Senior Dad

The Gift of Life

2012-01-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

Maya asked me recently how she got into Verna's tummy. I hesitated before answering, "What do you think?"

"God put me there," she said.

Even though I still struggle with whether or not God exists, I didn't see any reason to deny's Maya's assertion. She's not quite six and doesn't engage in the world (obviously) with anything remotely resembling a deeper theological consciousness. Nor is there any point in exploring a detailed presentation of the birds and the bees at her age.

"That's right," I said.

She smiled and we returned to our nighttime routine before she goes to bed--brush teeth, read book, sing song.

But I thought about this conversation this past Friday, January 13, as a friend and I facilitated an intervention with an acquaintance. Her sister had asked for our help.

The sister spoke about years of abuse and how she was unable to help her sister anymore because the sister's own husband is seriously ill. My friend shared some thoughts. Then, without any forethought about what I might say, the words flowed out of me from a deeper place. Normally the words emerge from the murky depths of my brain and I hear them before they pop from my mouth. But on Friday the 13th I got lucky and unconsciously found a voice.

"Life is a gift," I said. "And what baffles me is why you would throw that away. Life is truly a gift and you have this amazing opportunity to live it well for many years. I just don't understand how you can keep throwing it away."

The acquaintance sat stoically as tears welled in my eyes. I understand how substance abuse and addiction are a disease, but at that moment I was completely befuddled. And said so.

The sister picked up on my comments and shared how her son's girlfriend had died when she was 24. My friend spoke of how his father is battling severe kidney problem in his 60s. Both of them emboldened me to speak again.

"Since everyone's getting personal," I said, "I do have more to say. Today is Friday the 13th, and six years ago exactly my late wife found out she had breast cancer. She'd done everything right: she exercised daily, ate well, drank in moderation, but she still got cancer. And then she died when she was 45. She'd have given anything to still be here to be with us, especially her two young children.

The sister was crying now and my friend looked downward. More tears welled in my eyes. I am not close to convinced that any of our words will make any impact on the acquaintance. And I am not sure what I will say to Maya the next time she asks me about where she came from. But I do know this: life is a gift.

The Holiday Spirit

2011-12-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

I used to be a Jewish chauvinist. When I was a teenager, I refused to go to two cousins' weddings because they were marrying non-Jews. One relative, a first cousin of my father's, was making a commitment with someone who'd stood with her through the death of her mother.

But I sent her a note explaining why I couldn't attend her nuptials and felt I was doing the right thing. Well, they've been happily married for more than 35 years, both are wonderfully sweet, and, after I met and married a nice Catholic girl in the early 90s, I've apologized for my myopia several times in letters and in person.

Interestingly, after Verna and I got engaged someone sent me an article that said intermarriage finishes the work of Hitler. I'd love to say I had my interfaith-we-are-the-world epiphany before the ugly responses to my mixed marriage. But that would not be true.

I grew up in a very Jewish household. My maternal grandmother, who was never dogmatic, even tore her toilet paper before the Jewish Sabbath so she wouldn't violate the Biblical and Talmudic directives against work on the day of rest. My mother once threatened serious illness after I asked out a non-Jewish girl when I was 19.

But when I fell in love with someone who was not Jewish and I encountered varying degrees of hostility, I realized, shamefully, that my teenaged behavior had been unbecoming. It was easy to criticize those who seemed so narrow-minded, but my response when I was about 15 was certainly on the spectrum of insularity. So who was I to criticize?

On the other hand, many in the Jewish community continue during the Christmas holiday to wax religious about the Christmas dilemma. What should Jews and Jewish parents do when all things Santa, reindeer, elves, present, jingle bells, carols and more are splashed across every inch of our culture? Can we truly preserve our faith with a little Chinese food and a movie?

Obviously it's different for me now. As Maya likes to say, "Dad, you're Jewish, but Miguel and I are Jewish and Catholic." And that means we do celebrate both holidays. We have a Christmas tree and each light a menorah.

After my early dalliance with Jewish chauvinism, I can easily admit that I like Christmas, and have always liked the spirit of the holiday. Like many Christians, my biggest issue with Christmas these days is that we've allowed the holiday to become way too commercial. Even Maya responds that Christmas is about "getting presents," which I know is normal for an almost six-year-old, but I don't want that idea reinforced much longer.

So we go give as much as possible, to each other, to strangers, with time and money. Last year we bought Starbucks gift cards and handed them out to people on the streets. It was a small (and maybe token) gesture, but I want Miguel and Maya to be exposed to giving. And I try to model that all year long.

I do see how people devolve into confusion and outright nastiness towards cultural and religious differences at this time of year, and it's not good for us as Americans or as people of the world. Several years ago, the local Jewish paper, which I've freelanced for since 2003, ran an article about an Orthodox rabbi who forbid his congregants to read from the Torah (first five books of Moses) on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, saying it was a mark against God. When Verna and I read that, I cringed and she railed against the prejudice of some of my religion's adherents.

"Now you know why I would never convert," she'd said.

Judaism and Catholicism are part of my religious and spiritual life now and will be for a long, long time. And that's a good thing. I am Jewish, but I do enjoy celebrating Christianity with my loved ones. And learning more about faith from different perspectives.

I wish the fringe religious group in Florida who pressured Lowe's to pull it's advertising from a reality show based on Muslim Americans could have absorbed some of the wisdom I came to later in life. I finally learned that if there is a God, then we are all that Deity's children. Instead of railing against people who worship and celebrate differently, why don't find time for tolerance, respect, inclusion, and sublime wonder at the diversity of our country (and planet)?

If I had to do it all over again, I'd attend both weddings, celebrate with abandon, and share familial joy. But maybe my early chauvinism and later renunciation of that behavior has helped me become more sensitive to my interfaith family and to solidify a commitment to preserving that appreciation (and all that entails) for the rest of my life.

Way Past The 3 Rs

2011-12-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't hunkered down to work on the memoir, so I might as well blog and write something. Life's been great and busy, which I imagine it is for many of us.

A few weeks ago I tried to rouse Miguel from his usual teenaged state of nighttime inactivity.

"C'mon, Miguel, brush your teeth, put in your headgear, and then we can watch some Dick," I said.

"Dad, that doesn't sound right."

"Dick Van Dyke. Dick Van Dyke," I said, referring to the classic TV DVDs we'd been viewing before bed. We'd started with Andy Griffith. "Why does it always have to be about that?"

"Because I'm 13," he responded.

And then I was thrust back to my own hormonally driven adolescence and I remembered, with all too much clarity, the irreverent humor and endless joke about sex, sexual acts, bodies, breasts, and the like that I shared with my friends.

So I realized I can use some of his reactions as teachable moments. This morning, for example, while I'm home with laryngitis (proving that God does have a sense of humor) and general malaise, I watched Miguel play one of his PS3 games, in which he skateboards through urban settings. His self-designed character was shirtless and sported a bikini-clad babe tattoo across his ripped abs.

"Miguel, what's up with the tattoo?" I asked. I am sure at this point he would've preferred I'd gone to work.

"It's just a tattoo," he said.

I then launched into a brief discussion (OK, I did most of the talking) about what it means to objectify women. I am pretty sure the concept of objectifying anyone went over his head, as it would've mine all those years ago. But I hope my message will eventually seep in.

"Miguel, I just don't want you to see women as functions of their bodies," I said as he manipulated his toggles.

For him, it's a game; for me, it's about life and values and how we position ourselves in the world. And, as he finishes eighth grade and enters high school amid a flurry of social interactions and experiences, I want my voice to be a prominent guide.

While I willingly accept the opportunity to help mould my teenaged son, I am not ready to explore sex education or anything related with Maya. Sometimes, though, I have no choice.

Last night, as she was getting ready for bed, she looked at a photo of Verna, Miguel, and me and said, "I was still in Mommy's tummy."

"Well, Maya, you were still with God in Heaven," I said.

"I was an angel?"

"Yes, you were an angel," I said.

"What happened to my wings when I was born?" she asked.

"God took them," I answered.

"Before I came out of Mommy's tummy?"

"Yes," I said.

"Is that how babies get born, from the tummy?" she asked.

"Some babies do," I said. "But most babies come out from the vagina."

Her eyes widened and she looked at me. "Really?"

We then had a discussion, with her asking most of the questions, about how God helps push the babies down the canal and then the doctor or nurse helps deliver them.

