  And Jessica posted a picture of Paul I hadn't seen before.

In the afternoon Walt and I took flowers to the cemetery and then had our now traditional sushi dinner to close out the evening.

I hate April 20.

The Birthdays

I found this video the other day.  (I tried to embed it but for some reason that didn't work, though it should have.)  If you don't want to go to YouTube and watch the video yourself, it's a video of David, Jeri and Paul, sitting on the couch (holding pictures of Tom and Ned, who couldn't be there) and singing "My Favorite Things" with lyrics I rewrote to commemorate The Pinata Group. That's David on the guitar.

I had all sorts of mixed feelings watching it. I thought I would be emotional and yeah, emotions welled up.  But one thing that struck me very forcibly was something I said to David shortly before he died.

We were joking about all the photos and videos I take and I told him "that's OK--you can die and I probably won't even notice because I have so many videos of you around." In retrospect, that was a terrible thing to say, given that he was dead not long after.

But as I watched this video, I realized that maybe it wasn't so bad after all.  Here they were, alive again, singing together with Jeri.  The video made me smile and though I wish to heck they were here, the videos are a comfort because for a few minutes, they are back, alive, whole and the family is all together again.

We're coming up on Birthday Time.  Paul's birthday is tomorrow and David's is a week later.  Paul would have been 46 and David 43.  They are permanently stuck at 30 and 24.  

I look at Ned's grey hair--actually he's getting white hair.  He has more than I do.  And I see the look of a middle aged man.  I wonder what his brothers would look like at 46 and 43.  

Paul was planning to move to L.A. with his wife and become a movie star.  What would he be doing now?  Waiting tables?  Working in the post office?  Or would he be one of that small percent that actually work in the business?  We'll never know. I feel cheated because I always wanted to watch him win his Oscar and stand there and thank his mom for all her support.

And David.  He was in the process of getting his life together.  He had tried Sacramento City College and Chico State and gave up.  After a period of working bagging groceries, he was talking about moving to Santa Cruz and going to school there.  He still hadn't figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up.  But what a mind that kid had.  If he found the right path, he could have done anything.

Instead the two of them are lying in a grave in the Davis cemetery and it just seems so unfair that life has moved on without them.

After so many years (19 and 16), the birthdays and the anniversaries aren't as wrenching as they were in the beginning.  You never "get over" the death of a child and you do, as people wanting to say something comforting after they died, "remember them" (as if you could forget!).  You are forever changed.  They become a part of the person you are now and you go on about your business.  You don't wear sack cloth and ashes forever, you don't shut the curtains and assume the fetal position for the rest of your life, but you laugh and have good times and bad times while a piece of your brain includes them in all family activities, though you don't really talk about them much.

We'll probably go out for sushi on Paul's birthday.  We've been doing that for 16 years now.  Who knows what we'll do on Dave's, but we'll raise a glass of wine...or water...or whatever and toast them.

And then we wait until the death anniversaries roll around a couple of months later.

Happy birthday, guys

15 Years

It's so difficult to realize that Paul would have turned 45 yesterday, if he weren't permanently stuck at 30.  Big difference between 30, when you're old enough to be an adult and making adult decisions and 45, when you are middle aged, maybe starting to get a bit paunchy, stuck in the position you have carved out for yourself, maybe making repairs on the house you bought or going to PTA meetings.

Paul didn't do any of those things.  He hung himself, accidentally or deliberately (there will be a debate on that point within this family forever) on the eve of making an offer on the house he and his wife were going to buy. 

They had been married only 8 months, so there was no baby expected.   (His widow now has 3 children, including a set of twins.  I am jealous of their paternal grandmother.)

They wanted to move to Los Angeles and make it big in the movie business.

I had this vision of his becoming a disgruntled old man (he was already halfway there, a disgrungled young man) and working at some job he hated, never making it big the way he expected to.  I was his mother but one look at the talent he would be competing against told me that no matter how talented he was (and he was talented...but not that talented), it was unlikely that he would take the town by storm.  

But each year at this time I get angry when I see actors getting Golden Globe or Academy awards and thanking their mothers for all their support over the years.  That was what I told Paul I expected him to do.  Instead, when I won an award for being co-author of a musical, just weeks after Paul's death, my acceptance "speech" was to hold the award aloft and say "this is for Paul."   Where was my thanks, Paul?

Ned has turned into a handsome, responsible middle-aged man with more grey hair than I have.  He's starting to get age lines in his face, which look good on him.  Every time I see him, I wonder what Paul would be like if he had lived.

(Tom, somehow, seems perennially young.  Maybe having two kids to chase after keeps him younger looking longer.)

Every year on Paul's birthday we go out for sushi, since he loved sushi and we ate it frequently when we went to dinner together (next week, we will go for more sushi on David's birthday--he wasn't as crazy about sushi as Paul was, but it just seems our "thing" to do on the birthdays of our sons, who no longer celebrate birthdays...and later in April and May when we commemorate their death dates.)

The sushi place we used to frequent when Paul and Dave were alive has closed but there are a butt load of sushi places that have cropped up in the past nearly 20 years.  We went to the one closest to our house, which we had not yet visited, this year.  It turned out be my favorite of the ones we have visited in past years.

Walt had sukyiaki (because he's not a sushi purist on these occasions)...

...while I had something called Bob's Roll, which was delicious.

So.  One down, three to go. 

I went to the cemetery in the afternoon and on the way to the boys' grave, I saw a rabbit hopping across the cemetery--first time I'd seen that.  Off to the side were some of the famous Davis wild turkeys, and on my way back to the car I saw a very large, very red ladybug.  All three encounters made me smile.  As Paul and I always had a "thing" about smiley faces, I took it as a greeting from the grave.  

