They Don't Tell You This

The problem with growing up and especially getting older is something we don't think about until it happens to us.  We either die early, or we watch all of our friends dying, one by one.  Both situations suck!

Before my computer died (even computers get old!) I had started keeping a list of all of our friends who died and which year we lost them.  One year we lost 13 friends, friends of ours, not friends of our parents.  But it's too depressing to try to compile that list again.

This week we lost Mitch Agruss, grand old man of Sacramento theater, recently given a lifetime achievement award.  We knew Mitch first when we first moved here and the kids watched his "Captain Mitch" cartoon show every day.  It was not until he was about to do a show a few years back and I went to interview him (my photo at left) that I learned what an amazing man he was.  His apartment was like a museum of show business, and he had tales of doing summer stock with the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Moss Hart among others.

Following that interview, we became casual friends.  We had friends in common and we occasionally had lunch with them.  We drove him and my colleague to a lot of shows in Sacramento.  I loved watching him "holding court" in the lobby as everyone in the theater, it seemed, wanted to come and say hello to him.

But it became obvious that he was not going to live much longer and after a brief hospitalization, he died of a stroke in the ambulance, headed back to his apartment.

At the same time, we recently went to the 95th birthday party of our friend of >40 years, Arthur Sullivan, who is probably not going to live much longer, according to his long-time partner, a physician.

Arthur has been a friend ever since he joined The Lamplighters a bazillion years ago.  World's sweetest man and though we didn't see him often, I am saddened to know that he is on his way out.

Today we had news of the hospitalization of another friend of >40 years.  I don't know the degree of seriousness, but he had to be transported to Sacramento because they did not have the resources to care for him at the hospital here in town.  I know he has not been well for a long time and I just pray that we hear good news about him.

And then I called Peach this afternoon.  I had not spoken with her since before I went on the cruise.  She had difficulty speaking, slurring her words, and pretty much not making much sense.  She gave the phone to her daughter, who says they are kind of in a holding pattern, knowing that the end is near and just trying to bring a smile to her face as often as they can.  They have met with the priest and have made preliminary arrangements for her funeral, which makes me cry whenever I mention it.  She has been more of a sister to me than my own sister ever was, and especially following Karen's death.  A big part of me wants to fly to Iowa, but I know they have more than they can handle right now--and it's about ready to snow (I was there last year at this time), so I'm better off staying at home, but my heart aches for her, and perhaps more for myself, knowing that she is on her way out.

With her death, the death of our cousin Kathy in 2011, and the death of our cousin Shirley a few years before that, it will leave me as the oldest survivor of our generation and that is a sobering thought. 

You reach a certain age and you don't make new friends any more and just watch the ones you have fade away, if you don't do it first.  But it gets more and more lonely as there are fewer and fewer people to whom you can turn when you lose another friend.  My mother is still here, but losses don't faze her any more and she responds by saying "well...life goes on..." which isn't the kind of shared emotion that I need and is, in its own way, another daily manifestation of another loss, whether she is still alive or not.

I'm just in a real funk today, needing a big "there-there."

Dave Fisk

You know, there are some days when there is just nothing, really to talk about.  It's impossible to answer my mother's constantly asked question "what have you been doing exciting?" when all I've been doing is going to Atria or watching TV.

So I didn't write anything here last night because I had nothing to write about.  And i got up early this morning to see if I was inspired  I had a couple of ideas, but first I updated my journal database and then went on to Facebook to post my weekly "Throwback Thursday" photo, today's, a picture of David, Paul and Ned from a production of The Wizard of Oz.

But what I saw when I went to post my picture made my heart sink.  It was three different notices, from his brothers and sister-in-law that Dave Fisk lost his month-long battle in the ICU.

Dave and his family have been our friends since all the kids were in school together.  There are a lot of Fisks, and a lot of Sykeses and they did a lot together.  Brother Chad was in theatrical productions with our kids.  Dave was always included in everything that the other kids did.

One of my fondest memories of Dave was when the high school was performing Our Town.  Paul had the role of the Stage Manager, who narrates the action on stage.  The show had just started and Paul was standing at the edge of the stage, setting the scene for the audience, when Dave came in, late.  The Veteran's Memorial Theater is fairly large, for a community theater, somewhat under 400 seats, and Dave, who was quite large, came lumbering down the stairs.  He got to the bottom of the stairs and walked across to the other side of the theater, raising his hand and saying "Hi, Paul!" as he passed him.  It got a chuckle from the audience, almost all of whom certainly knew Dave as a familiar figure around town.

He had the best smile in the world and was quick to give hugs.

When brother Chad was getting married, the wedding was on the stage of the theater and Chad decided he wanted Dave to get one of those minister-for-a-day licenses so that he could perform the ceremony.  Paul went over and over and over with Dave what he was supposed to say, what would be going on on the stage.  Dave was so proud to be the guy in charge.  Paul stood by him to help him get through it all, and at the end of the ceremony, an exuberant Dave turned to Chad and his new bride and said "You may kiss the groom!"

I haven't seen Dave in several years now and was saddened to read that he was seriously ill and in the hospital.  Walt and Ned went to visit him on Sunday, on their way back from Lake Tahoe before meeting me at the theater where I was reviewing a show.  I'm glad they had a chance to say goodbye.

Dave was a special guy and he made an impact on everyone who knew him.  He will be greatly missed.

R.I.P., l'empress

People who read Funny the World may not be familiar with Harriet Vachss Harris who used the nom de plume "l'empress" for her journal, A Place of My Own, and for writing comments on blogs, but for those who read these entries on my mirror blog, Airy Persiflage, her name will be familiar, as she frequently commented on entries there.  In fact she was almost the only one who ever commented there.

Harriet lost her battle with lymphoma yesterday.  Always cautious about revealing too much about her personal life, we knew that she had battled cancer, but did not know that she had recently been given "six months, if you're lucky."  Sadly, she was not lucky.

She was such a loyal commenter, always one to hold my feet to the fire in the way that the late Jim Lawrence used to do that when I noticed in February that she had not commented on anything in a long while, nor had she updated her own blog, which she usually updated several times a week, I dropped a note to her daughter, who is on Facebook.

"It hurts my heart every time I have to type this," she wrote, "but my mom's time is more finite than most. We're going to offer her one more option but her steady response is that she simply cannot undergo treatment."

Even then I didn't understand that she was in the hospital.  Her daughter talked about her returning to the assisted living home where she had recently moved and where she seemed to incredibly happy to finally really have "a place of her own."

But that was not to be.  In short order she was in a nursing home and it was clear that the family was on a death watch. People all over the internet sent messages of love and support to her daughter, who spent Harriet's last days reading them to her.  In fact, she was reading them to her shortly before she died.

"I have said since the beginning that you and my mom are so alike that I feel you're more like her than her sister is," her daughter wrote to me.  Harriet and I never really had much in the way of direct exchanges.  Mostly our interactions were comments made on each other's blogs or comments that we both made on That's My Answer each day and we did seem to have an awful lot of things in common.

Harriet had a hard life.  She lived in a house with her daughter and son-in-law.  Her husband had been moved to a nursing home awhile ago.  I never could figure out what his mental state was and whether he had dementia along with his many physical problems, but it was clear that she was devoted to him and just had reached the point where it was physically impossible for her to care for him any longer.  And she wanted desperately to move into her own place, when she could afford it.  I gathered things were cramped in the place she always called "the cracker box."

I know it didn't help when the basement flooded a few years ago.