I was almost about to tell her about the stork and just make it easy on myself. Eventually we stopped talking about babies and birthing and she picked out of book for me to ready before bed, Fancy Nancy. But sometimes it's easier to deal with a slightly somnambulant teen versus a highly inquisitive kindergartener.

Parenting. Oy. I mean, joy.

Mahalo!

2011-06-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is going to be my last blog entry for a while. I need to hunker down and get serious about writing the memoir of our cancer journey.

If I had to choose one thing I like best about going on vacation it would be the freedom. Vacations mean not being tied to a schedule, worrying about getting up at a certain time, fixing breakfast, shuttling kids to school, working, preparing dinners, or shepherding kids to the park.

Vacations mean going with the flow. You may have a daily plan--sightseeing at a particular spot--but the vibe is usually relaxed and open-ended.

Lest anyone think I am a hippie wannabe on vacation who floats around singing kumbaya and stares at waves lapping the shore, I have had my tenser moments. Several years ago, when Verna and I were engaged, we went to Costa Rica after she got her teaching credential. We stayed at some beachside cabins in Tortugero, and I badgered the gentle proprietors about when they were serving lunch so I could fit a run into my afternoon.

Verna was rightfully livid with me for not being able to appreciate our hosts' generosity and stop focusing on whether or not I worked out one day.

But, for the most part, vacations are about letting go, releasing most control, and seeing what surprises lurk inside every experience.

What follows is a selective travelogue of our recent trip to Hawaii, June 12-19.

Monday, June 13:

We decide to tour the USS Arizona Memorial. My father-in-law, Martin, a former Marine and Merchant Marine, says, "It's supposed to be the best memorial on the island."

I worry how kid friendly the memorial will be, especially for five-year old Maya. Martin and Miguel sharing the experience together is great inter-generational bonding and will teach Miguel some of our nation's history through the personal lens of a close relative who was about his age when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

But I am not sure about Maya. As soon as we arrive we pick up tickets for required video to sail over to the actual memorial site, a 10 minute boat ride away. I say to the attendant, "Is the movie appropriate for my daughter who is five?"

"Sure," he answers. "Though there's some bombing towards the end."

"OK," I say to him, Miguel, and Martin, "we'll just wait outside. Is that all right?"

"Certainly," the attendant responds. "You can meet them afterwards and then board the boat."

Miguel and Martin think I am babying Maya. "Are you going to raise her in a nunnery?"

"Her mother died last year," I say quietly. "She was traumatized enough. I'm not going to subject her to the movie."

On the boat ride over to the memorial, Miguel confides, "You were right. The movie was not appropriate for Maya."

The memorial is solemn, reverent, and somewhat moving. I think Miguel is bored, and Maya is just Maya. She has enough energy for whatever we are doing. We later climb atop and inside a submarine, which both of them think is cool. We eat dinner at Gordon Biersch, a brew pub fairly popular in the San Francisco Bay area.

Tuesday, June 14:

Beach day. Martin decides to venture out on his own, for he loathes surf and sand. The kids and I explore the Ala Mauna Park about 3 miles from our apartment. It is a nice but not spectacular Hawaiian beach--waves crashing against the shore, palm trees waving in the wind, sunshine, warm breezes, saltwater redolent in the air.

But I sense we could do better, so we return to the car and venture another three miles west to Waikiki. The beaches there are close to spectacular. There are far more people, the ocean is nearly bath water warm, and the waves have some edge.

We park the car outside the Rock Island Cafe, a 1960s themed eatery, filled with posters, knickknacks, bobbleheads, Life magazines, keychains, license plates, lunch boxes and more, all festooned with images from popular cultural icons of nearly 50 years ago, as sixties hits blare on the speakers. Miguel orders a chili cheese dog, Maya opts for chicken strips, and I get the veggie burger.

Then, with Hawaii 5-0 music screaming from the heavens, we hit Waikiki beach. Miguel and I immediately plunge in and start bodysurfing. Maya lolls about on the shore, afraid to come in much deeper than her knees. But as the surf's intensity increases, she is knocked down to the watery sand several times, twice completely covered by water, but each time she bolts up giggling and squealing in delight. Her smile is as bright as the sun.

"Dad, you are watching Maya, right?"

"Yes."

On the way back to the car, Miguel says, "Can I buy a ukelele?" We'd earlier passed a small store tucked around the corner from the beach.

"Sure," I say, and it turns out they offer free lessons every morning at 10. Prices range from $49-$3500. I purchase one that includes a tuner, DVD, a live hula dancer, and music book, all for under $100.

Wednesday, June 15:

We return to Waikiki with Martin, who plans to hike to Diamond Head, for Miguel's lesson and a full day on the soft sand of the beach. After Miguel's 30-minute class, we plop ourselves down next to three women. Miguel and I race into the ocean while Maya dances lightly on the edge of the water. He stays in while Maya and I lounge on our towels and engage the three women, obviously alone, whom we learn are scientists from Oslo, Norway. They work for Norway's Radiation Protection Authority.

We invite Eva, Ingrid, and Tonje to lunch. They are all single (though Eva was married and has a six year old daughter) and they share the opinion that Norwegian women are choosy and independent. The trio loves to travel and has no need right now for a serious or sustained relationship.

We part ways after lunch, and the kids and I head to the beach. Miguel and I rent boogie boards, which make our version of surfing even more enjoyable as we glide atop the water.

Thursday, June 16:

I take the kids to a local water park, about 30 minutes outside Honolulu. Maya waits while Miguel and I quickly go on two bigger kids' water slides, before I take her over to the kiddie section where she frolics down several slides and in two wading pools for hours and hours and hours.

Every hour or so, Miguel checks in and he and I do a slide together, while Maya dutifully sits on the bench at the entrance/exit. Miguel seems happy, though, to be on his own. By the end of the day, neither of them wants to leave when the park closes at 4:30.

Friday, June 17:

We journey to Haleiwa, about 30 minutes from Honolulu on the island's North Shore. Haleiwa is a sleepy town, with a Hawaii-tourist-hippie-artsy vibe. Before our arrival, though, we make a 90-minute pit stop at the Dole Pineapple Plantation, and spend nearly one-hour inside the world's largest pineapple maze, searching for 8 stations with various icons we need to stencil onto our tickets.

Haleiwa is also known for being the sort of gateway to Hawaii's most famous surfing beaches, including the granddaddy, Bonzai or Pipeline Beach. Once we get there we decide to skip lunch and sample what one friend said is Hawaii's best shaved ice at Matsumoto's, where the line of hungry customers snakes around the store.

The shaved ice is good but very sweet.

Saturday, June 18:

I drive the kids to Hanauma Bay, a protected beach surrounded by massive mountains, dense forests, and blue-green water, which offers the island's only snorkeling. Miguel, Maya, and I suit up and he and I venture out toward the algae encrusted rocks, where we see a rich variety of fish--tang, surgeon, trigger, butterfly, parrot--in blurs of yellow, white, black, orange, blue, green, and gray.

Maya dons her snorkeling gear but swims close to the shore because, in her own words, "I don't want to sink."

While we are sunning ourselves on the beach, a cooling breeze whipping off the bay, I see two women, one much older, heading into the water. The older one snaps several photos of the younger one. I get up and announce to Miguel, "Watch me."

Then I step into the water and say, "Would you like me to take one of both of you?"

Gurjit, the mother, and her 19-year old daughter, Sevan, are visiting from London. I tell them that I was widowed last summer and this trip was planned immediately after Verna died.

"I lost my husband 13 years ago," Gurjit says.

She is a therapist specializing in the sexual abuse of children. Her husband had been en route to his mother's funeral in India when the taxi driver fell asleep. He died three days later thousands of miles from home in a village outside his natal home in India. She was left to care for Sevan and run the restaurant her husband owned (and was named Sevan's).

For eight years, Gurjit slept three hours a night and managed the restaurant and worked full-time as a therapist.

Sevan gazes at her mom as her mom shares the story, "She's my hero," says Sevan, who is in college two hours away but comes home every weekend.

"She's my hero," I say.

Sunday, June 19:

On the not quite five hour plane ride home, on Father's Day, as Maya sleeps with her head on my left arm, Miguel and I watch Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in The Adjustment Bureau, a fairly enjoyable and well-acted drama about love and fate and destiny. I think of Verna and how we always felt we were somehow destined to meet, fall in love, and create a family. We never anticipated breast cancer and her death five weeks before she turned 46.