Dear Dumbass

This was written by Paul's friend Sarah four years ago.  She just reprinted it on Facebook.  I think it still works today, the 14th anniversary of Paul's death:

dear dumbass,

so i have a big piece of pooh in my butt and i need to get it out.

i am a little late with this letter, i guess. i guess i should have written it on monday, tuesday or wednesday or whatever. i didn't. i was busy wiping tears, being mad, making sandos, and smelling the air.

the air.
it has smelled the same for the past ten years.
before, it smelled like baseball, spring,the pence, sex,sneezes and jasmine.
after, it smells like
shock
anger
wind
loss
confusion
denial
whiskey
and dead you.

i don't know why. 

i don't want to know. if you meant it, it makes you sad. if you didn't, it makes you pathetic. 

how many times did i have to count you down from ten when some one (dmtc) dumb did something stupid? i still can't believe that you did something SO FUCKING STUPID.

i told you; if you want to, i'll do it. that way you get it done and i get to do it.
is that what you meant when you left the shortest message on record(from you) on my machine?

"i have a piece of pooh in my butt".

a week prior.

the message struck me as strange. usually you would have gone into LENGTHY(hehe) detail about the pooh. you would have told me of its girth. you would have laughed. you would have told me EXACTLY what i needed to do to help you get it out. you would have laughed. that laugh. you would have, perhaps, told me if any of it had gotten out of your butt yet, and how much. how it smelled. how it was going to taste in the poohburger that you were going to make for me. you would have asked me if i wanted cheese. . . sauce. you would have laughed.

i didn't call you back. the message struck me as strange but not strange enough to CALL YOU BACK. the truth is, i was screening you in the first fucking place. the next thing i knew, the air smelled different and the sparkles in the sidewalk cement no longer delighted my eyes.

there is a lot to tell you. the world isn't even funny anymore, i mean it is funny but it is also crazy. remember watching movies about the future like, mad max or escape from new york? remember the mutants and sociopaths and gas wars and random shootings? welcome to 2009. not quite, but we are on our merry way to a very dangerous future. i mean,fuck, i am writing you this "note" on facebook.com. a social network that feeds and feeds and feeds and feeds. it doesn't feed us, it feeds on us.

you missed idiocracy. it is a movie by mike judge. it is truth. and to tell you the truth, it is funny. it is fucking hilarious.

the time that would have been your future has been pretty goddamn fucking funny. i have to say the talks would have been EPIC. i would need a 4,000 foot deep sink overflowing with dishes to completely catch up with you. plus we would have to have SEVERAL meetings about the thing and the other thing up on the roof(after we broke in).

you didn't know it, but you were a knight to me. you rescued my mind. when my mind swam with thoughts and i was drowning in a world that looked at me like a confused puppy (head all cocked to the side), you got me. you rescued me. you told me, "you get me, sarah. you GET me", and i pulled a han solo:"i know", trying my hardest to be cool. i tried my hardest to keep it from you. to keep my admiration for you, from you. to play it cool. to play it FUCKING cool. shit, you got me. you GOT me. i found in you a friend that will never be equaled. we were rare. our talks. our trips to the hardware store, for nothing. our trips to the speedboat dealership, to pretend. i will always be grateful that you spent that time with me. ALWAYS. and when i moved away, 3 hour phone conversations twice a week and sometimes more. you were family. i can only hope that you knew it. since the time we danced in the booth to the age of aquarius- to that last message; i can say that i had a fast friend, a bosom buddy in you. no matter the matter ,you were just a phone call away. i fell in love with you as a brother as a person as a friend. i fell hard. then you pushed me and a lot of others into the abyss. it took me 5 years to even believe you were really gone and 5 years to accept it. i believe it now.

so, fuck you paul.

love,
skc

13

Ironically, we are going to see a show called 13 this week.   I know almost nothing about it, except it sounds like a good companion for High School Musical, which is a good musical for younger people, but which I didn't like much.  Maybe 13 will be better.

But the number 13 has a deeper significance for me this year.   Today we are marking the 13th anniversary of Paul's death, the start of "memorial season," which ends next month on the 18th of May, the 16th anniversary of David's death.

I can't even relate to those numbers.  Sixteen years since we had that horrible telephone call in New York?  Thirteen years since that fateful night when the phone rang here at home at midnight and I answered it cheerily, thinking it was Paul--only to hear the voice of a police officer calling from his house to let me know that Paul was dead.

Each year the dates come along and I think I should say something or write something.  Some years I do, some years I don't.   Soon there will come a year when the guys will have been dead longer than they were alive and doesn't that boggle my mind.

I wrote this back in 2007, when I titled the day's entry "8 and 11".

"I guess you never really get over it, do you?" someone asked me recently.

It always seems such a strange comment to make.  Do you ever "get over" the death of a child ... or the loss of anybody you love?   But maybe if you have never experienced a painful death you don't understand that.   Or if you have you're hoping that maybe someone will tell you that you do, eventually, in time, "get over it."

The way I try to explain it is that you never "get over it," nor would you want to.  You loved a person.  To "get over it" seems to be minimizing the feelings you had for that person in life.

But the good news is that it does stop hurting most of the time.  Whatever the "it" is that you never get over gets absorbed into your system and it just becomes a part of the person that you become following the death.   The person(s) you loved are always there with you.  You never forget, but you don't cry forever.  You laugh again.  You have fun again.  You find meaning in life again.  But you never "forget."

That's something else that people tell you when they are trying to be helpful.  "You'll never forget him."  I accept that statement for how it was intended — as a comfort. But part of me has to snicker mentally ... like I could forget two pregnancies and two births and the life of two children who made it to adulthood.

Could I forget sticky kisses and story time and pictures made with colored pasta products?

Could I forget first steps, first days at school, first bikes, first performances, first cars, first jobs?

Could I forget diving and dancing and singing and acting and judo?

Could I forget Egg Nog Galas and "Deck the Halls"?

Could I forget delivering newspapers and making kites?

Could I forget silly haircuts and emotional breakdowns, and talks about love, life and everything else that stretched into long the night?

Could I forget watching babies become toddlers, then children, then young adults, and then adults.

Could I forget getting on the phone with a stranger, 3,000 miles away and telling her she could take the heart of our son and give it to someone else?

Could I forget running my hands through the hair of my son, laid out on a gurney, not breathing...or watching his wife holding his hand in disbelief.

No, I'll "never forget them." 

And on today I remember the day Paul died.  I remember the day all those kids died at Columbine and I think about the parents who are making burial plans for their children who lost their lives in another senseless tragedy in Virginia.