But she is finally at peace.  She was not a good friend, but she was a presence nearly every day and I will miss her.  I suspect that if we had been neighbors, we might have become good friends.

The Spirit is Willing...

One thing you learn about getting old(er) is that no matter how much you want to do "stuff" and think you can do stuff, there is a finite energy reserve and it just ain't what you had at 30...or 40...or 50 or, heck, even 60.

I am always complaining about what my mother does not do and how she does not participate in any of the activities at Atria and how she says that she's earned the right to do nothing if she doesn't want to.

If I'm not careful I'm going to start sounding just like her any day now.

We leave for Santa Barbara tomorrow night, and Ashley and David move in to take care of the dogs.  I had grand plans for what I wanted to do to get the house ready for them, but I also wanted to bake Christmas cookies, had laundry to get done, packages to wrap and a host of things that sneak up on you when you lose the last 3 days before the holiday itself.  

We will be celebrating Christmas with Tom and family, Ned and Marta and Walt's sister and brother and their respective spouses on the 22nd, so we can drive home on the 23rd to be here to finish up Christmas preparations on the 24th and "have Christmas" with my mother on the 25th...and then do it again the next night when Jeri and Phil arrive.

I got up this morning filled with good intentions which included a trip to the bank, a trip to the store, a trip to visit my mother, and baking at least two more batches of cookies. That would, of course, include cleaning the kitchen between batches (Walt has been wonderful about keeping the dishwasher emptied).  I got some packages wrapped in the morning, then we did the bank and the supermarket and then I went and took a poinsettia to my mother and visited for an hour.  

I figured that after I got home (at 3:30) I could get a batch of cookies made, dinner made, and then get the house straightened up (including removing a thick accumulation of dust on everything), a small golden tree put up on the dining room table, and the rest of the packages wrapped.  The big ones, for the girls.

Yeah, it would be a long day, but I've done it before, I could do it again.

Problem was that my body just wouldn't move after a certain point.  I had to sit down to regroup several times and each time I sat down to rest my body it was for a bit longer time.

So here I am at 11 p.m., writing this (as my latest break to rest my back).  There is absolutely no strength left in my arms and I can barely stagger to the kitchen. Even my butt aches. The cookies are now finished, the utensils and pots and pans are in the dishwasher and now I can finish wrapping presents and straightening up the house.

But I have hit the wall.

Five years ago I could have done this.  Tonight I cannot.

And so I understand my mother, who is, of course, old enough to be my mother, when she says that she just doesn't want to move out of her chair.

But we had a good visit today.  Today was one of those "I'm old...why am I here?" days, but we got to talking about her death and how she preferred to die.  I managed to make a lot of jokes about her death.  I'm getting really good about death jokes, which sounds morbid, but it's something that makes her laugh.

For example when she worries that she might die while I'm not in town, I tell her that if she feels she is going to die she should quickly run out into the hall waving her arms and yelling "I'm dying! I'm dying" so that someone will notice and be there so she doesn't have to lie on the floor for a long time.

When she worries about what will happen to her body if she dies when I'm not here, I tell her I've arranged with the chef to hang her in the meat locker until I get home.  She giggles at that too, but it does stop her concerns about dying when I'm out of town.

I just hope she doesn't die tonight because if they called from Atria, I'm not sure I have the strength to drive over there.  Just put her in the meat locker and I'll be there in the morning....

The Rainbow Bridge

I am not a fan of sappy sentiment, especially things like this, which I want to say is just so sappily sentimental that it makes me roll my eyes, but yet if you are someone who has loved and lost a pet, it probably brings some comfort.

My friends Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin lost their beloved Steinbeck this week.

The cat was 15 years old, lived a long and happy life, and died in their arms, peeing on them as he left life.  The perfect ending.  

I have a bone to pick with God.  He really designed things wrong.  It is completely unfair that he gave us animals to bond with us and be our life partners and then saddle them with such a short life spans.

When a pet dies, we are disconsolate, and somewhat embarrassed that we let our tears flow freely. "It was just a cat" or "dog" or "whatever."  No.  It was not "just [an animal]."   

When you share your life with an animal they are there in good times and in bad.  You play with them, sleep with them, talk to them, feed them, take care of them.  They watch you and are clued into your every mood.  They try to comfort when you are sad, they are quick to forgive, and you may have a relationship closer to your pet than you have to most of your friends. Why wouldn't you cry at their death and feel deeply sad after they are gone.

When the end of life is near, we feel frantic because we are helpless to prolong their life.  We want to say "no! no!  Don't go! Not yet!"   But we love them and know that the kindest thing we can do often is to let them go.   They often tell us when it is their time.  I remember our dog Seymour, who was a ball chasing demon died of cancer.  I knew that day she spent her day with her head on a chair, and no interest in balls at all, that it was time.

I've seen a number of animals leave this life.  None of us knows what happens after death, but it was our dog Toby who convinced me that there is a thing called a "soul" and that animals have one.  I held him when he was leaving life.  As the doctor gave him the first shot, he relaxed completely.  As she gave him the lethal shot, his body didn't change but his "essence" changed.   I could almost feel his soul...or his "something" leave his body.   He went from being our beloved pet to being an empty shell and the thing that made him Toby was no longer there.

It reminds me of the death of Lad, A Dog.  The mistress and the master return find Lad lying by his beloved lake and the master says "the engine has stopped" and she corrects him.  "No.  The engineer has left it."

We give these guys our love and they give us their unconditional love and when they leave us, it hurts so much.

I hope there is an afterlife.  I hope we are reunited with our loved ones.  And I hope that all those dogs who have preceeded me are there to be with me again.  

In the meantime, my heart is with Jim and with Steve  because I know how much they are hurting tonight.

Day 65:  This tree near my mother's was so gorgeous, I had to drive around the block
so I could be in position to take a photo of it.

Alexander and Logos

I had a big shock this afternoon.  I heard from a friend, who was trying to get in touch with our friend from UC Berkeley, that he had died last July.

Ed Andrews, for whom Ned (Edward Andrew) was named, joined the Benedictine monks in St. Cloud, Minnesota.  We flew to Minnesota for his ordination as Father Alexander, OSB in 1969, when Paul was just 4 months old.

We attended his first Mass and then never heard from him again, though I continued to send him Christmas messages each year.

Ed was a huge (literal and figurative) presence at the Newman Center in Berkeley and was a close friend, I thought.  He studied Russian when he was at Berkeley and spoke some Russian.  We learned to say "shumip shunitza" (that's my interpretation of how it sounds...it is, of course, written in Cyrillic script) which means "the grain is rustling," which he said was the most beautiful phrase in the Russian language.

He had blue eyes ("as blue as an Alaskan hitchhiker's thumb"), he often told us.  He proved to us that "How Dry I Am" was part of Shostakovich's 5th symphony. We laughed a lot with him and then I had such a huge hurt when I wrote to him after Dave died and never heard back.  I tried checking with someone at the abbey to find out if he had received my letter and was told that yes, he had.  But he had no words of friendship, or of comfort, or even one of those prayer cards that you get when someone is having a Mass said for the repose of someone's soul.   I am sorry that he is gone.  It leaves a big hole in the world, but he left us 40 years ago.

BUT, today was Thursday, so it's time for "Today at Logos."  I was shocked when I checked and found out that from the time the store opened that morning there had been three sales.  Three.   Total of $23.  