I have tears in my eyes as the movie ends and Damon and Blunt are locked in an eternal embrace that basically alters the course of their lives and allows their fates together to prevail. I am sad about my loss but grateful for the 20 years we were together. Twenty years where Verna and I basically knew what the plan was, how we'd allowed our lives to be scripted and how our choices would unfold.

Oh, there were surprises, but none as exciting as when we went on vacation. Having learned from my rigidity in Costa Rica and one other vacation early, early in our marriage, by the time we stormed Cabo San Lucas in the summer of 2008, on what was our first vacation alone in 11 years and last one as well, we were a bundle of sublime bliss and relaxation.

On one hand, I wish I knew the plan for me for the next 20 years. On the other, though, the uncertainty lends itself to the possibility of daily adventures. Life will unfold for me and my loved ones, but for now I am content to treat it as much as possible as a vacation, not completely sure of the details, the direction, or even the outcome. Just enjoying the journey.

Life Goes On And On

2011-06-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

I got married last night.

Maya hopped out of the bath, as I held up her black and red with white polka dots Minnie Mouse towel, and kissed me on the lips.

"Now we're married," she said.

"Sounds good to me."

We'd spoken on the phone earlier that morning because I'd been away since Friday. "I am so excited because Daddy is coming home today," she sang into my ear. I was beyond elated.

I was actually not surprised about our sudden nuptials just a little over nine months since Verna died. I did scoop up the garter last weekend amid a cluster of guys who exhibited as much enthusiasm for the exercise as sloths doped up on sleeping pills at the wedding I officiated at in Seattle. So I was just fulfilling my destiny.

Maya and I made may have sailed, though, into the turbulent waters that confront almost all newlyweds. She told me this morning that, "I wish I didn't have a daddy."

My crime? I said she needed to finish her entire breakfast, a tiny swatch of quesadilla and a few pieces of scrambled eggs.

Yes, I can be too demanding and that may have doomed our happily ever after.

Tonight, at what turned out to be Miguel's final baseball game of the season, she admitted the bitter truth. "We're not married," she laughed. "That was just pretend."

A dagger to my already wounded heart, a dose of reality upside my head and heart? Hey, the short-lived matrimonial union had its upside. I brushed her teeth, read her William's Doll, and tucked her under five layers of sheets and blankets. Then I had an hour to myself.

*****

Last Thursday night I took Maya for a walk around the park in our neighborhood. She wanted to stroll outside in the evening light while Miguel watched the NBA Finals. While she played with her preschool friend, Mackie, and his younger sister, Emma, I gazed at a group of mostly Mexicans engaged in a friendly basketball game on the hardtop. I noticed a friend of ours, N, whose real name I will not use for he is not in this country legally.

We met N and his then girlfriend, T, and their then two year old son, N, about two years ago. N, the son, and Maya loved to play together, and N, the father, and T treated her as if she were their daughter. They pushed her on the swings, took her on long walks around the perimeter of the park, and bought her ice cream and popsicles in the summertime.

N, sweaty and flushed after an intense game, came over and hugged me. He is a landscaper who works at least 40 hours a week. He is also a hands on father. I've seen him pushing Maya and his son on the swings, tossing a baseball to his son, and kicking a soccer ball with him.

"Hello Maya," he said.

"How are you Senor?" I asked.

"Good, good."

"Where are T and N?" Maya asked.

"Home." He paused. "T is not well. She is..." Then he moved his hand 180 degrees from mid-chest to belly.

"Pregnant?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, as his lips curled upwards.

I hugged him again and said, "That is so wonderful. I am so excited." I felt tears wet my eyes.

T is due around Christmas, a true holiday miracle. The three of them are very special to me because early last year or late in 2009 I officiated at their wedding ceremony, a hastily arranged event right outside my home on the eastern edge of the park.

N and T are Jehovah's Witnesses, both from Mexico and both undocumented immigrants. Until she got pregnant again, T worked evenings as a waitress. She has gently frosted hair and a beaming smile. After I told them I did weddings they asked me to perform one for them.

"How much?" they'd asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Just get the license." I snagged two passersby and conducted a short ceremony for two loving people who are always present for their son (and daughter to be) and toil hard in this country.

A week later they brought us a home baked Mexican cake. It was delicious. N left a message on my cell phone weeks after Verna died last August. I hadn't seen them in a couple of months or more.

"I am so sorry for your loss. Please call me anytime," he said and left me his number. I phoned and we spoke briefly. We didn't see them for a few more months, but we hugged tightly in the parking lot of a department store as they again expressed their condolences.

Somehow I have this powerful feeling that their daughter, the ultimate Christmas gift of life, is going to be very, very special. I believe she has at least one very potent angel looking out for her.

*****

My mother has a first cousin, Renee, who lived home with her parents all her life. She always had friends outside the home, went on trips, carved out her own life, but she also spent vacations with her parents, my Uncle Max, the brother of my grandmother, and Aunt Irene.

Irene died a few years ago, and Renee continued to care for her father as his health declined until he died at the age of 95. Renee still lives in that split-level home in West Hartford, CT. Renee, my mother informed me, attends synagogue regularly. Not only does she recite the traditional prayers of praise to God and in memory of her departed loved ones. But Renee, who is in her 60s, chauffeurs older members of the community on routine errands.

She still has a full social life with friends she's amassed, but she also embraces her role as caregiver to those in need. I think she's amazing for how she copes with profound loss.

Love, life, death. Life goes on and on.

I Can See Clearly Now

2011-05-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

I was reading Thomas Merton's spiritual autobiography and listening to London Calling and Police on My Back by The Clash as Miguel, Maya, and I were flying back from Seattle this evening. Welcome to the living Yin and Yang of my life or, as the late anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss said, the binary opposites that blend together to form the whole me.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the seemingly disparate strands that make up who I am (and just about everyone else on the planet). For example, I have a deep passion for jazz and classical music, but still thump my body to rock and roll daily and will never forget how I scored a second row seat (yes, I went alone) to see Journey in concert in Hartford, CT, in 1986.

I am pretty solid emotionally, but cry when I hear certain songs or watch certain commercials on TV. I have a post-graduate degree, but love Jerry Lewis movies, the Farrelly Brothers, and some of the work of Adam Sandler.

I know, I know, one's level of education does not necessarily correspond to one's cultural tastes. But, believe me, my friends and co-workers, when I toiled for a Connecticut political organization, teased me about Journey and the other popular rock and roll I favored over the Grateful Dead and other 'deeper' music. So I have always been sensitive about my apparent contradictory pleasures and paths.

Until now.

Merton and the Clash can co-exist, in my universe for sure.

I guess the biggest expression of this binary opposition has been my officiating of weddings. On one hand, I am a widower who feels a strong measure of sadness around love, happiness, and commitment. Not that I want anyone to be unhappy, but I do feel wistful when I gaze at couples taking the marital plunge or holding hands in the park or nuzzling at a restaurant. On the other hand, weddings can be a heck of a lot of fun, and I do feel a tremendous honor in helping two people begin their married lives together.

And there is another yin and yang moment. Many people rightfully see me as a wise guy who rarely takes much (including myself) seriously. But I also feel that I am participating in something deeply sacred when I officiate at a wedding. I felt the same when I was a funeral director, which is the reason I took the job, and again when I watched my mother-in-law die in 2008 and when I whispered to Verna minutes before she took her last breaths in 2010.

Sacred is as sacred does.

Which brings me back to weddings. I did one two weeks ago in Napa, and when the couple hired me in February, they said, "We are not just looking for an officiant, we want someone to form a relationship with."

"Does that mean I can go on your honeymoon?" I asked. They just left for a month in Italy.

So while I wistfully watched as Jen and Bryan began their happily ever after, and mingled with Jen's parents, Bryan's sister and her fiance, and sampled awesome radishes, I felt blessed to be present for them. During the ceremony, which I always personalize, I mentioned how Jen was, um, really focused on all the details. She sent me an email that said, "The wedding coordinator expects your ass on the shuttle by 2:45." So I repeated that line in the ceremony.

Later Jen literally yanked me onto the dance floor and said, "I can't believe you said 'ass' during the ceremony."

"Was that OK?" I asked somewhat sheepishly.

"Only you could pull it off," she said, before leading me through a dance where she twirled me around and then thanked me.

I slipped away while the party was still raging, in a vineyard with an Italian-like villa and under partly cloudy skies that held back the rain, content and sorrowful, with images of my own wedding day and night swirling through my mind.