Those parents will never "get over it" and they will "never forget" the children they are about to bury.

But in time, if they are lucky, and if they have people around them who love them and support them, they may be able to smile again, to laugh again, to have fun again, and to be grateful, as I am, that they were able to watch their children grow into the adults that they were at the time of their deaths.

But, oh how I'd love another all-night discussion session with David or with Paul.

Conversations with Sheila

I talk to the dogs. Everybody talks to their dogs. Often conversation with dogs tends to be monosyllabic. "Down." "Sit." "Stay." Fuller conversations might include things like "good girl" or "treat time." Occasionally I will talk to Lizzie or Polly as I would to a person. they don't pay much attention, or look at me as if wondering what language I'm speaking.

Sheila understands me.

Sitting at night at the dinner table, when I have finished my food and have no treats to share with the dogs, I look at Sheila and say quietly, "I'm finished eating, but he's still eating." The other dogs continue to look at me, hope in their eyes. Sheila immediately looks at Walt and goes to sit next to him.

Or at breakfast after I've given them each a crust of my toast, Lizzie and Polly keep hoping for more, but when I say "that's it" and hold my hands up, Sheila immediately leaves the table and goes back to her post in the living room, protecting us from dog walkers, trash collectors, and students walking to school.

I occasionally lock the dogs in the house, when Lizzie gets a bee in her bonnet and can't be outside without barking. Sometimes I forget that the dog door is closed. And then at some point I open it, but by then, the dogs have already tried to get out and have given up. Sheila will sit in my office, looking at me, eyes crossed because she has to pee. I'll say, quietly, "you know the dog door IS open." Immediately she whirls around and goes out the dog door.

It's surprising, sometimes, how much she seems to respond appropriately when you speak to her in sentences.

Lizzie doesn't talk to me, but she reads my mind. She can be out in the back yard and I can be thinking about leaving the house and she'll be in here in a flash, ready to get the treat that I give the dogs whenever I go out, or return home. She watches me like a hawk for any movement, however slight, which might indicate that there is a possibility of a treat in her future.

For Polly, it's non-verbal. When she climbs into my lap, snuggles herself into my armpit, lays her head across my chest, then looks up and licks me on the nose before sighing and settling her head back on my chest again with a happy sigh, you don't need words to know what she's saying.

Happy Birthday, Paul (1/28 ... which is when I wrote this)

Thanks for the Turkey

Don't say we don't know how to milk a situation for all the humor we can get out of it.

Yesterday, Ned posted this photo to Facebook:

Ned is the image guy for radio station 93.7 (Jack.FM) and took a series of photos recognizing George Lucas' birthday. This one didn't make it to the radio's web site, but he knew that there would be lots of laughs from the family.

Many, many years ago Walt's brother (who has now been married nearly twenty-five years) was dating a woman who worked for George Lucas. I forgot her name years and years ago. At Thanksgiving that year, Lucas gave each of his employees a turkey. As it happened, Norm invited this woman to join us for Thanksgiving dinner at Lake Tahoe and she brought along the turkey. We all enjoyed our gift from George Lucas.

Fast forward many years to when the kids were adults. Paul's college roommate was a guy named Patrick Combs who has gone on to become, as he describes it, "an Inspirational Speaker, Success Coach, Raconteur and Theater Performer, Story writer, Author..." I've reconnected with him on Facebook.

Pat had a social function to go to at Skywalker Ranch, Lucas' huge complex which is, coincidentally, just about a mile up Lucas Valley Rd. from my mother's house. Pat asked Paul if he wanted to go along.

Well, Paul wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to visit Skywalker Ranch and so he jumped at the chance.

At some point during the evening, Pat spied George Lucas and asked Paul if he wanted to meet him. As I recall Paul telling the story later he said something like "Of course! The dude made Star Wars!"

For all of his years on stage and in the public eye, Paul could get just as tongue tied as the rest of us around celebrities, especially people he admired. I remember when he once bumped into his idol, David Byrne, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Byrne was behind a theatre taking a smoke break, Paul just happened along. The two of them were completely alone. Paul had admired David Byrne for years and all he could think of was to say "how's it going?" as he walked past him. He then decided it was stupid to blow his one big chance to be alone with his idol and he should at least talk to him, but by the time he returned, Byrne was disappearing inside the building. Paul picked up the cigarette he had been smoking and saved it. His one chance to connect with David Byrne.

(Years later, after Paul died, Audra brought their "child," the smiley face doll named "Happy" to a reunion of The Talking Heads and got a photo of the group holding him. Paul would have been thrilled.)

But this was George Lucas and Paul wasn't going to pass up the chance to talk with him. (After all, the dude made Star Wars!)

Patrick introduced Paul to Lucas, Paul was tongue tied and finally blurted out, "Thanks for the turkey!"

I don't think they said much more to each other than that, but we have laughed about that story all these years and so I really had myself a chuckle when I saw Ned's photo on Facebook.

---

LATER: Ned has informed me that apparently I dreamed most of this. I have obviously confused The Lamplighters (who recorded a CD at Skywalker Ranch) with Paul, who met George Lucas at some party at which Lawsuit was playing. The "thanks for the turkey" part was accurate, however! (Oh--and Patrick Combs had nothing to do with either!)

Rewriting Tradition

I was recently contacted by someone in Ireland who is doing her Masters Thesis on the ways social media might reduce oldler people's experience of social exclusion. I am an "older person" who uses social media so I was the kind of person she was looking for, as was Jon, a very funny guy whom I know from That's My Answer. The author of the thesis let me read a copy of her rough draft and I was surprisesd to discover that both Jon and I have our own sections in the work. His section is titled "Blogger, Jonathan Hemlock," and mine is "Social Networker, Bev Sykes." Heady stuff.

While the thesis doesn't really relate directly to what I want to write here, it did get me thinking about how the internet and social media are changing our lives and how we are all in the process of recreating different ways of doing what we have done all of our lives.

