Thinking of Michele

Our friend, Michele Havel died of a heart attack in 2007.  It was a terrible shock.  She and I were the same age.  Her husband went out one morning to deliver food for Meals on Wheels and when he returned, she was lying on the bed...gone.  I still remember the phone call from Charlotte...one of those late night calls that shock you because it's too late for a polite telephone call, so you know before you pick up the phone that it's not going to be good.

I was thinking about her because we went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Sacramento last night.  We went to play #3, a comedy called Wrong for Each Other, in Sacramento.  A Tuesday night.  How odd.  Must have been for the white haired set because the show started at 6:30, so we were out before 9 p.m.  I decided that it was too early to have dinner before the show, so we would just eat at a restaurant afterwards.  Walt picked the Old Spaghetti Factory.

As we arrived at the restaurant, I remembered that this was the place where I last saw Michele.

We had gone to a play with Michele and her husband Richard, and with Char and Mike, in September.  It was an original play about putting George Bush on trial by military tribunal for war crimes, dereliction of duty, and treason.  The others did not come to shows in Sacramento, as a general rule, but I talked this show up, since I had interviewed the director and it was going to be a controversial play.   None of us were fans of the 43rd president and the thought of his being held accountable for some of his actions, even in make-believe, was a pleasant one.  The verdict in the trial was up to the audience, some of whom were witnesses, some of whom were members of the jury.  The night we saw it, the president was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to the maximum time in prison.  On another night, the director told me later, he was acquitted on two counts and convicted only on the count of deleriction of duty.

It was an interesting experience and I was glad that the others had come.

After the show, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner.   It's a big ol' barn-like place along side the railroad tracks in Sacramento.   In fact a train car is parked in the middle of it and you can choose to eat in that car, if you like.  As you eat, trains rattle past you on the tracks which are separated from the restaurant only by the small parking lot.

We sat at a big table and I was sitting next to Michele.  We talked about how nice it was that we were all together and how it's silly that since she and I lived relatively close to one another, we didn't see each other more often.   They lived up in the foothills from Sacramento, I lived in the other direction, but we talked about how we should make a date for lunch every couple of months, at some spot which was about halfway between.

My last sight of her was her walking away with Richard, turning around to give a quick wave.

A month later she was gone.  We never did have our lunch together.

One of the things on Michele's bucket list was to go to France and she finally made it in 2009.  We had gotten together a year before to scatter her ashes on property they owned in Mendocino County, where we had so much fun camping over the years and where we discovered huckleberries, which we harvested yearly.  Char saved a little baggie of Michele's ashes to take with us the following year when we went to France.  On a grey and drizzly day, a small group of us--Char and I and our friend Pat, Char's daughters, and Jeri, all went down to the beach in Nice and we scattered Michele's ashes in the Mediterranean.

It hurt all over again, this final goodbye.

I thought of all that as I sat there with Walt, eating my pasta and flat-bread pizza (free gift to patrons of the B Street Theater), sitting opposite the table where we had eaten with Michele and Richard.  I thought back on all the memories of Tiny Tots, and Mendocino, and the dog Milhous, and the missed opportunities for lunch when we lived so close.

It was a cruel reminder of how life can change in an instant ... but a sweet reminder of a good friend and the good times we had with her.

"Michele's Place"

Why is my dinner looking at me?

Enjoy an orientation tour of Nice with your tour manager this morning. See the city's many sights, including Cimiez, then continue to the hilltop village of St. Paul de Vence, home of the painter Marc Chagall. Enjoy afternoon exploration time in Nice to discover the Old Town or catch some sun on the beach.

I don't know why I'm leaving in these tour descriptions, because we pretty much haven't followed the itinerary ever since day 1!

Today was our day to tour Monaco. After breakfast here in the hotel, we boarded the bus again and made our way out of town. Some had gone down to the beach early in the morning because there is a Triathlon going on today and they were able to watch some of it.

The drive to Monaco took awhile but the scenery was spectacular. I'm not really much into the "lives of the rich and famous" and can get tired of ostentation pretty quickly, but this was definitely worth seeing, even if only for the yachts in the harbor. My God are those impressive!

We went first to the palace grounds, walked through the garden and up to the chapel, where Ranier and Grace (and all of Ranier's ancestors) are buried, and then onto the grounds in front of the palace itself. The view is, of course, spectacular. Ian generously gave us 30 minutes, I think, to enjoy ourselves and then to meet back at the "yellow submarine," which sits in front of the Oceanographic Institute that Jacques Cousteau used to head up.