It's the first part of the month, so we have had a turnover in artists on display.  The new artist is Jeffrey Granett, whose exhibition is called "Translating Life to Paper."  He explains that "the images are abstract; they don't portray the physical objects seen or situations experienced; they are a result of my living the events.

This one, for example, is called "Japanese Sketch #2" and is described as "The airplane arrives safely and on time.  Our children, who are knowledgeable of Tokyo, are there waiting!"

My first customer was a woman with 5 books from the bargain table.  As she paid, she was telling me how happy she was to get some Medal of Honor stamps at the post office, apparently newly released.  She said she had served in the military from 1959-67 ("though not close to a medal of honor," she assured me!) I mentioned how Walt had been in the Air Force reserves and that he was one of the lucky ones who knew how to type and typists were in great demand.  We talked about typing and how you don't really need it any more, but there was a long period of time when it really was a good idea to learn how to type.

A few customers came, some bought, some didn't.   Then two men arrived with a big dog (Donner, they said his name was).  He was a beautiful dog.  They told me he was a rare red and white Irish setter.  Donner seemed friendly, but nervous.  He watched me carefully from behind the bookcases.

He finally started to come up to me, but when I looked at him, he growled quietly.  I didn't look at him or try to touch him and he eventually came up and stuck his nose in my hands and let me pet him.  Two girls who were looking through the fantasy section, eating their yogurt from the shop around the corner, started to walk toward him and jumped  when he barked at them.

A tall guy came in and was browsing in the math section.   Donner stared at him and just kept uttering this low growl the whole time.  He never tried to do anything, he never barked, and the customer ignored him,but Donner wasn't going to take his eyes off of this guy for anything.

One of the two guys finally bought an art book and they left.  I really like it when people bring their dogs into the store.

An older man, bent over trying to balance a stack of books, came in.   I thought he had picked them up from the Bargain shelves outside, but he was leaving a donation.

An older guy in nice slacks and a dress shirt (no tie) came in. He didn't buy anything, but he was noteworthy because he was wearing athletic shoes with electric orange soles.

I saw a guy outside reading books from the bargain cart. He was a swarthy, muscular guy, who finally came inside with 3 books he picked off the carts...all three were romance novels.

One of our local columnists came in looking for Susan.  This is the lady who has the job I wanted.  She writes the equivalent of a blog entry a week.  I started Funny the World hoping to be asked to do that.  I have to admit, though, that she does it much better than I do, so I can't be bitter.

"My friend" arrived at 4:30.  This time he bought two mysteries, one of which was a James Patterson book.  We had a bit of a discussion about Patterson's writing style decline since he became a "corporation" with vastly inferior "co-authors."  I did, however, read the first chapter of the book he found on the bargain shelves, "Private: #1 Suspect," and I ended up finding it cheap in a Kindle version and bought it.  The first chapter gives hints of the "old Patterson."  I've noticed that lately this guy has started to bring exact change so I don't have to make change for him, so I haven't screwed up his change in several weeks now.

We had a small rush of customers -- 5 at once!  None of them bought anything, but 2 women were asking me what expenses the store had other than rent.   They said they read about how much Logos donates to charity (Doctors without Borders and Save the Children -- they contributed $40,000 last year) and they thought the policy was marvelous.

The last couple who came in knocked the Open/Closed sign off the door and apologized profusely, very embarrassed, as they put it back on the door again.  They bought two history books, one about Paris and one about China.

I didn't have a busy day, but I certainly had a busier day than Susan did earlier.  And I got to meet a nice dog too!

~Sil and Logos

Another of my internet friends has died.  Regular readers of Funny the World will probably have seen many of her comments from ~Sil in Corea.  I didn't know her well, but we have been reading each other and interacting on Facebook for many years.  I think she was a Quaker, in her 80s, and had lived in South Korea for many years, working at a welfare center.  I just remember that she seemed a gentle soul who shared all of my passions for social justice.  I will miss her very much.

Sil and her family in 2013

But today is Thursday, so it's time for Today at Logos, kind of abbreviated version, hitting the high points.

My first customer today was my friend Ruth.  She had just come from the local radio station, where she had recorded her program for this week.  She reads stories having to do with the Gold Rush era.  I guess she is finished with Mark Twain for the time being.  This time she was telling me about Hugh Glass, an American fur trapper and frontiersman noted for his exploits during the first third of the 19th century.  He was most famous as a frontier folk hero for his legendary cross-country trek after being mauled by a grizzly bear.

Despite his injuries, Glass regained consciousness. He did so only to find himself abandoned, without weapons or equipment, suffering from a broken leg, the cuts on his back exposing bare ribs, and all his wounds festering. Glass lay mutilated and alone, more than 200 miles from the nearest American settlement at Fort Kiowa on the Missouri.

In one of the more remarkable treks known to history, Glass set his own leg, wrapped himself in the bear hide his companions had placed over him as a shroud, and began crawling. To prevent gangrene, Glass laid his wounded back on a rotting log and let the maggots eat the dead flesh.  He survived on wild berries and roots and once chased two wolves away from a calf they had killed and he ate the raw meat.  He eventually reached the fort.  (And I complain about 2 mile hikes on our cruises!)

I'm sure the radio broadcast is going to be quite an event when it airs!

When Ruth had told her tale, she went into the children's room to find some folk tales to buy for her neighbors, whom she felt needed to learn them.  Didn't find Aesop's, but went away with a handful of books anyway.

A very tall grandpa type came in with a grandma type and a grandchild type.   Grandma found a poem by Goethe and said it was just what she was looking for.   

Two men brought in donations, within about 15 minutes of each other. One of the guys was an older man with coffee breath and a missing tooth.  He brought two books, one of which was a huge book called "Trains we Rode," which looked fascinating, but I was engrossed in my VanGogh biography, so didn't take time to look at it.

A couple came in and headed for the "touchy-feely" section, where the self help and self esteem books her.  She chose a book and sat down at the table in the front of the store and read for about half an hour.  I didn't see him at all, but I heard him talking to someone I assumed was their daughter on the phone.  She took the phone from him and went outside to continue the conversation.

I found a hefty guy in a red plaid shirt wandering the stacks with something that looked like a purse on his arm.  I thought that odd, but what the heck.  When he left the store, he held up the book he was carrying and said his wife had already paid for it...it was the husband of the women from the touchy feely section.

Two girls came in and spent about half an hour browsing.  One finally bought a book called "The Thirty Years War" and then came back again to buy a big book on English Heraldry.  After she left she hurried back in, in a panic, looking for her credit card.  Fortunately she found it.

A lovely girl carrying a violin case came in.  She bought a French language book, a dictionary and two Shakespeare books.  She told me she was going to London and then to Paris in June.  She asked about the French conversation group that meets at Logos once a month, and whether she could come even if she only had rudimentary French.   I told her I thought it would be OK and that I was wondering the same things.   We decided we could support one another.

My friend came in at 4:13.  This week's book was on outdoor public art in Seattle.  While he was browsing around the store, this guy in his 20s came in.   He was wearing two backpacks, "homeless guy" looking clothes and actually resembled Hugh Glass, except that I don't think he had combed his shoulder length hair in a week. His hands were very dirty and he told me he had a job at "the greenhouse."  I can only assume he was on something because I could hardly make sense out of this stream of consciousness that came out of him.  He was looking for a "book of books" about the Black List, but he then went on to tell me he raised bees and sent them around to friends.  He wants to plant fruit trees in a forest so they will feed hungry people.  When I asked him who would take care of them, he stressed they would be in a forest and he would stop by and see them after a year.  He talked about carving boats.  He asked me who my favorite author was and I told him John Steinbeck and he said he liked Steinbeck and he didn't understand why "his book" was black listed.  He was obviously very well read on a multitude of subjects and he told me "read a lot in prison."