I saw a Hallmark card commercial today. It's for Mother's Day and it shows a woman opening a drawer and taking out a collection of cards she has received from her child over the years on Mother's day. The tag line was something along the lines of "this year give Mom something she can hold in her hand." I remember when greeting cards cost less than $1 and could be mailed for 10 cents. Now cards can run you up to $5 or more and postage is nearly $1. Is it any wonder that we have turned to e-cards instead of "something she can hold in her hand."

I felt guilty when I started sending our annual Christmas letter by e-mail (and then making a web page and sending a LINK instead), but now I see that others are beginning to follow suit, especially as postage continues to rise higher and higher and sending Christmas cards becomes more of a luxury than it used to be.

We are even in the process of redefining our customs surrounding death. I've now been on the internet long enough to have gone through several deaths, some of face to face friends, some of people I've never met. I remember the "death watch" The Last Session group had, as Dick Remley was dying. Dickie's death may have been my first "internet death." I knew him face to face, as did many of the mourners, but also many only knew him through e-mail and Steve's diary. There was this sense of frustration, being unable to join together in a group hug, to attend a memorial service all together in the same room, but instead we posted messages in a yahoo group and those of us who did go to the memorial service reported on it to those who were unable to attend.

Since Dickie died, there have been other deaths. I remember when blogger Denver Doug died and how we all posted memories on the guestbook of his blog. I remember when vlogger Dougri committed suicide and the shockwave went through the YouTube community. Just a month ago came the news of our friend Merrell's sudden death and the coming together of our community to join electronically in remembering her life.

I didn't have the huge internet community when Paul died (and especially not when David died), so there was no "internet memorial" at the time, but it's been interesting, and quite touching, the new tradition that has formed.

After my sister died (at the same age David was when he died), my mother and I talked on the phone every year on the anniversary of her death for a lot of years. We didn't necessarily talk about Karen, but we always called each other on September 13. I still call her on September 13, but she no longer realizes that this is why I'm calling.

Since so many people who knew our kids have joined Facebook, now each year around midnight of April 19, people start changing their facebook photos.

Jessica was the first this year, posting this photo of Paul, which many of us (me included) also used as our profile pictures. Many added the enigmatic comment "FTS," which, as anybody who understands, knows refers to Paul's comment, which was reprinted on the program at his memorial and is also on the grave marker which he shares with Dave. I told the story in my entry last year.

Ned changed his profile picture to this rather strange photo. It's from the party that the Lawsuit group had after the memorial service, and is one of a number of Poloroid photos taken that night which contain this green disfiguration. We like to believe it was Paul's spirit attending the party, since the camera had not done this strange thing in all the years of its use before this party, nor has it done it since.

Myv used this profile picture, which is one of my favorite pictures of Paul in concert, at the Whole Earth festival at UC Davis. (In the large size picture you can see my mother standing on the balcony in the upper right corner)

Jeri posted her annual comment about Paul on this date. Few made a big deal about the anniversary, but we all felt this common bond. We all knew and we all sent out coded signals like a group hug. Whether you were feeling sad or angry or empty, we were all remembering together, whether we were in Davis or on the other side of the country.

As for Walt and me, we are continuing our search for a sushi place to to replace Osaka Sushi. On the recommendation of a couple of people on Facebook, we decided to go to a restaurant called Moshi Moshi in South Davis.

First we stopped to buy flowers and then drove out to the cemetery. While there, I noticed that the Bunfill family certainly is ostentatious.

Though the name is familiar, I'm not really sure who they are (or were), but the graves definitely are all you notice when you drive into the cemetery. The three benches along the edge of the grass are also engraved with the Bunfill name, and there is a third grave site, to the left of this photo with a large "Bunfill" engraved on it. Sadly, everyone currently buried in any of these graves died younger than either Walt or myself.

But anyway, then we went on to Moshi Moshi, a little hole in the wall place which we noticed right away was different from other sushi places where we'd eaten because it had its own combination of ingredients and its own name for things. When I saw this item on the menu, I obviously had to order it.

It turned out to be delicious and is the stuff topped with avocado in the foreground of this photo. (There was raw tuna and celery inside)

Moshi is also the only sushi place that has the distinction of offering Tiramisu for dessert!!!

We will probably return here. I really liked the quality of the sushi, though, as we had been warned, it was a bit more "spendy" than some other places.

So Paul has been remembered for another year and in a month we'll do it all over again for David's ... god ... fourteenth anniversary. It doesn't seem possible. But then the rest of the year, from May 18 to when the holidays start in November is free and clear without emotional family entanglements!

Bits and Pieces

Why housekeeping can be very frustrating. The dogs have been tracking in mud from the sporadic rain storms, along with the usual dust, flying fur, and the pieces of foam from a pillow they have been destroying for the past several weeks. Today I was cleaning it all up, including all the stuff that had accumulated under the furniture in the family room and kitchen. I had this nice little big pile swept up.

First, Polly came over and started rooting through it, like a shopper at a big bin sale, until she found a piece of paper she wanted and then gingerly lifted it out of the dust and ran off to jump in one of the recliners with it.

Then the garbage man arrived and the dogs raced from the front to the back of the house to chase them away.

Back to square one!

Yeah, Polly is still here. She's got it all figured out now. She starts trembling the minute I put a leash on her on Saturday to take her to Petco, and is still trembling when she gets out of the cage at Petco. In between arriving and leaving she may snap at a few people. Then I pick her up, get into the car, she gives a smug smile, stops trembling and snuggles under my arm for the trip home. We keep telling her this isn't her "forever home," but she's not buying it.

I am Polly's goddess. She lives for my attention. Look at that face. That face says "are we going to cuddle now, please?" Never mind that I have just spent several hours in the recliner with her...I had the audacity to get up for a couple of minutes.

Whenever I walk--anywhere--she follows along behind me, constantly leaping at my calves. Whenever I go behind a closed door she stands at the door whining. She's worse than a toddler.

But she's the best dog to sleep with. As soon as I cover us up with a quilt, she burrows under it, along my left leg, sometimes with her head on my chest, and falls asleep. She doesn't move all night long and when I wake up some 5-7 hours later, she is crushed that I actually sit up and get up. How dare I leave her alone in the chair when all she wants is to sleep in my lap.