They are getting ready to start the Tour de France here, so the shops are all full of memorabilia of the race and the town filled with banners and posters. We will miss it (perhaps fortunately), as we will be in Italy when the race starts in Monaco the first week of July.

From the palace, we went to the Casino in Monte Carlo, a place that held absolutely NO interest for me. Some of the others went in and played the slots for a few minutes, but it was not the 30 minute stop that Ian had expected (I suspect maybe it was he who wanted to play the slots!)
Next was the place I'd been dreading, the hilltop town of Eze. It's very high up and the only way to get there is to walk, so Char and I opted out and found a nice place to sit on a bench in the shade and just talk. It was delightful. So nice not to feel rushed!

Then we drove to a perfume factory and had a tour. Very interesting. I had never thought about how perfume was made before...it's even more complex than wine making! I think we all came away with some purchases. I bought Jeri a little soap duck, which is hand-painted...and one for me too.

Ian had hoped to take us somewhere else, but is saving that for tomorrow. Instead we headed back to Nice. The younger ones went back to the beach to check out the Triathlon, I laid down on the bed and slept for nearly 3 hours.

I thought I was to wait for the group to meet at 7 to go to dinner, but Shirley and Jenny (sisters from the Danville area) came in, having had dinner and saying they had just seen Char and Pat at a cafe. They took me there and I joined them. Char and I each had the "salad royale," which was a HUGE plate of smoked salmon and three enormous prawns (still with head and feelers attached...which is why I entitled this entry "why is my dinner looking at me"? We sat there eating this glorious food and listening to an accordionist seranading us with La Vie en Rose. How much more "French" can you get?

We came back to the hotel and sat in the courtyard for a while regaling Shirley and Jenny with tales of our many camping adventures over the years!

We will have most of tomorrow free, after our town visit early in the day, and we plan to go down to the beach and send the last of Michele's ashes out into the Mediterranean. She dreamed of going to France and never made it while she was alive, but she has had a great trip so far and we will leave her here when we go to Italy the next day.

Death, Aging and Other Indignities

There are a couple of unreated, but marginally interesting things to talk about today. First is that I may have had a greeting from my friend Michele, who died a little over a year ago. I subscribe to a "birthday alarm" service which reminds me when it's time to send a birthday card and so a few days ago, I had a reminder that Michele was about to turn 66.

Naturally this brought a momentary pang to the heart, missing Michele, realizing that she's not here any more and that it also would have been her birthday. I wrote to Char about it. She is missing Michele as much, or much more, than I am. And remember that Char's last name is Blackford...that's important.

So the next night Walt and I went to a show in Sacramento and at intermission, I decided to bring a book and see if my eyes would let me read (they wouldn't). I had chosen a book at random off of my bookshelf to stick in my purse. It was an early Tess Gerritsen and I chose it because it was thin, and I thought maybe even with the eye problem I could get through a shorter book.

When I went to open it, I discovered there was a bookmark in it. I use all sorts of weird things for bookmarks -- anything from real legitimate bookmarks to tissues, to napkins, to anything that happens to be sitting next to wherever I'm reading. Apparently I had started this book before and I had stuck in a little packet of forget-me-not seeds that we had received at Michele's memorial service as a bookmark. But the thing about it was that the package was kind of stuck by one edge to the spine of the book so that the lower corner was pointing at the following sentence:

I just kind of smiled and wished Michele a happy birthday--just in case she was hovering around somewhere.

The other thing is that I hope not to continue to whine about my eyes, now that I have the problem diagnosed and surgery scheduled, but there are still bad days and better days. Today is not a better day. I've enlarged the print for a lot of the internet, but some things can't be enlarged, like MailWasher, which I use to prescreen e-mail before downloading it. I discovered this morning that I absolutely could not read that screen, so I had to Do Something. I've ended up buying myself a magnifying glass to see the screen for pages that I can't read otherwise. It slowed things down considerably, but it is very helpful.

It's also helpful for reading the tiny print in some theatre programs. I had a devil of a time reading the program for the University show(s) that I reviewed last night. I was very sorry I didn't have this glass then!