He finally decided he had talked my ear off enough and decided to leave.  He didn't find what he was looking for, but I couldn't figure out what he was looking for anyway.  I was relieved when he left.

My friend was still there and I suspected he had stayed so I wouldn't be alone in the store with the guy, which he kind of admitted he had.  I was very grateful.

The last guy, in comparison to the previous customer, was very boring.  He bought a bargain book, a bible and a book of prose.

When Peter arrived about 3 minutes to 6, I couldn't believe it was that late already.  The afternoon had flown by, partly because of my interest in the VanGogh biography.

The Club is Bigger Now

We went today to the memorial service for the son of one of Walt's long-time co-workers.  He died earlier this month.  As we sat in the church, we looked across at another of his co-workers...we went to the memorial service for his son a couple of years ago.  The mother of the man we were memorializing today hugged me as if she couldn't let go and kept saying "Now we know what you have been going through" over and over.

It was an emotional service for me, if only because I kept thinking of this "club" that none of us want to belong to, but that we do belong anyway. And I couldn't help but thinking of David and Paul as well.  It wasn't that long ago that we were at another service in that same church and I wrote about Paul's comments regarding the expensive remodel they did 20 or so years ago.

I decided I don't want to write a journal entry today.  I want to copy the poem that came from the mortuary instead. Usually I don't react to stuff like this, but this one just hit me, for some reason.

When I'm Gone

When I come to the end of my journey
and I travel my last weary mile,
just forget, if you can,
that I ever frowned and remember only the smile.

David Sykes, 1972 - 1996

Forget unkind words I have spoken
Remember some good I have done.
Forget that I ever had a heartache
and remember I've had loads of fun.

Paul Sykes, 1969-1999

Forget that I have stumbled and blundered
and sometimes fell by the way
Remember I have fought some hard battles
and won, ere the close of the day,

Nick, 1972-2013

 

but in summer, just gather some flowers
and remember the place where I lie
and come in the evening
when the sun paints the sky in the west
stand for a moment beside me
and remember only the best

Too Much, Too Much

I get something called "Davis Patch" each day, which highlights one story important to Davis, whether it be something new at the school, or an interesting tidbit or, like yesterday, report of illegal activity.  In yesterday's Patch it reported the murder of two people in South Davis.  Crimes like this are rare in Davis.  You almost never hear of "murder" and Davis in the same sentence. In fact the last murder in Davis was in 2011. I was saddened to read it and wondered, briefly, how close it was to my friend Derrick, the former entertainment editor of the paper.  We are having lunch today and I figured I'd ask him about it.  I knew that the murder had taken place on his street, and, from the address, probably close to him.  I wasn't sure what Derrick's address was, but thought it must be about a block away.  I was relieved when the news showed the house where the murders had taken place and could see that it was not Derrick's house.

Still.  Murder.  In peaceful Davis.  Shocking.

I don't remember when it was that I zeroed in on the fact that the pictures being shown on TV from Boston were live and that there had been a bombing.   I immediately texted Jeri, who works on Boylston St. not far from the end of the marathon.  She immediately wrote back saying she was at work and OK.  Ned, at the same time was trying to reach Phil, who called him back while he and I were talking.   Phil was on the other side of Boston.  Good.  Our kids were fine.

That freed me to watch the news coverage without worry about Jeri and Phil.  The bomb blast, the horror, the blood on the street.  I watched for a long time, until I couldn't watch any more.  It had reached that stage where reporters were desperate to find anything to say.  It must be terrible to be a reporter during a crisis like this.  You can't just cut away to a soft drink commercial, or return to regular programming.   You must stay on the scene and report what is happening.  But nothing is happening.  There is no way to know who planted the bombs, or anything else.   But you have to say something, so at some point, "reporting" turns to "speculation" and you hear who might have done it and why they might have done it.  They rehash old crimes like this, they show the same clip over and over and over again of the same women being rushed to ambulances, and the same horrific drying pools of blood on the sidewalk.

They interview survivors, witnesses, and people who think they might have seen something but aren't sure, but who are happy to talk to reporters.

At some point is just becomes overwhelming and so I turned over to the Monday NCIS marathon where fictional people killed other fictional people and fictional law enforcement people caught the fictional bad guys.

I would periodically switch back to regular news and see the same shots over and over again and reporters still speculating on what had happened and why, only now the numbers were mounting.  10 injured, 2 killed.  80 injured, 2 killed, 113 injured, 3 killed, one an 8 year old boy.

The horror of it all began to affect me, not in any visible way, but I was aware that I had retreated into some sort of tunnel of depression, thinking back on how many times I had sat before a television watching coverage of an event like this and wondered what is happening in our country.

On Facebook there popped up lots of graphics offering support to the victims and to the city of Boston.

And then there were the Twitter feeds.  I didn't log into Twitter, but on Facebook there were reports that right away they started -- vicious things said about rounding up all Muslims and deporting them, even though there was absolutely no indication that this was not another disgruntled Timothy McVey or some other home-grown terrorist.  And even if this was some Muslim who had committed this horrible act, how terrible to compound the tragedy by assuming that all Muslims were to blame.

In the evening there was a brief comment on Facebook from one of the Putah Creek Crawdads, that bluegrass group of over-65 somethings of which The Psychiatrist is a member, who have been such a staple around the Davis community.  The statement mourned the passing of guitarist Chip Northup.  Which one was he?  I assumed he was the oldest in the group and went back and re-read the article I had written about them several years ago.  No, he was not.  Another guys my age (a bit older, actually) who had died suddenly and unexpectedly on this day which was already filled with thoughts of death.

After dinner, I settled in to watch Dancing with the Stars, but somehow as the program went on, I couldn't get into it.  Somehow it didn't seem right to be watching this show after the tragedy in Boston.  I also found I was very, very tired, so I decided to watch the show in the morning and instead to go to sleep, which I did almost instantly.

I woke at midnight, but was able to get back to sleep again fairly quickly and slept through until a bit after 4:30, by which time I'd had a full night of sleep.

The first thing I did when I woke up was, of course, to check e-mail.   There was a note from my Scrabble buddy Joan, forwarding a message from her pastor about Chip Northup's death:

This is a time when we experience the importance of a loving community.
Claudia Maupin and Chip Northup, both much loved members, were murdered over the weekend

It was Chip who had been murdered! I couldn't take it all in.  Not only violence in our community, but violence against someone I had known.

As I sit here, I am feeling a bit nauseous.  Murder in Boston, murder in Davis and the questions swirling around my head:  why?  

The Putah Creek Crawdads
Chip Northup is the guy at the right, sitting down
The Psychiatrist, Cap Thomsen, is the guy with the beard and the vest

Do I Laugh or Do I Cry?

That was what Maryanne wrote this morning when she reported the sad news of the passing of Dana Rae Pomeroy.  Dana Rae, a strong-willed woman, had gone out on her own terms, not content to let the doctors remove her from life support.  Instead she woke up from her coma and was able to say her goodbyes.

On March 25...just days ago, Maryanne posted this:

A mere two weeks ago DanaRae was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. They found a mass in her right lung. She did not want anyone to start worrying until we had more information. I mean we knew it was not good, but just HOW not good was still open to question until further tests were done.