That pathetic face and body language say "you have that funny black box pointed in my direction; please don't hurt me." It's why I have so few photos of her. She's terribly uncooperative.

Who knows how much longer this little girl, who has been here nearly 4 months, will be here. I suspect that it's going to take a long time for her to transfer her slavish devotion to me over to a new forever mom. But it will happen eventually. My calves will rejoice on that day, though I will miss her whenever I go to sleep at night.

She's a sweet little dog, but she's not home yet...even if she thinks she is.

---

I went to write a note to that guy who called me the other day to tell me how much he liked my journal. One of the things we spoke about was Lawsuit and his desire to find more Lawsuit music. I went to YouTube and found all the "new" stuff that Ned has uploaded over the past several months--more than I had seen in a very long time.

Walt and I both watched the video below and laughed a lot. It's very long (10 minutes), but if you can stick with it through the first 8 minutes or so, I think it's worth it. It was recorded in August of 1996. It was the only time during a Lawsuit concert that Paul was so dumbfounded he couldn't find words.

---

Very Long Day

It's a very long day when it begins at 4 a.m. I found myself wide awake and so caught up on one or two programs on my DVR before I finally drifted off to sleep again. It was the first time in I can't remember how long that the alarm clock (actually the alarm on my cell phone) actually woke me up. I had an 8 a.m. dentist appointment and knew that I might be in danger of sleeping too late so thank goodness I had the foresight to set it the night before..

By 8 a.m., I was flat on my back, doing my best Lamaze breathing to relax myself, letting my thoughts float where they may and almost drifting off to sleep while my teeth were being scraped. Now that's a good dental appointment! I came home and wrote "look ma, no cavities--sorta" as my Facebook status. Someone asked if that was "like being sorta pregnant" and I guess it is. When the hygienist had finished with the cleaning, Cindy did a quick once-over, poked one spot and said "I don't think I need to do anything about this now" and was gone again. I took that as a cavity-in-the-making, but too small to worry about right now.

I came home and made the rum raisin ice cream I'd planned to make (and lemme tell you, it's good!). It was pretty blatantly clear by noon that if I was going to review a show tonight, I was going to have to take a nap.

So, after I had some lunch, I settled into the recliner with a quilt and 2 dogs and drifted almost immediately off to sleep.

As so frequently happens, I had forgotten to do anything about the telephone and I had just gotten into a deep sleep when it rang. I just don't understand how I can go an entire WEEK without the phone ringing, but the very second I take a nap that I really need to take or be in trouble that night, the phone rings. And since it's so complicated to get out from under two dogs and a quilt, I'm wide awake by the time I've made it to the telephone.

The worst part was that it was a call that was coming two days too soon. It was my fellow critic, who wanted to know if I would like to carpool to Saturday night's show in Sacramento. By the time I'd made arrangements with him, I had slept too long to go back to sleep and hadn't slept NEARLY long enough to qualify as a nap.

I got some more stuff done around the house and then decided that I really HAD to get some sleep. Things are a bit fuzzy when I think about this. I know that I fell asleep, but I have the feeling that again I only slept for a matter of minutes before some sound (not the phone this time--and I don't know what sound it was--it might have been a loud commercial on TV) woke me up.

I gave up on sleep and hoped for the best. I also hoped that maybe I'd slept for enough time that I wouldn't have problems staying awake tonight.

Walt was out at a meeting until nearly 7:00 and I threw some leftovers in his general direction when he came home because we had to leave in about half an hour. I had eaten a bit earlier.

When time came, we got all the dogs "treated" and went up to the University.

Tonight was the night of the annual theatre festival (actually I supposed it happens twice a year, once in each semester) where young playwrights and young directors (and young actors) get to put on original plays, under the "artistic curatorship" of one of the professors in the Drama Department.

There are three plays each time and what I have usually found is that there is usually one real gem and two that are so-so. But there are also usually performances that stand out even in so-so productions.

Walt liked all three plays this time, I didn't find the "gem" I was looking for, but I did get the answer to my question: Did I get enough sleep during my two naps? NO! At the end of the second play when the cast came out to take its bow and I saw a character I don't remember seeing in the play at all, I knew that I had missed a chunk of it! Fortunately, I have a play synopsis and the playwright's notes about it, so armed with those and what I did see, I should be able to piece together a decent review.

As I write this it is 11:30 and the review must be at the paper first thing in the morning, so I have miles to go before I sleep again. But of course, I had to procrastinate a bit and write this journal entry first.

F T S

I told this story in this journal once, but not since May of 2000, so perhaps this is a good day to do it because it has been unexpectedly emotional for me today.

It started with Jeri, who posted this picture on Facebook:

It was designed by Paul's best friend, Kag. I adopted it as my profile photo for the day. Several of Paul's friends posted it to their wall. Nobody gave any identification. Those of us who would appreciate it didn't need any explanation.

Throughout the day, status entries from lots of people started popping up, just saying "FTS." I actually got a phone call from Shelly and Ellen asking what the heck "FTS" meant. So this is what I posted 9 years ago:

"FTS" is an in joke. We may have the only grave in the cemetery with a joke included, this being a rather staid and proper place. When Walt and I went with Paul’s wife to order the grave plot, the cemetery keeper was looking for where there was a double plot available so he could move David and bury Paul next to him. Audra (Paul’s wife) started musing... "Paul said there was something he wanted on his grave marker...what was it...?" We wanted to go with whatever she wanted, so I was curious about what Paul had said to her. All of a sudden, this "look" came over her face and I knew she had remembered--and that she couldn’t say it in front of the cemetery keeper.

When we got outside, I said "OK--what was it that Paul said," She blushed. "He said he thought it would be perfect to say ‘fuck this shit.’" We agreed that it probably wasn’t such a good idea to put that on a gravestone that was going to outlast all of us. But later when I was speaking with my friend Olivia, she said "Of course you can--just use ‘fts.’" So on the program for the memorial, we included "fts" on the back page and we decided that it was fitting that Paul get his last wish, so "fts" was engraved in his grave marker.