The university show was difficult for me. Walt and I were going to go, of course, but his brother has been in the hospital for several days. He needed surgery, but they had to wait until an infection cleared. The surgery was done two days ago, late in the day. It turns out that there were complications and he developed pneumonia and was in the ICU. Walt decided he wanted to go down to the hospital (about 80 miles away). He asked if I could drive myself to the theatre.

I told him I could, since it would be after dark and I'm better about driving after dark, as long as it's not on the freeway. We only have one car, so he rented a car and went off to Santa Rosa. He called later to say Norm was sedated and didn't know he was there, and he thought he would spend the night so he could go back again today.

I went off to the theatre thinking nothing about it, hoping that Norm would be able to get out of the ICU today. Literally three minutes before the lights went down in the theatre, I went to turn my cell phone off and saw that I had a voice mail. It was from Norm's wife, looking for Walt (she had called earlier in the afternoon). Her message about Norm was that the doctors said he was "very critical" and that he "might die."

It was too late to call her as the lights went down right then, but I've been so worried. Walt called this morning to say that his fever is finally coming down, which was a good sign. He's still sedated and considered critical, and mostly he doesn't know they are there and seems confused about where he is, but maybe he's passed the crisis. None of us will breathe easy until he is out of the ICU.

I don't like thinking that this is the way the rest of my life is going to go...burying friends, visiting loved ones in the hospital and worrying about my own deteriorating body.

Anybody who wants to live forever has got to be nuts.

Norm and Ned

Final Goodbye to Michele

Today we said a final goodbye to our friend Michele, who died last November. The plan had been to scatter her ashes on the property she and her husband owned in Mendocino County, but November was too wet to "scatter," and also Tim, Char's oldest son, who lives in Maryland, wanted to be here, so we waited for better weather--and for Tim.

Sadly, Walt was not able to make it, as he is still with his mother, so I went and represented the family. I drove to Cloverdale, 15 or so miles north of Santa Rosa, and met Michele's son Eric and his wife there. Eric rode with me in the car and we caravanned up to the property--about an hour's drive, often on very winding mountain roads.

About 20 of us, young and old, met at the roadside entrance to the property and then hiked down to where we all used to camp all those years ago, when the kids were little, when they put on skits on an improvised stage, where Jeri "married" Cam, with Tim officiating, where Richard made gin fizzes by hooking his blender to the battery of his car, where the outhouse was a 2-seater open air building (no door) that looked out all over Anderson Valley. When you needed to use the facilities, you raised a wooden warning for others to stay away...but the view was glorious.

(I think we stopped using the outhouse when they started logging below the property and you might run into a workman!)

It was also the property where we gathered around the table and played cards and other games. We all gathered huckleberries each year and did "quality control" so we could have sourdough pancakes the following morning (made from Char's starter, which she took to bed with her to keep at body temperature so it would grow during the night).

There was no better place for Michele's ashes to be scattered.

Jenny's daughter, Haley, who, Grandma Char says, has never had an unexpressed thought (we're sure she's going to be an attorney when she grows up) announced after 2 minutes that she was bored, that there was nothing to do, and that "nature was boring."

No such problem for her cousin, Katie, who had come from Maryland with her father Tim (and mom Juliet and brother Jonathan) Grandpa Mike found a banana slug and told the kids all about them, including giving the thing a kiss.

Katie appeared to be enchanted, and went about cleaning up the slug, learning about it, watching how its eyes went in and out of their sockets, etc. Katie won't be a lawyer, but will make a fantastic scientist some day.

Eric's wife, Nan, broke out the crackers and cheese (Michele's favorite brie) along with grapes and brownies, made from Michele's recipe.

Richard opened several bottles of champagne and we all drank a toast to Michele. Then Eric brought out the ashes and each person took one or more handfuls and decided where they wanted to scatter their particular bit of ashes.

Not surprisingly, all of us who had been at the property with Michele over the years chose to find huckleberry bushes to "fertilize." We are sure there is going to be a bumper crop of berries next year.

When we had finally finished, we packed everything up to go back to the highway (Mike, Richard and I claimed "old and fat" as an excuse to get a ride!)

Then we headed for the town of Mendocino, where Nan had made reservations for lunch at the lovely Mendocino Cafe, where we sat overlooking a gorgeous garden and, beyond it, the ocean.