The wedding I did this past Saturday was held in a large loft studio in downtown Seattle. The bride is the niece of Verna's and my sister-in-law, who is married to Verna's brother. The days leading up to the ceremony, I've been told, were incredibly stressful where vendors flaked out, plans were dashed and redrawn, and the bride was so overwhelmed that she got hives.

The ceremony, if I have to be honest, was great. I recited a few poems, weaved in wisdom for the couple, shared how Kelly and Courtney met, how Kelly was unsure at first of his feelings for Courtney, and how he sought counsel from his grandmother, and then listened with moist eyes as Kelly and Courtney were unable to read their vows to each other without gushing in tears. Then I closed with a Lao Tzu poem about the sacred space a couple must carve out for their love before I whispered--at their request--just to them that it was my "supreme pleasure and honor to pronounce you married; Kelly, you may kiss the bride."

I spent most of the evening with family, then dragged Miguel onto the dance floor (Maya was with friends because young kids were not invited to the evening wedding), and then boogied to several songs, some with Miguel literally on my back as I twirled him around, before I almost quietly stepped away with my son and drove back to our friends' house by Green Lake.

See, I just had to push the envelope slightly. Since I am single I pulled Miguel with me and lined up with a half dozen other bachelors for the tossing of the garter. The cluster of guys near us said, "No contest here, we're all jaded," which was an interesting comment for they were there with their girlfriends. Miguel was just confused, but stood next to me anyway.

After two misfires, Kelly's third toss of the garter soared sort of in the air and landed near my left shoe. I slowly reached down and picked it up as everyone cheered. My only thought was, "Oh s**t."

Was I supposed to put it on the woman who'd caught the bouquet and was certainly young enough to be my daughter, as I am 52? Was I supposed to keep it or return it to the bride and groom? Or just fling it out the window and then follow?

Someone said, "Just put it on and dance."

So I did. And by the next day I had four marriage proposals. Just kidding. I saw Kelly and Courtney last night for dinner, a send-off sponsored by Courtney's great aunt, before the newlyweds left today on their honeymoon, to which I wasn't invited, and they also said, "Keep it."

I stuffed the garter, which represents, I guess, hope and love and all that (blah, blah, blah), in my closet next to my haircut kit and sachet of lavender. Just call it another strange pairing that somehow makes perfect sense--at least to me--as I navigate the turbulent and placid waters of life as I know it.

Not Makin' Whoopee

2011-05-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

I promise this entry will not contain graphic or lurid details of sex education.

Honest. I promise.

It’s more about values, and how we pass on moral messages to our children and fortify ourselves as role models. You know, do as I say and do.

On the way home from school yesterday, Miguel shared with me the day’s sex education lesson.
Kids can ask any question they want. The question was: Which is better, oral or anal sex?

“It wasn’t my question,” he said.

“What did the teacher say?” I asked. For some reason, the question was posed to the language arts instructor, not the science one, who teaches the unit.

“She said, ‘That’s a personal question,’ Miguel said. “So which is better?”

I will not divulge my answer, nor reveal my response to his next question: “Have you ever had oral sex?”

My answers are unimportant. I will admit that I was speechless as he fired his questions much more rapidly than I felt equipped to answer.

I always knew I’d be Miguel’s go-to guy for all matters of sex, relationships, love, etc. Verna ceded that responsibility to me when Miguel was a toddler by virtue of our shared gender. Even though I am fully committed to offer age-and-developmentally appropriate honesty to my children about sex, my conversations with Miguel have always been slightly awkward.

He first asked me about babies and sex when he was eight. After I gave him a very brief introduction into sexual reproduction, he looked at me as if he’d just swallowed castor oil and raw eggs. From time to time, as he’s approached puberty and adolescence and his body has begun to change, there have been additional talks. I have tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible. Call me Jack Webb, Mr. Dragnet: just the facts.

Oh, I editorialize. I’ve thrown in a few things about protection, emotional readiness, not wanting to be a grandfather for at least 15 years. I am not even sure I needed to go in a few directions, but Miguel’s teachers have informed us parents that teenage sex (oral and otherwise) happens earlier and earlier.

Yes, I shudder. At 13 I was content to stand in the lunch line close enough to girls to inhale the fragrance of their shampoo. The world may have changed slightly when it comes to the sexes and sex in the 21st century.

So when I got back to work yesterday, a little addled after Miguel put me on the spot, I sought out the comfort of two male co-workers. They laughed with me as I retold the car conversation, and then one said, “It’s great that he could talk to you.”

And that’s when it hit me: yes, it is great he can talk to me. And he wanted to converse with me. I have not initiated a conversation yet about sex education. He was the one who came to me with the permission slip, and Miguel has usually shared with me the various sex education lessons. I have confined myself to asking the very general, “How was school today?”

To which he invariably replies, “Fine.”

Or I might say, “What’d you do in school today?” and he will offer, “Not much.”

But with sex education, I haven’t paid closer attention to the unit than any others. Partly because I am swamped with life, work, and just getting the kids fed, to school, and to their activities.

I do know, however, the awesome responsibility I have. And it’s not really about sex. Miguel barely has girls on his radar. He texts a few, but they are in the larger context of reaching out to friends. It is really about learning how to navigate the emotionally confusing and often physically awkward world of relationships, friendships, and the delicate social dance of teenagers.

Several weeks ago, after I mentioned a new female friend, he said, “Is she hot?”

“Miguel, that doesn’t matter,” I said, feeling as if I were banging my head against a wall and wondering if he was actually listening to me. “It’s what’s on the inside.”

But I bought him two posters of Megan Fox, which now adorn his bedroom wall, so what message is really bounding through him?

Welcome to my contradiction.

I still hope (and pray) Miguel learns about girls, young women, women, relationships, and, yes, sex, by the examples I’ve tried to set for the past 25 years. Time will, um, tell. I am not sure I want to know all the questions, but I am ready with answers.

Mother and Child Reunion

2011-05-15T17:39:00.001-07:00

I wanted to do something special and memorable for our first Mother's Day without Verna. So I announced to the kids, “Let's bring some photos to the cemetery and share a story or memory of Mommy.

Miguel lowered his shoulders and shrugged in full teenager mode, “Do I have to?”

“No,” I said, “but Maya and are going to and you have to come with us.”

He brought a tennis ball and asked if we could play catch. “No, Miguel, it's a cemetery. We are going to be reverent,” I said, using a word I purposely knew was unfamiliar to him. “This is a sacred space.”

Then he asked if he could bound downhill over and across other grave markers. “No,” I said again, “do you need to ask?”

We knelt by Verna and her mother's grave marker. I wiped away some dried leaves, dirt, and grass, and emptied the water from a few flower pots. Someone had left fresh flowers that the deer had already snacked on.

Maya chose a photograph taken last August, less than two weeks before Verna died. Verna rests her head against the olive green cushion on our living room couch, a thin smile stretched across her lips, her face steroids puffy, clasping a completely naked Maya in her arms. Happiness is etched on Maya's face, the fingers on her left hand gently touching the cross around Verna's neck, her ears sparkling from what were then days old earrings.

I brought a photograph from 1997, just a week or so after we'd found out Verna was pregnant with Miguel. We are at the home of her best friend from kindergarten, Rose, and her husband, David, wearing Raybans and opening a bottle of champagne. I am wearing a homemade tie-dyed t-shirt and my formerly ubiquitous fanny pack. Verna has a black v-necked shirt and jeans shorts.

We were still stunned and elated that we were going to be parents. Verna was not quite 33. I'd just turned 38. I told Miguel and Maya how excited we'd been when Kaiser confirmed that Verna was indeed pregnant.

Miguel tossed the tennis ball. “Miguel, “ I said sternly. Maya flitted near me. My sister-in-law, Donna, showed up with her eldest daughter, Jillian, who turns 21 this year on what would have been Verna's and my 20^th wedding anniversary.

Maya walked around the grass and gravestones with Jillian, then Miguel on the periphery started chasing the girls. Donna and I reminisced yet again about the surreal and awful times of last year, the pain crises that sent Verna to the hospital several times, the decision to defer her care to hospice, the tears, the anguish, and finally the reality that Verna's death was imminent slamming against us all like a vicious wave.

Later in the day, I said to Donna, “I felt so alone,” referring to me being Verna's primary caregiver the last two weeks of her life, totally responsible for administering and increasing the narcotic cocktails, and wavering about what was best for her, the kids, me, the rest of the family.