I suppose there are those who think it’s terrible, but...that was Paul and it just seems fitting. David would have loved it, and it pretty much describes how we felt about having to design a grave marker for two of our sons. And--hey--sometimes you just have to laugh, even in the face of tragedy. Or perhaps especially in the face of tragedy.

So that explains all the "FTS" messages on Facebook today.

The one thing I hate about Paul dying on this date is that it's the anniversary of Columbine, so there are Columbine retrospectives on lots of news channels every year. I remember that my first thought after we received "the call" was to wonder if Paul had been depressed over what happened in Columbine. It didn't make sense at the time, and it doesn't make sense now, but I was grasping at straws trying to understand what had happened.

When Walt and I went to Denver to see The Last Session several months later and the group went for a tour that would take them to Columbine, I chose not to go because I just couldn't face actually going to Columbine (whether you have any connection to the tragedy or not, it still seems a kind of creepy "tourist attraction" !)

So we did our thing tonight. Stopped at the store to get flowers, then drove out to the cemetery to leave them (expecting to see the annual jar of mayonnaise from Paul's friend Jessica...but she leaves it at night, apparently...she leaves it because Paul detested mayonnaise).

Then we headed off to Osaka Sushi, where we had dinner. I had the first beer I've had in decades.

Dinner was great, as usual. I got brave and daring and ordered something I'd never ordered before...and it was really good!

Osaka Maki

Cantankerous Coochie Snorcher

Men (or women, for that matter) who are uncomfortable with the discussion of the idiosyncracies of the female body might want to stop reading right here.

Let's just say that this cartoon looks mighty good to me today. A nice warm breeze would feel very comforting about now.

Even after working in ob/gyn for 12 years, I still had to look up the kind of approach to take when your body is becoming a one-woman bread-making factory, or at least producing the leavening agent.

If I were wearing jeans, you'd think I had just come in off of a multi-hour horseback ride.

Goin' Commando helps. Soothing medications help.

"Don't scratch" they are quick to tell you, but it's kind of hard when it feels like you're sitting in a very active ants' nest. But it helps when there are so many dogs sitting on your lap that you can't reach your nether regions. You start wishing you could act like the dog and drag your body along the pile of a rug. Now I know why they look so happy doing it.

It's significantly better than it was a few days ago, but it's still occupying too much of my attention. I'm hoping that improvement will continue. There are far more pleasant things to think about.

---

Each year as this time approaches, I am torn between "writing something" and not "writing something." But this year seems kind of significant.

It's ten years since Paul died and yet it seems like only yesterday.

We were at my mother's for Easter and I sat there looking at Ned's profile, realizing that it was man's profile (I should hope so, since he's nearly 42!) and the hair on the side of his head is almost white.

Paul is permanently stuck at 30. He will never have wrinkles, never have grey in his hair, never develop all of those nagging symptoms that plague us as we get older.

But by the same token, he never knew Brianna. Never got to see Tom balancing his daughter on his hand. He never even got to see Tom married.

He never joined in the joy of watching Jeri and Phil get married either. How that would have tickled him, since he'd been Phil's friend for so many years.

I watch the music videos that Ned is creating now and think back over the hundreds of videos that Ned and Paul made together through the years. Ned has taken all that experience and run with it and I'm so proud of him. But what fun Paul missed out on. He missed the whole digital age.

I heard today that the nephew of a Facebook friend just died, at age 23. We just went to Michael's funeral last week, age 43.

I'm tired of beautiful young people dying. When you've lost a young person you love, you find that you carry each and every one of the other young people in your heart and it just intensifies the pain when the next person dies, when you watch another family struggling to get through another memorial service.

I suppose we'll be going out for dinner tomorrow night. We've kind of gotten into that habit over the years. And then we'll put Paul aside for another year and gear up for the 13th anniversary of David's death next month.

The Concept Album

I'm missing Paul this week. The feature article I've been working on is about the upcoming Citizens Who Care show, an annual fund-raiser for an organization which provides support for the frail elderly and their family caregivers. Walt is on its board, coincidentally.

Each year they feature the music of a composer or lyricist (or both). This year is the first year that they are featuring the music of a performer, Frank Sinatra.

Sinatra was one of Paul's idols and, in fact, we attempted to get tickets for him to see Sinatra in Reno or Lake Tahoe as a birthday gift. As it turned out, it would have been Sinatra's last concert, but in the end he was ill and had to cancel, so Paul never did get to see him perform live, but he sure loved Sinatra and his music. I would love to be able to discuss this article with him -- and he would love to be working in the theatre for the concert, as he did many of those annual concerts.

I always thought of the photo on the left as Paul's Sinatra photo. He was the M.C. for his friend Kag's wedding.

The problem with putting together a show that features the music of Sinatra is that Sinatra recorded just about every popular song ever written during his 60+ year career.

Stephen Peithman, who writes and arranges the shows. decided to ignore the early years, and to start his story about the time Sinatra took control of his own career, around the time of From Here to Eternity, just after his divorce from Ava Gardner (the show only runs 2-3 hours, after all!)

He chose that start point because in 1955 he recorded the first "concept" album and invented a whole new genre of music in the process. The "concept" album was a collection of a bunch of songs around a central theme, and then hiring songwriters to write a couple of new songs to fill out the list. The title of the album generally was the title of one of the new songs. More often than not, the albums went to #1 on the charts.

Research for the article brought back a number of memories. One thing that I had forgotten...the first concept album, "In the Wee Small Hours" was one of the first 12" LPs. In these days we don't even remember when LPs were only 10". I had a whole bunch of them at one time and sold them all to Peach because I was trying to raise money to fly to Phoenix to see Sister Anne (I never did make the trip, and never bought my records back.)

I remember my father coming home with a 12" LP, all excited at the new technology that allowed more songs to be put on an album. He was excited about something called "high fidelity." (He died before CDs came on the market. He would have been amazed at the advances in sound quality!)

We had many of Sinatra's concept albums, including "In the Wee Small Hours." I probably still have them all. Some of the others included "Only the Lonely," all "she done me wrong" songs.

"Come Fly with Me" was all about other places ..."Around the World," "Isle of Capri," "On the Road to Mandaly," "April in Paris," "London by Night," "Blue Hawaii," etc.