By the time Maryanne let us all know, DR (we usually called her DR) was in  ICU, her right lung completely blocked, lots of fluid in her left lung and her BP 60/40.  The doctors put her in an induced coma and when it was clear that it was close to the end, they were going to remove her from life support yesterday, but, as I said, she woke up and was able to give orders.  She had the chance to say goodbye to her husband and this morning she finally passed at 6:25 a.m., Eastern time.

DanaRae was part of our CompuServe group, and is the fourth person in the group to die, the third within the last four months.  The rest of you have been put on notice:  NO MORE DEATHS FOR A LONG TIME NOW!!!

DanaRae was also my very first internet friend.  I had a modem and didn't know what I wanted to do with it.  I also had free software for CompuServe, so I joined but was terrified of racking up huge bills by spending time on forums (where all the fun was) which cost money.  But there was a practice forum, where you could learn how CompuServe worked, ask questions of more experiened members and try your hand at posting messages (my lord does that seem like a lifetie ago...it was.   It was 1995). 

DR and I ended up in the Practice Forum at the same time and a friendship developed, as we exchanged messages on the board, and started writing to each other in e-mail.  We were both writers, but she was a more professional writer than I was.  She had written a marvelous book called "When Someone You Love Has Cancer."  It has always been a conundrum to me why this book did not start selling like hotcakes and why I didn't see it everywhere in the self help section of book stores.  In fact, I never did see it in a book store.

The book tells the step by step details of the death of her first husband, Walter F. Sinner, also from lung cancer.  The book deals with emotions, practicality, and all sorts of medical issues.  Josefina B. Magno, MD, president of the International Hospice Association said, This book is real life.  It depicts the pain, the fear, the worries, the anger, the guilt, the grief, the confusion and every human emotion that accompanies a cancer diagnosis...An important source of help for both patients and families...

It is ironic that DR died of the same disease that took her husband, the disease with which she was so famliar, and wrote about so eloquently.  (It also makes me wonder why she continued to smoke!)

DR and I both eventually got enough confidence (and figured out how to make it affordable) to join the Issues Forum, where we were both active in Women's Issues and started the group that is still close today.  It's another of those happy things that I wrote about yesterday.

In addition to being a writer, Dana Rae was also a neat freak.   She and I had many e-mail discussions about my cluttered house and she swore she could help me become a neat person.  She started with all the clutter on tables and other flat surfaces.  She assured me she wasn't so much a neat person, but she was a person who knew about containers.  She told me that I could buy some pretty containers and store all of that clutter out of sight in containers.

I went to CostPlus and brought home lots of pretty straw baskets, and colorful plastic containers.  I sorted through all of my stuff and got it all put away in those containers.  For about an hour, my house looked clean and neat and organized.  Then those containers became new flat surfaces to put other clutter.   I still have one container that I bought at that time which is filled with much of my detritis that I have not looked at since I filled it, but it has lots of stuff piled on top of it.

I think DR finally realized I was a lost cause.

DR and Pat Peck (who died in October last year) were active participants in the blog written by Bill Dahn (who died earlier this month).  After most of Bill's entries, he invited his readers to comment on anything they wanted.   Dana Rae, who went as "Lady DR" was prolific.  She, like Bill, was dealing with an ailing mother and her very last comment in his last entry was about her:

More prayers for Mom, please. She's back in hospital, no one can tag what's wrong and three docs are in disagreement. Deb has made it very clear than when a decision is made and treatment completed, Mom will go directly home, not to a rehab facility. No idea how that impacts treatment or discharge. I figure Deb has to feel like a yo-yo on an elastic string, at this point, and she's dealing with it alone at this point.

She later added her sentiments after reading that Bill had died:

I'm still trying to absorb the idea of Bill being gone. I've known him over twenty years, met him in Boulder. He's such a caring man and has been so supportive of many. The help and encouragement he offered those of us dealing with elderly parents meant so much. The personal help and encouragement he offered me will never be forgotten. My heart goes out to you and your family and to your mom. Peace, prayers and love

Now Bill and DR (and Pat too) are together again, and their mothers are left without their help, love and support.  It doesn't seem fair.

At the end of her book, DR offered hope for grieving loved ones:

Believe it or not, one day the sun will look a little brighter, you'll discover a higher level of energy and you will sincerely smile at someone or something. You'll find a rekindling of old insterests or discover a new interest that sincerely intrigues you, You'll want to go to a social event instead of forcing yourself to go.  And you will always be aware of life's priorities and the importance of taking risks and enjoying every day, every event, every experience.   This advantage is reserved for those of us who have been there.

In her life, Dana Rae Pomeroy lived those words.  She remarried, loved her husband and her dogs passionately.  She enjoyed every day, every event, every experience.  I would love to know how she felt when she passed over and started a whole new bunch of experiences to savor.

Take My Heart--Please

I've been thinking about David tonight.

We watched a show called Mobbed, which I had never heard of and which I don't see myself ever watching again, but I had been on Twitter tonight and my twitter feed was flooded with requests from Howie Mandel (the host) to watch it, and after it started on the East coast, from people who were raving about it.

The hype worked.  I decided to find out what it was all about.

It's a reality show and I guess that they choose someone who wants to honor someone--or surprise someone--and build an hour program around making that into an extravaganze.  I saw that Part 2 tonight was a girl who had a crush on someone at work and wanted to let him know she was falling in love with him.  I think a proposal might have been involved and from the look on his face, it might have gone badly, but we only watched the first hour.

The first subject was a 75 year old fire chief whose daughter wanted to let him know how much he was loved and to show him how many lives he had changed throughout his lifetime.  The tribute was prompted by her sister's death in an auto accident many years ago and the parents' decision to donate her organs (at the end of the show they met the daughters of an organ recipient who had lived an extra 17 years due to the kidneys she had been given and I think the last one was the heart recipient, though I couldn't understand what she said, but she did tap her chest and it seems likely that she was the heart recipient. The girl had been given the heart as a baby and was now an adult. 

Before that introduction there were practical jokes and lots of music and dancing with everybody waving their arms in the air in the manner of a last act finale.  It was all very touching and I was sobbing by the end of it.

Which is why I was thinking about David.

When David decided to run his car (or, more accurately, Jeri's car) into a light post in front of our old meat market in San Francisco, Walt and I were in New York, where we had gone for a Jose Carreras concert with our friend Barbara.   The other kids were at "the happiest place on earth," Disneyland, following a concert the night before, where after a phone call to security, the whole band was rounded up within half an hour (they were wearing Lawsuit t-shirts).

Walt and I were at a party at our friend Ron's apartment.  He was going to introduce us to a bunch of CompuServe friends I'd never met and when "the" phone call came, we were waiting for the first guests to arrive.  As the guests started arriving, Walt and I were in the back room talking to Ned and my mother, at David's bedside.

The kids flew home immediately and were with David in the hospital when he died.  We got the first plane out of New York, but not until 6 a.m. the next morning.  It was a long night in our hotel room, where none of us could sleep.

But the most surreal thing of all was talking to a disembodied voice of the "transplant coordinator" and giving her permission to remove our youngest child's organs so that some other person could use them.

There was never any question about whether we wanted to do that or not.  It has always been comforting, in the past 15+ years to think that perhas still somewhere in the world bits and pieces of David are still functioning and keeping someone else alive.