She responded, “It's time for me to give you a hug,” as she pulled me to her chest like a mother comforting a child.

Maya brought home a photograph of herself from school, a multicolored construction paper background, wearing a sweet smile as she gazes at the photographer, probably a preschool teacher. The picture is soft-framed with a blue matte and a white border, three flowers and a bumblebee on the corners.

Underneath the picture it says, You're the best! “It's a Mother's Day present for Mommy,” Maya said. “I wish I could give it to her.”

“Me, too,” I said.

Just three weeks ago, Maya stamped her foot outside our garage and said, “Daddy, I am angry. I want Mommy to come down and be with us, and hug us.”

“I know,” I said.

“And that's why I have been so grumpy,” she said apologetically. “Because I miss Mommy.”

I hugged and kissed her and wished I could bring Maya her Mommy down from Heaven, to sit on her bed so they could affix stickers in Maya's Disney princess sticker books.

But, alas, it is not to be. I know that, as do Miguel and Maya, but that still does not erase the longing, the confusion, the pain.

As Miguel and I walked upstairs on Mother's Day for his nightly routine (teeth brushing, one toss of his Oregon Ducks football, and then I read to him), he said, “I want to find a picture of Mommy and me and make it bigger and then put it in a really nice frame in my bedroom.”

I was temporarily speechless. Finally I said, “Sounds like a great idea.”

And completely reverent.

Heart of the Matter: Easter 2011

2011-04-24T21:21:00.001-07:00

I celebrated Easter long before I married a nice Catholic girl, which is why I labored so hard this year, as the sole and Jewish parent, to offer Miguel and Maya something substantive about the holiday.

See, as a kid my parents took us to Filley Pond in Bloomfield, CT, where I grew up, for the annual Easter egg hunt. Colored eggs, chocolate shaped bunnies, jelly beans, Easter bunnies in costume--all very cute and safe in a homogenized way for children of any and all religious backgrounds. But not what Easter is truly about, I think, any more than Christmas is just presents galore and a jolly fat man in a red suit.

The first thing I wanted to do was bring Miguel and Maya to church, to honor Verna and her mother. Almost every Easter that is what we did: attended Mass, usually at Mission San Rafael (where we held Verna's funeral), with Verna's mother while her father waited for us at Starbuck's.

"Miguel," I announced the other day, "we are going to church on Easter."

"But the Heat (Miami's professional basketball team) are on (TV)," he said. He is an uber fan of the Heat.

"Miguel, we are going to church to honor your mother and grandmother," I shot back.

"But, Dad, it's the Heat."

I've got a lot of work to do.

So we went to Church, and it was packed, with people lined up in the lobby and tucked into the small altars on the perimeter of the sanctuary. I had been hoping that Father Paul would be the officiant. I knew him and respected his theological worldview (as I understood it), plus he delivered the Last Rites to Verna as we were huddled around her and several weeks later did her funeral.

But we got Father Dave, the assistant clergy, as he is listed in the Church program. Father Dave sounds exactly like a sincere version of Steve Carrell's character, Michael, on The Office. Father Dave was high energy. Father Dave was perfect for a Jewish guy like me who finds most synagogue and church services interminably boring.

At one point soon after the Mass began, Father Dave exhorted the crowd to repeat after him, "Indeed he has risen," but the response was tepid at best, so he charged forth and basically said, "You can do better than that." God's cheerleading squad has no better representative than Father Dave.

I closed my eyes during the service, not because I was about to nod off, but because I wanted to listen and let Father Dave's words wash over me. I was hoping for some insight into Easter that I could share with Miguel and Maya beyond Christ died for our sins. I just don't think two kids who have had little if any religious instructions will find the words "Christ died for our sins" or "Christ was resurrected to guarantee us all life everlasting" very meaningful right now.

During his sermon or homily, Father Dave said a few things that I quietly and quickly jotted down on the back of a business card. He said, "Easter is the time to be bound up in the rapture of joy." And, "God raised Jesus from the dead for us, in order for us to see the way to lead our lives."

He spent a lot of time talking about God's bountiful love, which certainly resonated with me as I sat in the pew next to Maya and Miguel. I thought about all the love we've been surrounded by since Verna was first diagnosed with cancer in 2006. How our neighborhood, Miguel's school, and my synagogue prepared us meals and delivered them to our home. How Johann Smit, an apple farmer and friend, brought us 10-15 lbs of apples each week and refused payment. How so many friends and family wrapped up Miguel and Maya in play dates and overnights and kept them safe and fed and warm and dry, and happy.

The love that blessed our lives, and continues to do so each and every day, seemed and seems unconditional, a gift, a miracle, a true, true blessing. But is that the core message of Easter? Unconditional love as a manifestation of God or the Divine Spark?

Speaking of love, our dear friends, the Steins, invited us over for Easter lunch. As I sat with John and Liz, each 33 and married for 14 years, with their three girls (one of whom is almost 13 and a friend of Miguel's) bounding in and out of the house, I asked them how they explain Easter to their kids.

"We tell them the story," said John. "We tailor it for each kid."

So Liz and John do get into the Last Supper and Pontius Pilate and how Jesus died and was resurrected. And they are not worried about whether or not the girls understand the Biblical version of those events. They hope that repeated tellings of the story with seep through to them just as water dripping onto a stone eventually makes its mark.

John, Liz, and I also talked about sin, which John (thankfully) defined as "missing the mark," which I found fascinating because that is the definition of the word "sin" in Hebrew.

John and Liz attend a non-denominational Christian church that has grown in popularity in Marin County over the past dozen years. I actually think Liz has larger and Christian plans for me even though I am firmly Jewish and a somewhat shaky agnostic. But they are both loving and kind and funny and fun to be around. So our friendship will deepen even if I don't take a plunge in the same waters that comfort them.

Their youngest daughter has never spoken to me no matter how hard I've tried to coax a simple greeting or a mild high-five from this 3-1/2-year old cutie. But today, as I was discussing Christian theology and the meaning of the Easter story with her parents over macaroni and cheese, marinated asparagus, and Faro salad, she popped out from underneath the kitchen table and uttered her first (and I hope not last) words to me, "Jesus died on the cross."

Quite possibly a minor Easter miracle.

Before Maya bounded out the front door this morning for the 4th annual neighborhood Easter egg hunt, I said to her, "Maya what is Easter about? What did they tell you about Easter in preschool?"

"Candy and Jesus," she answered.

"What about Jesus?" I asked, hoping for an insight from my little princess that would sustain my ability to better communicate the holiday to her and her brother, who'd just helped hide dozens of candy-filled plastic eggs on the two-acre park lawn outside our home.

"Jesus is going to come down and have candy with me," she said.

Yes, I have a lot of work to do. Hallelujah.

Let The Sunshine In State of Being

2011-04-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

Flying Over Tennessee:

"I don't want to go to the beach," said Miguel. "There's too much sand."

So we spent three full sun-splashed days an hour north of Miami, with temperatures in the mid-upper 80s and two golf courses and one CVS on every corner, and never reached the shore. Miguel and Maya frolicked in the pool at my brother's hotel one day and at my aunt's pool the next.

The Florida we visited was a combination of traditional Friedman family values meets 21st century ethnic enclaves. We were there first and foremost to spend time with my father and stepmother, who each turn 80 towards the end of this month.

We were also there to help support my father and stepmother as they deal with severe physical and mental limitations. My father has a very bad back and is bent over all the time, and not in the way of Apollo Ohno gliding across the ice. He said this morning, "The pain is there everyday."

My stepmother needs a cane to walk and is experiencing some cognitive decline, so it is impossible for my father to care for both of them. My step-siblings are there now to initiate conversations with them about seeking support from Jewish Family Services.

All I did was remind my father that it was OK to utilize help. "Dad, you can't go it alone. Please listen to Michael and Andrea."

Florida was also seeing different cultures, Haitians, West Indians, African-Americans, that Miguel and Maya have almost no contact with in a California county that is 85% Caucasian.

On Thursday we drove to the Gulf side of the state, to Ft. Myers and Lehigh Acres, to spend time with my aunt (father's sister) and uncle, two of their children (my first cousins), several of the cousins' children, and a few of my aunt's great-grandchildren (and my aunt is only 74 at the most). Outside of my aunt, whose been in California in the past ten years and was at Verna's funeral last September, I haven't seen my Florida family, who grew up 1/2 mile from us, since late 2001.