"Come Dance with Me" is all dance music -- "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Cheek to Cheek," "Dancing in the Dark," "Same Old Song and Dance"... etc.

There were 16 in all that he recorded for Capital Records, and more that he recorded on his own Reprise Label. One that has been out of print for years was called "Watertown," described as "...conceived and co-written by The Four Seasons' house songwriter Bob Gaudio, and following the misery of a divorced father left stranded in a small town with his kids. Sinatra is in fine, morose voice, brightened just a little by the tastefully kitschy late-'60s contempo-pop arrangements."

Sinatra has more than 1000 recordings to his credit, including some lesser known works he did in Brasil with Antonio Carlos Jobim. Trying to trim that down to about 35 songs was a real challenge for Stephen. His first list, covering just the period of time after 1954, was more than 300 songs.

It's going to be interesting to see what made the final cut (I'm told "My Way" did).

I just wish Paul could be here for the show...

Forty Years Ago

(An excerpt from my diary dated January 28, 1969. I think it shows the progress that has been made in childbirth over the past 40 years.)

Contractions started around 3:30 a.m. and were just like when Ned was born--very irregular, mild to moderate, and disappointing. We decided to go see Dr. Roth, who sent me over to Delivery to have them break my water and get things started. He told me the baby would probably be born in about 3 hours.

I guess they were busier than they thought there because they didn't do anything to speed things up and just let me go at my own pace, which took a long time. The doctor, an intern, didn't check me for about 3 hours and I was fairly discouraged about everything because I had no idea how far into labor I was. When he finally did check me around 6, he wasn't terribly encouraging. By that time I was awfully tired and the hardest part was wondering how much longer I had to stay on top of contractions--if it was a question of hours, I didn't think I could do it.

My water finally broke and almost immediately my contractions became extremely hard and close together. The nurse examined me and asked if I wanted anything for pain, which I declined. Two contractions later, I changed my mind and rang for her. She took one look at me and all hell broke loose because Paul had decided to come now. It was really kind of funny. They were wheeling me thru the halls at top speed saying "don't push" and I was trying with all my might not to, and being very unsuccessful about it. Dr. Smith was racing around saying "wait for me!" and the nurse was saying "I told you she'd go quickly." Dr. Mayo, the staff doctor, asked if I wanted gas, which I vehemently rejected. I was in the middle of another contraction that I wasn't supposed to push for and began to blow very hard and I heard Dr. Mayo saying "she's a breather; she's a French breather." Anyway, in a very short time, I saw a little blue foot sticking up in the air and Dr. Smith said that Paul was a boy, but didn't show him to me and whisked him away to the basket to be cared for...I hadn't even seen his face yet.

Before being admitted, I had called Dr. Rousseau for permission to nurse on the delivery table. Dr. Smith wasn't too hot on that idea and said he had to ask the staff doctor. After Paul was born, I reminded him about it and he said he'd forgotten and it didn't look like he was going to say anything, so I yelled at Dr. Mayo to ask for permission, which he readily granted. Paul was crying very vigorously but wasn't too interested in nursing, though every time I put my nipple in his mouth, he did stop crying. It wasn't an ideal nursing set-up anyway, as Dr. Smith was still working on the episiotomy and the only position I could get into put Paul under my armpit. But it did serve its purpose--I got to hold Paul for a few minutes. The nurse finally whisked him away to the nursery--another thing I didn't go for; I would rather have carried him myself--while they finished cleaning me up.

Walt and I went down to the maternity floor, where all the beds were occupied, so I was installed in a bed in the hall for the night. Then when I asked about something to eat, I was told it was too late. Having had nothing since 7 a.m., I was starving, so Walt went out and brought me a roast beef sandwich and a couple of candy bars. By the time he came back, I wasn't feeling quite as chipper as I had earlier. I had started having afterpains that were really beauts. I knew that the pains got worse with each progressive birth, but didn't expect anything so strong. Walt finally left around 10 and I lay back on my bed of pain. I knew I was bleeding heavily because each time I had a pain, I could feel it trickle out between my legs and I knew I was pretty soggy. Shortly after Walt left, the pains got just horrible--nearly as bad as giving birth--and suddenly I gave a big push and passed a huge blood clot. It took awhile to get the nurse (having no call button to push) and when she came I told her about it and she rushed off in search of help. I felt much better after passing the clot and was relatively comfortable. Then the pains started again and a nurse massaged my abdomen to pass a couple more clots. Dr. Smith came down to start an IV solution of dextrose which stayed in my vein all night.

In the morning, the nurse got me up to take me to the bathroom and left me for a minute. I felt kind of weak and the next thing I knew, I was picking myself up off the bathroom floor. When the nurse came back, I told her what happened. She started to wash me off and again the next thing I knew she had my head in a vice-like grip and was holding some ammonia under my nose and repeating "are you all right?" Never fainted before in my life and all of a sudden I had passed out twice in a period of a couple of minutes. I knew I felt bad when it took me two hours to get up enough strength to walk down the hall to the pay phone to call Walt--and even then I didn't think I'd make it, nor did I talk for long or call anyone else, except Dr. Rousseau (the pediatrician). For me that's weak.

---

That was 40 years ago. It's difficult to realize that Paul would be 40 years old today. He's permanently frozen at 30.

Happy Birthday, Paul -- Wherever you are

12 years

Is It Any Wonder...

Tomorrow was going to be Cousins Day and it was my turn to cook. I was completely uninspired. Nothing sounded good to me, so I spent a lot of time rummaging around on Foodnetwork.com.

I finally came up with a recipe from Rachael Ray, which sounded tasty--it was chicken in an apricot sauce served with butternut squash risotto. I always try to make something I've never made before when it's my turn to cook for others (except for Walt, of course) and this looked to be pretty simple.

The risotto called for using frozen butternut squash, but they didn't have any, so I decided to go with fresh, which worked just as well.

However, the thing that got me was that I stood at one end of the frozen food aisle and took a photo:

A vast array of frozen foods, everything from frozen vegetables to entrees to desserts to breakfasts to frozen fruit, etc., etc., etc.