When my sister was murdered in 1971 it was before the age of transplants.  The only part of a person that could be used were the eyes and my father was LIVID at the thought of anybody cutting up "his" daughter.  My mother regretted that for years afterwards, thinking of two people whose sight might have been restored using Karen's corneas.

We heard from one of the transplant recipients.  I think it was whoever got one of David's kidneys.  I don't remember anything about that person now, except I think it was a middle-aged man.  I always wondered about the heart recipient. 

The transplant team promised us annual updates on how the organs were doing, but after the first year, we never heard from them again.  But that was OK.   The organs weren't David's any more and maybe I'm happier thinking that his heart still beats in the body of someone else, whether it does or not.

As I said, I won't be watching Mobbed again and I'm not entirely certain that the honoree was all that happy with being the center of attention tonight, but I am glad I watched it and could think back on donating David's organs and the comfort that act brought us.

We wanted to donate Paul's organs, too, but since the circumstances surrounding his death meant he had to be a "coroner case," it wasn't possible, though we signed a release to donate whatever could be used (skin cells, and other things for research).

If you have never seriously considered organ donation, whether for yourself or for your loved ones, I really recommend that you take some time to think about it, talk with your loved ones, and let your wishes be known to those who will take care of you after you die.

Pat

Our friend Pat died this week.  We received word from her daughter yesterday.  

Her death was, sadly, no surprise.  She had been diagnosed with lung cancer several months ago, and about a month ago told us that while she had announced her cancer to us, she had not told us that at the time she was diagnosed, she was stage 4.   She knew her time was short.

I was feeling well, except for a tiny little twinge in my right chest.  The tumor was inoperable because of size and involvement with a vertebra. Without treatment, prognosis was guessed at 6 mo. to a year, she wrote.

She started a course of treatment but nothing worked except she felt worse, so she made the decision to let nature take its course.

Since then, I've done pretty well, slowing down, but able to do most necessary shopping, library visits, all the essential things of life.  :-)  Up to now. As of mid-August,  I'm super-slowed. Walking is  shaky, worse every day, close to impossible now.

She went on hospice care and her daughter and son-in-law moved in to take care of her so she could die at home.  She continued to send e-mails, but when those stopped, we knew that the end was near. At her request there was no funeral and will be no formal memorial.

I first met Pat on CompuServe back in the 1980s.  We were part of the very active Women's Issues forum and formed a really close friendship.  I first met her face to face when C, another member of the group was about to leave her husband and needed moral support.  Pat took the train from Southern California, I drove from Northern California and we met C in Santa Barbara.  

Later, in 1996, we decided to give her further support by going together to take the train to Colorado to meet a 4th member of the group.  C loved trains and we felt that focusing on the train trip and not the divorce would be helpful for her.  It turned out that everybody wanted to join us.  In the end 20 people (19 women and 1 man) met for the first time. We came from all over the U.S., and even from England.

We called our gathering "Netstock" and when it was over, we decided that we had had so much fun we wanted to do it again.  Over the years our Netstock group has met in Portland; Seattle; Austin, Tx; Washington, DC; Milwaukee; Ashland, Oregon; and even London (we all landed for Netstock on 9/11...that was an odd Netstock!)...have I forgotten a location?

We have been there for each other through births, deaths, divorces, weddings, illnesses and major life events.  We have shared our joys and our sorrows.   I love these people as if they were my own siblings.  When CompuServe forums began to disintegrate, we moved our discussion group to a private Yahoo site and have continued to keep up a lively discussion there. Pat is actually the second of the group to leave us, though the first one, a few years ago, had not been active in a long time. This one hurts more.

I find it almost unbelievable how much I miss someone I saw in person only about 8 or 10 times in almost 20 years, wrote one of our group today.

Walt and I saw Pat regularly when we traveled to So. California because we usually stayed at her house.  She was with us the first time I saw The Last Session, the show that changed my life.

Professionally, Pat was a music editor.  We knew her best for her work on Walker, Texas Ranger, but she has an impressive bio on IMDB and I always remembered that her ex-husband was on the creative team for Gumby. When we knew her, she worked at home and I enjoyed it when she showed me how she added music to film clips.   She was quick to assure me that Walker had no violence, it only had action.

At her request there was no funeral and no official memorial service, but since we are scattered all over the world, we wanted an opportunity to grieve together, so we are holding a "virtual memorial" on Yahoo tomorrow.  This group has had a lot of virtual parties over the years, Pat a very active participant (and me not so much because I'm about as social on line as I am in person!).  But we will be "bringing" significant foods.  Ellen (I think) is "making" Pat's recipe for vegetarian lasagne, which was printed in one of the two group cookbooks that we have published over the years; Tricia is "making" margaritas; Mary will bring a box o'wine, which featured prominently on many of our gatherings.  I decided to make "gooey balls," which is an Indian dessert for which I have no recipe, but that doesn't matter since it's "virtual."  The last meal Walt and I had with Pat was at an Indian restaurant in Burbank and she raved about their gooey balls (a dessert), so it seems appropriate.  Evil Sian will be joining the group from Orkney and brining Twiglets, that vile British snack that we tasted in 1996 and agreed was the spawn of Satan. But then Sian is that kinda person.

And I'm sure we will all sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider."   Pat insisted that those damn spiders were itsy bitsy, even though we know they should be eensy weensy...but just once I'll let her have her way.

Goodbye, my friend.  You will be missed so much.

City of the Dead

Yesterday at the book store, it had been my plan to read Henry V, since I am going to see the play on Friday.  But -- well, it's Shakespeare and I was falling asleep by page 3.  I got up and wandered around the store looking for anything that caught my eye.  On one of the display shelves, I found a book called San Francisco Confidential by Ray Munro.  It is subtitled "Tales of scandal and excess from the town that's seen everything."  I finished the book during my volunteer stint, but enjoyed it so much I bought it to keep.  

The book starts with early scandals in my home town, but much of it is devoted to things that happened during my lifetime.  Things like the murder of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk by Supervisor Dan White (professed homophobe, who was actually having an affair with a male fireman at the time he killed the two politicians).   Things like Patty Hearst's kidnapping and subsequent actions.  Things like Jim Jones and how he went from local politician to the megalomaniac who caused the death of hundreds on his compound in Guyana.

Lots and lots of fun things to read because I was either there when it all happened, or remember reading out it.  

One chapter I found particularly interesting because I didn't know the whole story.

My grandparents are buried in the Catholic cemetery in Colma, the town just south of San Francisco.  I remember going to one of the funerals, but don't remember which grandparent it was.  When I give tours of San Francisco to people from out of town, I take them past the only two cemeteries in the city, one of which is attached to the old Mission Dolores, and which contains graves from people who died during the very early days of the city, the late 1700s to the middle 1800s.  The other cemetery is the military cemetery on the Presidio land, which used to belong to the Army but with military downsizing in the early 90s, the Army pulled out, leaving buildings which are gradually being taken over by businesses.  But the military cemetery remains.

All other people dying in San Francisco must be buried outside the city.  Colma has a population of 1,500 people, "and 1.5 million underground," says its mayor.

Apparently in the 1930s, San Francisco (which has no room for "expansion" because of the water on three sides) decided to close all but the 2 cemeteries I talked about, and the remains in the other cemeteries were dug up and moved to Colma  As a result 73% of Colma's 2.2 square miles is zoned for cemeteries, the town's web page says. Hearses outnumber hotrods in the town.