Soon after we arrived at my cousin Sharon's house, she pulled me aside and shared what was going on in the family. One sister, Elaine, who lives nearby, has been in and out of the hospital for the past few years. She was in there again.

"Steven, it's been so frustrating," Sharon said. "We are all so worried about Elaine."

Sharon and I have a special relationship. We are the same age and always went to the same school. We always sat together on the school bus and reserved a seat for each other. Even after we drifted apart in middle and high school, I never forgot sleeping over at her house, having a wicked crush on her, or all the times we talked on the phone, sent each other postcards over the summer, and spent holidays together at the shore.

Sharon's third child, Brooke, who is almost 16, and Sharon's sister Arlene's youngest son, Alex, who is almost 17, are as close. Sharon said to me, "Brooke asked me, Steven, if Alex is going to move away from me like you did."

"Sharon, you moved to Florida before I left Connecticut," I responded. But I got her point. Sharon's and my lives are not that intertwined, though we talked a lot during Verna's illness, and Brooke fears a future separated from Alex.

Frankly, Alex is pretty special. I don't think Brooke should worry right now. After Verna died last August, Alex decided to organize a relay team for the American Cancer Society's 24-Hour Relay for Life. He named his team Verna's Heroes and he pledged to raise $2500. So far this lithe high school student with size 14 sneakers and sandy blond hair has raised more than $800.

"I told him it's OK if doesn't meet his goal," said Arlene, his proud mother.

Alex had plans Thursday night. He was supposed to hang with some buddies from school, but stayed home to meet me. Once I heard about Verna's Heroes, though, I wanted to meet and hug him.

"Have we ever met before?" he asked me.

"I was there when you were eight days old," I said.

I happened to be in Connecticut for his brit milah (Jewish circumcision ceremony) and the rabbi and mohel (the one who does the circumcision) had recently had throat cancer, so he asked me to chant the prayers while he performed the ritual mutilation. The rabbi's wife chimed in whenever I slowed down to pronounce a word I hadn't seen in a while.

So this amazing kid was also what Florida was about for us: A generosity of spirit in honoring Verna's memory and raising money for cancer research. I made sure to remind Miguel a few times that Alex opted not to spend the evening with friends because he wanted to chill with us.

So we missed the beach and consumed very few citrus fruits, but we did experience what was really important about the Sunshine State.

Manly Men

2011-04-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

Miguel asked to shave the other night.

"But Miguel, you don't have any hair on your face," I said.

"So," he said. "I just want to shave."

So I went to the front desk of the hotel we are staying at in Boynton Beach, Florida, and asked them for two complimentary razors (I'd forgotten mine) and shaving cream. Miguel lathered up, though he was disappointed by the generic brand's lack of froth, and started to drag the razor across his cheeks and above his upper lip. When he finished, he rubbed his face and said, "That feels smooth."

He announced in the car last night that he wants a Gillette Fusion.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it has less tug and pull," he answered.

"Where'd you hear that?" I asked.

"On a TV commercial."

My stepmother chimed in that if he starts shaving now his facial hair will grow in that much faster and darker.

"Is that really true," I wondered, "or just some myth?"

I think I shaved for the first time when I was 14. I'd noticed darker strands of hair amid the virtually invisible peach fuzz, so I grabbed my father's razor, the one with the blade screwed into the middle, and gently removed evidence of my burgeoning adolescence and early manhood.

I was so afraid of my parents' reaction that I never told them. I guess the statute of limitations has long expired should they read this blog entry.

But I did wonder what was behind Miguel's desire to shave and, as he informed me tonight after he mowed away nothing but facial air, continue shaving. Does he identify shaving with becoming a man? Is he growing more aware of his body's changes? What does he actually think becoming a man means?

These questions do not reside solely in the blogosphere or in my mind. Miguel and I are dealing with them as he is perched to jump into young adulthood and is preparing for his bar mitzvah ceremony in August. In the Jewish tradition, one becomes a man when he turns 13. Of course, that Talmudic (Jewish legal) rule grew out of a time when the life span was much shorter.

But in our society, what does becoming a man mean? Miguel isn't old enough to drive a car, drink, or vote, but he has babysat and cooked hot food for his sister. And while he is biologically capable of fathering a child, he has only recently shown any interest in girls at all. So I think grandparenthood is a long way off for me. Whew!

I recently asked several friends--male and female--to share some of their wisdom about what it means to grow up, become a young adult, and accept responsibility. I eagerly await their responses.

I have tried to instill in Miguel the importance of making a difference in the world, always choosing to act right, and knowing when to walk away from trouble or danger. Sometimes I am gentle, other times I am heavy-handed.

While we stood outside a mall today, I saw two young people, around 18, smoking cigarettes. I said to Miguel, "If you ever smoke I will cause you bodily harm."

"Really?" he asked.

"Really."

"Really?" he asked again, his eyes widening.

"No, but I will ground you for life and make your life miserable."

I also hope he learns about being a man from watching me and not just listening to my rants. I am a decent role model--now that I have abandoned my fanny pack--and sometimes the lessons he sees are the best ones for him to absorb.

But the world can be a crazy place and not everything is easy to control. Some of the music he tries to listen to, for example, contains messages I often abhor. Then again, some of the rock and roll and R&B I boogied to had some questionable lyrics as well.

And I am not even talking about the drinking and partying that so many kids in our county engage in on weekends. Or the stress levels among teens. The suicides and other dangerous behaviors and peer pressure. It is a veritable minefield out there at times for boys and girls. Bullying, drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex.

A man chooses wisely. But Miguel is still in so many ways a boy, whether or not he enjoys the pleasure of a Gillette Fusion gliding across his baby face.

Fashionably Unfashionable

2011-04-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm just not a fashionable guy. Until very recently I wore a fanny pack. I still wear argyle socks, though I've been told they are in fashion again. But I never knew they were in or out; I just like them.

Over the past weekend, I was told by family that my jeans were out of date. My blue ones have the thick loop on the left. I guess you call them painter's pants. I looked like an oversized Bob the Builder when I wore them.

Miguel said to me, "Dad, some guy from the 80s called. He wants his jeans back."

My black jeans? My sister-in-law said they look great...if I lived in the 70s. My co-workers, who saw me in them out of work, were convinced they were sweatpants, with a dark sheen.

But the accessory that elicited the most comments and insults was the fanny pack. I'd worn my 'man purse' since the 80s because it was a convenient place to hold my keys, sunglass case, wallet, mesh grocery bags, and change (as in coins).

However, two of my co-workers made it their daily responsibility to chide me and poke fun at me mercilessly in public or private. They'd laugh as soon as I entered the building and point at my fanny pack as if were carrying 8-track tapes, videocassettes, or posters of Milli Vanilli.

The female co-worker went so far to say that she would never even date a guy who wore a fanny pack. In an effort to prove to her that a majority of women I know prefer substance over style, I randomly selected 12 friends and posed the question, Would you date a guy who wore a fanny pack?

I know the sample was unscientific, but I was curious how this dozen would respond. One friend, married, whom I've known for at least 15 years wrote, "Honestly, I have never thought about whether or not a fanny pack diminishes a man's allure or manliness. But if we are talking about superficial first impressions, I look at the shoes, jeans and shirt. There is nothing more eye catching and attractive than a 50-year old man who knows how to dress. My co-worker says women love messenger bags."

Another friend and neighbor, at whose wedding I officiated in 2005, said, "As much as I love people 'being themselves'...I would NEVER date a guy that wore a fanny pack."

And another friend, a single mom of a two-year-old said, "I briefly dated a fanny pack user, hid it, offered to carry it for him, offered bribes, anything to stop him!! And to this day my friends and I laugh about those times. You must say goodbye to the fanny pack!"

Three friends did say it didn't matter. But of the nine who responded, five said, "Ditch the fanny pack."

I may prefer substance over style, but I am sensitive to how others perceive and also see me. So I ditched the fanny pack. And found myself this past weekend with my sister-in-law at Kohl's buying two pairs of jeans that finally rushed me into the 21st century after I'd tossed five pairs of pants, one ancient suit, and three shirts into a bag for Goodwill. Faded blue or stonewashed black jeans are fashionable. Relics from high school and early college are not.

I'd like to say the new apparel is liberating (but I haven't worn either pair of jeans or the new shirt my sister-in-law badgered me into buying), however, I am still in mourning for my fanny pack. Grieving for a small bag that wraps around my waist may not be fashionable, but it is how I am coping for now.