How much of this aisle do you suppose is devoted to frozen vegetables?

Exactly TWO of the doors open to just plain ol' veggies. There are vegetables in the third door here, too, but those are the ones that come buttered, creamed, or in some other way adulterated with unhealthy stuff.

Now, I am the very last person to complain about the preponderance of high fat, high carbohydrate, overly sweet, fake foods. I never met a carbohydrate or a calorie I didn't like, but when I looked at that long aisle and realized that the unadulterated frozen vegetables were tucked off in a corner like the black sheep in the family, to make room for frozen pizza, 50 different kinds of waffles, whipped topping, breaded whatevers, cream cheese stuffed peppers, etc., etc...well, it just seemed strange, given the epidemic of obesity in this country, especially among young people that we continue to have a proliferation of bad-for-you foods and continue to stock the shelves with all those things that I love and shouldn't eat.

Just an idle thought I had while wandering around the supermarket with a camera at my fingertips.

You may have picked up on the wording of the first sentence above, where I said "tomorrow was to have been Cousins Day." I had just about picked up all of the ingredients I needed for my Rachael Ray meal when my cell phone rang. It was Peach, saying that Kathy isn't feeling well and didn't think she could make it to Cousins Day. Peach and I had to make the decision about whether we were going to go anyway, or just change the date.

Well, that's a no brainer. We can't have Cousins Day without Kathy. So we are going to do a conference call tomorrow and see if we can find a new date.

The plan for the evening had been for Walt and I to go to the cemetery and then go out to dinner, but in all honesty, I really didn't feel like going out to dinner. My heart wasn't in it. It was partly disappointment about Cousins Day and partly because...well, because it was April 20.

So instead, I cooked my Cousins Day dinner for Walt and me. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be, so I will probably choose something different when we actually do have Cousins Day.

We did go out to the cemetery. This year I bought pink roses, because of Brianna and then I printed off Laurel's latest photo of her and stuck it in a plastic case and attached it to the bouquet of flowers.

Yeah, it was silly...did I expect them to know I'd done it? To rise up out of the grave and check the photo? Of course not, but somehow I just needed to do it. The two of them would have been so excited about their little niece.

And besides, anybody visiting the cemetery from now until they remove the flowers will notice it and I'm nothing if not one to wring every bit of drama I can from a situation.

It can't be 9 years. Wasn't it just yesterday....?

Oh...and if I didn't already e-mail it to you, you MUST go to Flickr and see the very best photo of Lizzie ever.

Some Internet-Related Stuff

OK...call me a slow learner, but where has Google Reader been all my life? Actually it's been right on my desktop. I started using it a year or so ago when I was watching more video blogs than I watch now, and just never got the whole "reader" thing so stopped using it. My god, I was so wrong!!!

A "reader" (there are many of them; Google Reader is only one) allows you to subscribe to the blogs that you read on a regular basis. Now this is where the difference between "blog" and "journal" comes in. Initially the difference had to do with content (journals being chronicle of a person's life, blog being an indepth discussion of internet material), but now I think that it is mostly structural.

With a blog, where all your entries are run together, in reverse order, the latest one preceding the others on the page, you can tell when a new entry has been made. A journal, like Funny the World, which has a front ("splash") page which directs you to the list of entries that you'll find on subsequent pages, is a different format and you can't really set it up for subscribers (which is why I set up the mirror blog to this journal, Airy Persiflage, for those who complained that they used readers and couldn't subscribe to Funny the World).

(This is boring the hell out of you, isn't it?)

ANYWAY, the whole point of this is that I was playing around with Google Reader yesterday and subscribed to all the blogs that I read on a regular basis. There are some which are still in "journal" format, like Jim's Journal and Nilknarf News (to name just two), which aren't able to be subscribed to. But most of the ones that I read could be added to the list.

Now, the neat thing about this (for those of you who are still following me and who haven't been using readers for decades already) is that now you just open your Google Reader and there, like bookmarks, are all your blogs but if there has been a new entry since the last time you checked, that blog will be highlighted. So that means you don't have to check every single blog every single day. Google Reader lets you know when there is something new to read! This shaves...oh...minutes...off of my day, because I don't have to go to each and every blog to see if there is new content. I just look down the list on Google Reader and it tells me instantly.

This actually means that I've now added more blogs to my list because the ones that were way down on the bottom I didn't get to all that often because I got so tired checking all the ones at the top of the list. Google Reader has allowed me to clean up my bookmarks significantly.

Why did it take me so long to discover this wonderful tool???

And while I'm asking "how come" questions, I am finding it curious that Michele, who has one of those "question of the day" sites has hundreds of hits every day, but Indigo, who asks questions on That's My Answer has less than a dozen regulars. All you people who find it fun to answer questions, hop over to her site and check her out! She's more consistent than Michele.

Some of the recent questions that people have answered:

• if you were to play tic tac toe, would you be X or O?

• Do you have anything that you keep to remind you of somebody important to you?

• Would you rather be 6" taller or 6" shorter than you are now?

• How many hours do you sleep each night?

• When was the last time you played on the swings? Went down a slide? Built a sand castle?

See? Fun stuff. Try it out. It's addicting.

OK. It has to be mentioned.

When Paul did his last monologue show, Sedona, Arizona, the most difficult segment to watch was his segment on David's death. It was particularly difficult because Walt and I hadn't been in the hospital when David died and nobody told us the extent of his injuries, which I learned for the first time in the theatre when Paul described them in detail in that segment.

But he started the segment saying that he wanted to talk about it because he and I had never discussed the details surrounding my sister's death in 1971, and throughout his life, people hardly ever mentioned her. He felt that, to him, Karen was just "the one who died" and he didn't want Dave to become just "the one who died" so he wanted to talk about him.

Well, today is the 9th anniversary of Paul's death...and next month, on the 18th of May, we will commemorate the 12th anniversary of David's death. I'm wondering if when Brianna is in her 20s she will feel that they were just "the ones who died."

So, Paul, I'm talking about you again. You definitely are more than "the one who died," but you have to understand that we have all moved on and that you haven't done much in the past nine years to warrant conversation.

It doesn't mean we don't love you or miss you.