When the job of moving the bodies was "undertaken" (pun intended) San Francisco became a macabre scene of rotting and ancient remains piled in the streets.  Young men played soccer using old skulls as balls.  Nobody ever made an accurate account of bodies that were moved to Colma, but in 1993 300 bodies, apparently Gold Rush workers, were uncovered by accident during restoration work on the grounds near the Palace of the Legion of Honor.  And additional eleven thousand bodies may still be buried under the museum.

Wyatt Earp is buried in the Jewish cemetery there (his wife was Jewish) along with Levi Strauss; Joe DiMaggio is buried in the Catholic cemetery, Tina Turner's dog is buried in the pet cemetery. There is a military cemetery there too that you drive along when taking one road into San Francisco from the airport.

Because there is so little land for building homes, Colma has become an exclusive, rich suburb.  The city gives its residents free tickets to the opera and Giants games in San Francisco (or did in 1996, when this book was published).

The town motto is "it's great to be alive in Colma."

I'll bet there is little call for a noise ordinance in Colma!

Gray May

SUNDAY:  The Wake

We have now put our friend Will Connelly to rest.  Walt and I left for Sunday evening's wake early, having heard rumors of traffic tie-ups at several spots between here and San Francisco, but we got to the funeral home around 4 and sat in the parking lot for about 15 minutes until other cars started to arrive, then we headed into the building.

The room for the service was very large.  I don't do "funeral pictures," but for Susie and Rachel and others who could not be there, I did try to give a feeing for it.  I am standing in the room at the back of the main room.  By the time the services started both the main room and the room I'm standing in would be filled.  Will, of course, is lying under the crucifix at the front.

I'm not a big fan of open coffins, but for viewing, they did a very good job with Will and we could tell he was really dead because he lay there throughout an entire afternoon of a gathering of his best friends and he never said a word.

It was a wonderful reunion of old and current Lamplighters.  It was so good to see Father Mark Taheny, whom I have not seen since he left the Lamplighters to enter the seminary, many years ago.  He was there with his 3-D photos, just like he never left.  He had some very funny pictures of Will, including one that had been taken at an Irish pub, with Will lying in a coffin.  He was a bit uncomfortable sharing it, thinking people might feel it inappropriate, but Will would have loved it.

As for the service, it was a nice mix of religion and comedy.

Will's good friend, Noah Griffin gave a fantastic eulogy and even sang a bit, an amazing tenor voice.  He and Will sang in a men's chorus together for years.

Members of the Lamplighters sang "Try we lifelong.." from The Gondoliers, followed by "Hail Poetry" from The Pirates of Penzance.   People who knew Hail Poetry were asked to join in the singing and there were gasps from the gathering when nearly half the hall stood up to give a rousing rendition of the song.  I had my camera with me, but not a recorder, so I used the camera as a recorder and just recorded the sound (the "movie" of the movie is just a picture of my thumb off to the right of the picture.  Listen for the "wow" at the end.).  

On You Tube 

After the Lamplighters, the St. Francis Yacht Club Sons of the Sea sang a sea chanty that was so good, I was sorry I hadn't recorded that as well.

MONDAY:  The Funeral

So today was the funeral.  As he did yesterday, Walt wore his W.C. Fields tie.  I told everyone that if he had not worn it, I would have sent him back upstairs to put it on.  

The funeral Mass was said at St. Brendan's church, where Will went to grammar school, and was a singer at the time of his death.  

If possible there were more people at the funeral mass than there were at last night's wake.  The priest was impressed at the number of people and pointed out how special it was that everyone came on a Monday, when most people would be working.

What a turn out of Lamplighters!  So many I hadn't seen in years, like Rosemary Bock, principal soprano for so many years, and Robert Corrick, who left the company in the early 1980s, as well as so many others.  The entire right side of the church was filled by men from the Sons of the Sea in their monogrammed jackets (I think--it might have been the Bohemian Aviary Chorus -- or is that one group, the Sons of the Sea Bohemian Aviary Chorus?).  Will's good friend, Noah Griffin sang Ave Maria and Our Father beautifully.  The priest's homily, for once, was on point and directed at Will's life and the light he brought to so many people.  He welcomed Catholics, people who had once been Catholics and now "hate the church" (I was actually impressed by that), Christians of other religions, and people who have no Christian faith and made everybody feel at home. He was just perfect.

The Lamplighters sang an old Irish blessing, which had been sung at Will's mother's funeral a few years ago.  As with Hail Poetry yesterday, I recorded the song, without "making a movie" so when you watch this video, realize that I didn't even know where the camera was aimed while I was recording.

On You Tube

I was doing fine until the mass started, and it's Henry Anderson's fault that I broke down.  When I saw the casket coming down the aisle and saw Chris Focht followed by Henry as pall bearers, I started crying.  Likewise, as the casket started down the aisle on the way out, Henry and I squeezed hands as he walked by and I started crying again.  Stop that, Henry!

When the funeral and the reception were over, a bunch of Lamplighters went to a nearby bar.  We took up four tables and, of course, we did the traditional toast for Will...

 "Oh, it's you!"

A Truly Good Man

27 April 2012

This is not going to go down as one of the happiest weeks in our lives.

Our friend Jim Hutchinson lost his battle with bladder cancer this morning.  Our hearts are very heavy today.  Like Will, Jim was one of the good guys and everybody loved him.  He was also a quiet man and so I didn't know him as well as I knew his wife Pat, but Walt worked with him on projects for the Davis Comic Opera Company and, for the past couple of years on the board of, "Citizens Who Care" (CWC). a group which provides social support services to Yolo County adults and their family caregivers.

Jim's CWC profile gives a hint of the kind of person he was:

Jim Hutchinson is a long time member of Citizens Who Care. He served on the board from 1995 'till 2004, and returned to the board in the Fall of 2006. He serves on the Finance Committee, the Winter Concert Committee, and is an In-Home Respite Volunteer. He formats the Newsletter and is the web manager of the CWC web site. Jim is an Emeritus Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He retired 1993 and enjoys Golf, Bridge and singing. He was active for many years in the Davis Comic Opera Company and now sings with the University Chorus. He is still professionally active in organizing the biennial International Symposium on the Vibration of Continuous Systems, and runs the web site for that organization (www.isvcs.org).

We met Jim and Pat through the Davis Comic Opera Company (DCOC), so he has been in our lives for almost our entire time in Davis.  Their son Bill was a member of the Sunshine Children's Theater with our kids and their daughter Kate owns Ciocolat, where we just were on Tuesday.

Jim was a performer (among lots of other things) with DCOC and Pat, for years and years, was the house manager.  

Man with a Load of Mischief , 1984
(Photo by Tom Estes)

One of his roles was as one of the ghosts in Ruddygore.  For those who don't know the show, the set for Act 2 includes life-size portraits which hang in a gallary and at a point, the portraits came to life.  This means that the actors who play the figures in the portraits must resemble those figures and when the show finished, Jim took his portrait home.  It hung on the end wall of their hall...and completely covered the wall.  It was quite an experience the first time you headed off to the rest room and saw this humongous painting of a guy in a suit of armor staring at you.

There were so many parties and dinners at Pat and Jim's, Jim always the gracious host ready to share a glass of wine with his friends, Pat cooking wonderful gourmet suppers.  Their living room had stained glass windows on either side of the fireplace, which Jim had made when taking a class in stained glass. He was a man of many talents.  In later years, I mostly saw him when he and Walt got together to transport ficus trees to the theater for the annual Citizens Who Care fund raising concert.  DCOC owned six ficus trees which lived most of the year in a garage, but Jim and Walt would cart them out each year and take them to the theater and then back into storage.  They just did that this last February, in fact.  Jim had been undergoing chemotherapy, but was looking well and was not going to pass up the chance to work on that 20th anniversary CWC show.