Fast Food Bingo

2011-04-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

There's a moment in Fever Pitch, a movie that still makes me tear up, when Jimmy Fallon, who major league obsesses about everything Boston Red Sox, explains to Drew Barrymore, his girlfriend, the power of his passionate commitment to a baseball team.

"Have you ever been committed to anything this long in your life?" he asks her in a tone meant to wound.

That scene popped into my head today as I sat in a McDonald's in Boynton Beach with Miguel and Maya, my brother, my father and stepmother, and 20 other senior citizens, playing Bingo at 9:15 in the morning.

Last night, an hour or so after the kids and I arrived in Florida, I was on the phone with my father, who turns 80 in about two weeks.

"You want to take the kids to play Bingo?" I asked him. "At McDonald's?"

"Sure," he said.

"Dad, if they are going to eat at McDonald's," I said, "It's your treat."

He laughed. "No problem," he said.

I have no problem with Bingo, a game I haven't played since high school, but the thought of mingling with the breakfast crowd at a fast food joint was not how I imagined starting my "vacation" in the Sunshine State. Then, again, we're here to honor my father and stepmother as they begin their ninth decades, so I'll go with the flow.

We arrived at McDonald's moments before show time. There were two handicapped spots, but one car was parked in between both of them.

"Mr. Cotler's taking up two spaces," my father said. He dropped us off and parked around the corner, which isn't easy for him because he uses a walker in public and an electric scooter at home.

Once my father got inside, he brought Maya and me two bingo cards and another two for Miguel. He also dropped off his two at our table while he went in line to order breakfast for the kids. Miguel and Maya each opted for the sausage McMuffin.

So there I was trying to keep track of four bingo cards while Eleanore, the bingo caller and McDonad's greeter, a retired preschool teacher pushing at least 80, treated us to some good old fashioned hospitality and a floor show, and rapidly called out the numbers like an auctioneer on speed.

At one point my father interrupted her. "Eleanore, why was Harry at the doctor's yesterday?"

"You saw Harry (her husband)?" Then she lifted her hand and bent her ring finger. "It's his finger. He hurt it playing softball. He comes into the house, carrying his finger and moving slowly, and gently places it down on the table, and later on his pillow before bed. You'd think he really'd hurt himself."

She was hilarious. When my father introduced us, she said, "I've got a son, too, but he's not good looking like you," which I thought was flattering until I heard her say it again to my brother fifteen minutes later. I think she says that to all the guys, that senior flirt.

If you called out, "Bingo," but were mistaken, she blew a bicycle horn. If you really pissed her off, and she was joking the whole morning, she pulled out a New Year's Eve noisemaker, also known to Jews as a gragger.

For the record, I won four regular games. My rewards? Winners get their McDonald's game cards punched and earn free coffees or sandwiches. I let them punch out my father's card. He won four or five times himself, earning some "evil" stares and musings from Eleanore about our family's monopoly.

The final game of the morning is the cover-all, where you have to cover the entire bingo board, earning yourself five punches on the game card, which holds only five spots. So winning the cover-all effectively guarantees the victor a free drink or sandwich.

I know, I know, the excitement was palpable.

I just knew I was going to win the cover-all, as I did nearly 40 years ago when I last played Bingo. I was in high school and had gone with my paternal grandparents to their weekly bingo session with two or three of my first cousins. As the cover-all game started then, I kept clapping my hands together at the palms and calling out the letter and number I needed.

"O-71," I clapped, and invariably the letter and number I wanted came up until I finally shouted, "Bingo."

My prize then was $50, which my grandmother insisted I split with her because she'd paid the two or three dollars for my bingo cards. In the car ride home, one of my cousins asked me what I was going to do with my winnings. It was late August, so I said, "Buy some school clothes."

My grandmother gave me the $25 back and said, "Here, I was going to give you money for school anyway."

Today I did not chant or clap or invoke my late grandmother's name (she died in 1988), but I just knew I was going to win. And I did. As did an elder two tables away from us, but we both got our five punches, which means my father will probably never have to pay for another meal at McDonald's. And he doesn't even eat there, for he's on a special diet, so he brought along a peanut butter sandwich, crusts trimmed away, and two rice cakes.

My father later told me that he and Joyce have been going to that McDonald's with their same group of friends for at least 15 years. Eleanore has been a caller for eighteen. Not to get too Cheers on anyone, but I could easily see why they keep going. It is a family where everyone does know your name. And Eleanore still feels special and useful, and makes everyone feel special, even before she passes out cookies from the blue tin. And senior citizens, whose bones creak and their minds wander, get to be winners on a bingo board every Wednesday.

Life changes and people die. But this group counts on each other to be there, and most of them have committed themselves to seeing each other every Wednesday morning, rain, shine, or minor aches and pains. At one point, the store manager proudly displayed three photos of her second and newest grandchild. She beamed with pride as everyone gazed at the pictures.

On the way home from dinner tonight, Miguel said, "When are we going to play Bingo again? I liked Eleanore."

"I liked the horns," Maya added.

Bingo at McDonald's crosses the generations and warms the hearts of the ageless.

Somewhere Over the Red Ball

2011-04-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is cool. I am actually typing this as the kids and I soar to Florida to celebrate my father's and step-mother's 80th birthdays later this month. Technology has a few up sides.

But the human connection is what matters most, which is why I officiate at weddings. My "career" began in 1997, after my then co-worker and friend, Samantha, asked me to perform her wedding ceremony with Evan.

"You seem like you'd be fun," she said, clearly misguided. "And you're Jewish, which will make Evan's parents happy because he's marrying a Catholic girl."

Their wedding was a downright hoot. Evan's father told me before the wedding that he loved Samantha, but that his son could've had any "piece of a** he wanted."

I was, um, shocked.

The ceremony was really an excuse to continue the happy hour that'd begun a few hour earlier. Verna, who was pregnant with Miguel at the time, and I were among the very, very few people who were even sober the entire evening.

During the toasts after the ceremony, Evan's father shared how Evan and Samantha had met in high school. "I'd come into his room late at night," he said, "and he'd be under the cover, moaning..."

Verna and I exchanged glances. Did he just say what we think he did?

But after the ceremony, Evan's mom came over to me and said, "When you recited that blessing in Hebrew, I was in tears."

I didn't do another wedding for a year. I needed time to recover from Evan's father. I was outside the Jewish Community Center when I bumped into Dina, another former teaching colleague. I'd heard she was getting married so I said, "Congratulations."

She mumbled a thank you, almost looking away from me.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Well, we don't have anyone to do the ceremony."

"I can do it," I said.

"Really?"

Since 1997 I have officiated at more than two dozen weddings. And every couple is still together. I have officiated for friends, former students, strangers whom I will never see again, and I am doing one in Napa in mid-May with two people who seem ready to adopt me. I have done services in hotels, restaurants, country clubs, and in the living room of my neighbors. I did one right outside my home for a couple, both from Mexico, whom we met at the park. I literally snagged two witnesses from passersby.

I once shared duties with an Episcopal priest. I have done ceremonies that were 15-25 minutes long and, one, that had to be five minutes maximum or the bride, in her own words, would've thrown up from anxiety.

Why would someone who was married 19 years, but lost his wife to cancer, put himself in such emotionally charged situations?

I have no clue.

Seriously, I have always loved weddings. I love how fun they are, how they represent hope, how they are filled with life affirming meaning.

So there I was this past Sunday officiating at the wedding of Tracy, another former education colleague, and Jamie, a gentle and sweet guy. I was struck by how Tracy and Jamie gazed at each during the ceremony, hands clasped, underneath the traditional Jewish wedding canopy, the chuppah.

Tracy said she knew Jamie was her life partner after he'd so courageously helped her through the ordeal of putting her beloved cat to sleep.

I will admit I wasn't much into partying and resisted a friend's attempt to lure me onto the dance floor, but I loved being surrounded by love and tingly excitement. And I wasn't sad at all, just a tiny wistful.

At some point during the reception, someone dropped a red ball into Tracy's lap. I later posed with the red ball and the groom's mother, whom I'd tried unsuccessfully to cajole into dancing with me. What goes around...

But the red ball symbolized what I also love about weddings. It's obviously an in-joke or some detailed or cute story that only the couple and a select few understand. However, whenever Jamie or Tracy talk about the red ball or other slivers of insider details that make them smile, it just heightens their connection. And maybe gives them a few laughs as well as they navigate the calm and turbulent waters of marriage and life.