I had a lovely crabcake caesar salad and we all shared the 2 desserts that were brought for 3 birthday people (one of whom was Richard, who just turned 78 last week).

Then we wandered around in a toy store and the kids liked to play dress up. I took this picture of Haley.

When she looked at it she said, "Yep...I look good."

We moved north to Fort Bragg and the Quality Inn, chosen because it has wi fi. They lie. Nobody can get it. Char can connect, but it won't hold a connection; I can't even connect. They tell me I have to contact my internet provider. I don't think so! So I'm writing this in the room, but it will have to be posted tomorrow, from home.

All in all, though, it's been a lovely day, despite the sad nature of the reason why we are all here.

Tim scattering Michele's ashes over the spot where he first found huckleberries many, many years ago.

What do you say?

I had posted my entry for today when "the call" came.

You know "those" calls. It's 10 p.m. and the phone rings. It can't be good.

I've had too many of "those" calls.

And this was another one.

Just three days ago, I posted "Camping with the Blackfords," telling all the funny stories of things that happened when our little group went camping.

I talked about how great it was that the "Pinata Women" had started a discussion going and how we were going to have a sleepover in December.

On the phone was Char, telling me that Michele had died this afternoon. Her husband came home from from doing some volunteer work and he found her lying on the bed. She was dead, so they assume she had a heart attack.

Michele and I were the two youngest of the group. She was my age.

Why am I sitting here writing? Because they live a long way away, because I've called some people and e-mailed those I couldn't get hold of and... well...because writing is what I do.

What follows is purely free association as it pops into my head because, quite frankly, I just don't know what else to do.

Michele didn't go to Berkeley with the rest of us (she graduated from UC Davis, in fact). We didn't meet her until our kids went to Tiny Tots nursery school together. Our kids, the Blackford kids, the Jones kids, a whole bunch of kids. Michele and Richard fit right into our crazy group and before long they were as much a part of the Pinata group as the basic five were and from about the fourth New Years Day party to the present, they were part of all the parties, the camping trips, the pinatas, and everything else.

In fact, the last time I saw her was when I saw "A Patriot Act" for the last time. We saw the show and all went out to dinner in a group. We parted promising, as we always do, to get together soon. They had moved from Oakland to the foothills, about an hour and a half from us, several years ago and I am ashamed to say Walt and I have yet to visit their house, though we keep saying we are going to do so.

She and Richard were also at Ned's 40th birthday party.

Me - Michele - Char

When the Blackfords were selling their house and moving to Alaska, Michele and Richard bought it, so it stayed "in the family." They had wonderful parties there, but we missed the best one. It was the surprise party Michele threw for Richard's 50th birthday. I've told this story before, but Richard has a moustache and that big Czech nose, and he wears glasses, so everyone always teases him about wearing Groucho glasses. When he arrived at his party, everyone was wearing Groucho glasses, including his 80-something mother, and the stripper who arrived later, wearing only Groucho glasses.

I don't know anybody who loved people, especially children, more than Michele. She only had one son, but would love to have had more. She took an interest in everybody. And she loved animals. When they lived in the old Blackford house, they had a dog named Milhouse (guess who was in the White House at the time!)

When they finally sold "The Blackford House" they had a great "house cooling" party. I have a video of that somewhere, where I can't find it at the moment, of course.

...Ned found it...

Moments that pop into my head as special memories of Michele:

- picking huckleberries on their property in Mendocino (where her ashes will be scattered)

- long, long, in-depth conversations where she would try to help me sort out the problems in my life, even when I didn't have any.

- meeting her on the street in San Francisco after she'd had some medical procedure done and taking her out to lunch so we could discuss it.

- her laugh

- her love of plants and how she could make anything grow. A talent I never acquired.

- and of course, the story about standing out in the rain in Mendocino with a kid in a cast, a very wet dog, and no shelter, while Richard and Walt were enjoying hot coffee and a warm fire at a neighbor's while waiting for the tow truck to pull us out of the mud

Three days ago Michele was so excited that I'd found this picture from our camping days, because it was one of her favorites.

She wrote:

"TY, TY, TY!!! y tambien, gracias del fondo de mi corazon!
I can't believe you actually found this!

And my ego must also add, it gave me great pleasure as a sometimes editor and an always wannabe writer, that you quoted me verbatim on your own blog! I think I've arrived!

That makes me feel (a little) better. But not much.

I loved you, my friend.