If you needed an MC, Jim was the guy who could do it for.   After the last performance of the CWC show, it was Jim who handed out the gifts to all of the performers.

 
The thing about guys like Will and Jim is that they had such huge hearts and they touched so many lives.  I'm sure I don't know a fraction of all the ways that Jim helped everybody that he met.  But he was one of the original good guys and there are many sad people in the world today, hearing of his loss.

Will Connolly, 1943-2012

"I am just glum," Walt said, wandering around the house aimlessly.  We had just read our e-mail and learned that our friend Will Connolly had died.  Walt expressed what I was feeling too.  Another huge "presence" in the world had left it, and though his death was not unexpected, it still was a shock.

Will was our friend for decades.  I don't know how long.  Walt and I began ushering for The Lamplighters in the 1960s.  Will joined the company in 1970 and we watched him move up the ranks to the principal baritone roles.  Here he is as Samuel in Pirates of Penzance...I'm not sure if that is his hair or not!

Will became a more personal friend during my years working for The Lamplighters.  He, Gilbert and Henry Anderson were great friends, who liked to go on great adventures but be "home in time for dinner."  As my friendship with Gilbert grew, so, too, did my friendship with Will.

We were both born the same year, but he was a bit younger than I.   His father, also Will Connolly, had been a nationally famous sports writer for The San Francisco Chronicle.  At the time of his death, Will had been trying to figure out how to republish some of his father's better known columns on the Internet.   This one was one of three that I found on a site called "Western Neighborhood Projects," stories about a specific section of San Francisco. (Will, a native San Franciscan, was an expert on the city and had once worked as a tour guide.)

Will's mother was no slouch either, having received many, many honors and awards for her work as an advocate for the mentally disabled.  Her 2003 obituary is well worth taking the time to read.

When Gilbert died in 1986, Will and I, along with Henry and his wife Willa, took on the care of Gilbert's family during the week following the death.   While others in the Lamplighters took on the task of planning the memorial service, we were meeting with the people who would be handling his remains, meeting with the doctors who tended him at the end, and doing the practical thing.

When we had Gilbert put to rest, Will stepped in to be "Uncle Will" to Gilbert's niece Susie and her daughter Rachel.  Rachel, sadly never got to know her Uncle Buddy (Gilbert) but Will was a big presence in her life and visited her and Susie around the country several times over the past 20+ years.  (He, Walt and I flew to Oklahoma for Susie's bat mitzvah, in fact, and we went to St. Louis to be there for the production of the first play she ever directed.)  He was as proud of Rachel's theatrical successes as if he were her real uncle.

A year after Gilbert's death, Willa, Henry, Will and I, along with Diana Dorman, contractor for the orchestra, got together for a memorial dinner.  Out of that grew the GRUB, the name of which I never COULD remember.  The "something reinternment of Uncle Buddy."  It was a name Will dreamed up.  It was our yearly Gilbert memorial dinner, a group which, at its height had 17 attendees.  Will made all the arrangements and when I gently suggested calling a halt to it six years ago,on the 20th anniversary of Gilbert's death (more years than most of us knew him in life), it was Will who insisted we keep going.  (With Will now gone, and Walt and I going to be in Europe on the anniversary this year, this may finally be the year we stop meeting every July.)

Will was one of the funniest people I ever knew.  He always had a joke, a pun, a quip, a snide aside.  He found humor in all things and did one of the best W. C. Fields imitations.  He was born to play W.C. Fields  and, in fact, did play him in a Lamplighter Gala one year, and he even drove to Davis for Walt's 50th birthday party to sing "The Fatal Glass of Beer" from Fields' movie of the same name, accompanying himself on the zither.

But his finest hour may have been as a nerdy chiropterologist (one who studies bats).  Will embraced nerdhood and was so successful, the character was reprised in a later Gala.

Shelley Johnson recalls her favorite moment with Will on stage during that Gala:

It’s the closest I’ve come to Totally Losing It onstage. We were in a Gala where I was in the role of a Winery owner (a la the old TV series “Falcon Crest”) I was wearing an ‘80’s power suit and Will was playing a total nerd Chiropterologist; leading his flock of followers into the barns to research bats. He was dressed in an outlandishly goofy outfit – complete with a bat hat. His demeanor –hilarious.

Of course, the surprise was that when suddenly no one was around - Will & I did an “Oh Rapture” and ran onto each other’s arms center stage.

At that point he surreptitiously pulled the string under his chin on the bat hat so that the wings of the bat on his head rose: oh so slowly..... Well, you can imagine. The audience was howling. If I had not been able to bury my face in his chest and shake for a bit I would not have been able to stand up – much less continue.

We last saw Will a couple of months ago at a Lamplighter party.   He arrived quite late and Walt and I met him on the stairs as we were leaving.   He did not look well and confessed he felt "terrible."  I had this ominous premonition that I would never see him again.  I am sorry that feeling turned out to be accurate.

Stories of Will are legion and will be circulating throughout his very large circle of friends for weeks, I'm sure.  The one I shared was this:

Will and Gilbert were great friends. Will was also not particularly known for promptness. Gilbert one time made arrangements for Will to meet at his house, and was very specific about the time. He HAD to get there on time. Amazingly, Will showed up, right on time. Gilbert opened the door, looked at him and said "Good. I just wanted to see if you could really do it." and then closed the door again.

When I heard of Will's death I had the image of Will showing up at the pearly gates and Gilbert there to meet him with a "good--I just wanted to see if you could really do it" before shutting the door and sending him back to life again.

But I guess that probably isn't the way it works now.  

Ironically, Will died on the anniversary of Gilbert's sister's death.

Peggy Overshiner, Jeanne Ziaja, Gilbert, Mary Brown, June Wilkins, Arthur Contrad, Adrian McNamara, Ashton Bisbee ... there are so many Lamplighter principals in Heaven now, I'm almost looking forward to joining them myself, to see them all perform one more time!

WILL'S OBITUARY:  William (Will) Philip Connolly William (Will) Connolly, a lifelong resident of San Francisco, died April 24th at St. Mary's Hospital after a short illness. Will, born April 14, 1943, was the son of the late Will Connolly, a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner; and Margarete Connolly, an activist for the developmentally disabled. He attended St. Brendan's Elementary School, St. Ignatius High School and Lincoln High School. Will was a history buff and proudly received a Bachelor of Science Degree in U.S. History from the University of San Francisco at the age of 57. Will's greatest passion was music. He was a member of the Bohemian Club Aviary Men's Chorus, Lamplighters Musical Theatre Group, St. Francis Yacht Club Sons of the Sea, served as a cantor at St. Brendan's Catholic Church, and was a former member of the San Francisco Boys Chorus. He was also a member of the South End Rowing Club, San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, former board member of Creativity Explored, an art program for developmentally disabled adults, Irish Literary and Historical Society, Musical Days in Forest Hill (board member), Welsh American Society of Northern California. Will is survived by his brother Paul (Gail) Connolly and sister Anne Connolly; nieces Christina Stark, Paula Suiso, Elizabeth Thomas and eight great-nieces and nephews; as well as Malone and Mahoney cousins and many, many friends with whom he sang and laughed.