At one point at Tracy and Jamie's reception, after we'd eaten and after I'd met a couple who are getting married next year on my wedding date ("How cool would it be for me to officiate?" I said to them), I just stood back from the fray of bodies bouncing to Pat Benatar, smiled at everyone and knew it was time to quietly slip away and go home to Maya and Miguel.

God and The Cancer

2011-03-31T21:29:00.000-07:00

"I am grumpy because of what the cancer did to Mommy," declared Maya on the sidewalk next to our car as twilight deepened yesterday. "I miss Mommy and I don't like the cancer."

"I miss her, too," I said. "Cancer is bad and evil."

Last week she asked me why God had made Verna die. I said, "God didn't make Mommy die. She died because she had cancer, and sometimes cancer makes you die."

A week or so before Verna's funeral, I met with Father Paul, the Catholic priest Verna personally asked to officiate at the ceremony. He is active in social justice issues in the community, especially in the Latino neighborhoods. Somehow the issue of death and God and the unfairness of it all came up.

"I hate it when people say 'God wanted her more'," Father Paul admitted as we sat across from one another. "God didn't want her more. She died because she was too sick."

"Yes," I agreed, as I contemplated hugging him, "the cancer won out this time."

Father Paul's theological view of death was comforting to me. See, I don't blame God for Verna's death. I don't even hold God responsible for the Holocaust. If we have real free will then I understand why God has pulled back from the world, though I wouldn't mind a little intervention now and then. Some good old fashioned Biblical fire and brimstone to smote the real, real bad people. Rwanda. Darfur. Just to name two for starters.

Father Paul's words soothed me because I am agnostic, but it was nice to know he and I were on the same cosmological page.

I've been an agnostic since I was 19. I was an undergrad at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was in a Sociology of Deviance class and the professor was talking about crime and moral relativism and it suddenly struck me that, maybe, there wasn't any God. I'd never had any proof of God's existence, so why believe in a Deity that is quite possibly fictional?

My mother freaked out when I told her I wasn't sure there was a God.

"Maybe you should talk to someone," she pleaded.

So I made an appointment with Rabbi Neil Gilman, then the dean of the Seminary's rabbinical school, who'd also been my freshman Jewish philosophy professor a year earlier. I confirmed everything with his secretary.

On the day of the appointment, I felt as if were entering a lower realm on the way to Heaven, my insides shaky and roiling. Gilman was a scholar who made me nervous. He knew so much and I basically ignored most of his class for I was a lazy undergrad for the first five years of college.

He ushered me into his office, lined with books and books and books. He asked me why I was there.

"I already told your secretary," I said meekly, looking down at my sneakers.

"I know, I just want to hear it from you," he intoned.

"I don't think I believe in God anymore," I said.

He got up from his black leather swivel chair and extended his hand towards me. "Welcome to the club," he said with a grin.

Over the next few weeks, we read different philosophers and Gilman expounded on his view that belief in God exists on a continuum. At various stages of one's life he or she is on the more believing side; and at other stages he or she believes less.

That made sense to me, but over the years I haven't budged from my proud agnosticism. But I was never ready to take the leap into full blown atheism, because atheism always seemed too absolute. I am a doubter, not a disbeliever.

A few months later I watched a bus filled with members of the local Jewish youth group, including my younger brother (and only sibling), pull away from the synagogue enroute to some weekend retreat. I told my mother as we walked to the car that I prayed to God for Scott to be safe.

She started crying. Joyfully.

But even for all my agnostic bluster, I have had experiences, still, that cause me to wonder about the world. Watching the births of both children was a miracle and a mystery that can't help but stir a sense that the world is guided by something.

In early 2009, I wrote a freelance article about the popularity of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition that has gained a fair amount of publicity because Madonna is one of its devotees. One rabbi I interviewed said the essence of Kabbalah is recognizing the Divine spark in everyone and treating everyone as if he or she possesses that celestial shard of light.

His words resonated with me, and I have never forgotten them. I have a few close friends and associates (namely a few elderly women at the retirement community where I work), and family members who are either devout or active in their faiths. Deep, non-judgmental faith impresses me. Always has.

I remember watching my late mother-in-law, Maria, a devout Catholic who lived the best of Jesus' teachings, in 1992 as she retraced her Lord's footsteps at a synagogue where he preached 2000 years ago just north of Tiberias, in Israel's Galilee region. Walking on hallowed ground was the pinnacle of her life.

I will admit I have a hard time understanding when a tragedy occurs and someone says, "God spared us" or "God was good to us." How or why does God protect some people and let others die? Did those who suffered not pray enough?

There were some well-meaning people who said that Verna just needed to pray and think positively when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer and later when it returned. But what about all her friends who'd succumbed to the disease before her? Had they not fought or prayed hard enough?

None of this internal struggle means much or will necessarily help me help Maya as she alternates between utter sadness and demonstrable anger over her Mommy's death.

Two of my co-workers, both dedicated Catholics and very sweet people, told me today that I may be an agnostic but I am also very spiritual. I don't feel that way. I feel as if I am just muddling through when it comes to so, so much. And I do desperately want to comfort Maya and Miguel.

Maybe it's time to open my heart. Maybe it's time for some travel on that continuum that Professor Neil Gilman vividly rendered for me more than 30 years ago.

It's my choice. Thank God.

Music Lessons

2011-03-30T22:12:00.001-07:00

Music soothes me. For the past few nights, I have been scouring YouTube and watching videos of high energy rock and R and B songs that just make me feel better. I lose myself in the music for at least a while and I can "escape" my problems, my sorrow, my pain and feel eased somewhat without having to resort to crack cocaine.

Music also evokes powerful emotions. Last night I watched the YouTube clip for the millionth time of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" on Britain's Got Talent, and my eyes brimmed with tears and I felt all was well in the world, which I know is not true, but for five, very brief minutes I could hide behind a facade where goodness, the sheer, innocent goodness of a 47-year old doughty English spinster, triumphs over the evil of haughtiness and ridicule and pervasive pessimism.

Certain songs either transport me to a particular moment in time or recreate a special memory. When I hear Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do?", I am back in my bedroom as a teen, shades drawn, as I strummed my tennis racket to Frampton's opus and pretended to be a rock star.

Frampton's "I'm in You", a syrupy melody, was, I think, the unofficial anthem for my high school and early college girlfriend, Cindy, and me. Whenever I hear it, I think of her and of young, young love and how immature I was, but how powerful our relationship felt back then.

Don Henley's "Boys of Summer", which I literally could not listen to for a few years, reminds of a heart-searing breakup with a girlfriend, Amy, when I was in my mid-20s. It just hurt to hear Henley crooning, "You can never turn back."

Robert Palmer's "Bad Case of Loving You" holds a special place in my heart. Upon the recommendation of our labor coach, I sang a less than rock and roll version of it to Miguel every night for 3 months while he grew inside Verna.

"Hot summer nights/Felt like a net/I gotta find my baby yet."

Music also energizes me. I have over 1700 songs on my iPod in the rock and roll folder, and I listen to them in alphabetical order when I either run or ride the Life Cycle everyday. Certain songs make me want to tap my feet, sway to the music, or pump my body even faster. Anything by Bryan Adams, Donnie Iris, the Michael Stanley Band, the Beatles, Van Halen, and countless others are guaranteed to increase my energy.

Music can also teach or provide an opportunity for learning. The first thing Miguel does when I turn the car on after I pick him up at school is switch the radio station, usually on a jazz station, to some hip/hop, funk, rap outlet he's favoring.

Today he was listening to a song by Rihanna, a talented singer who gained further notoriety after her ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, assaulted her physically. Her song today was about S and M.

"Miguel, do you know what S and M is?" I asked as the song blared.

"No." His friend, Adam, an 8th grader, sat in the backseat.

"S and M is where people have sex and cause others or themselves pain and violence," I explained. "S and M is where something enjoyable is turned into something painful and violent."

I didn't see the need to launch into anything more about sex, sacred acts between consenting adults or intense physical intimacy and enjoyment, than those two sentences.

"Well," he said, "thanks for the information."

"Miguel, you know what I'm saying. Some songs just say things that are really against my and Mommy's values."

At this point, he may have been ready to jump out the car window, splatter himself on the highway and avoid further embarrassment in front of Adam.

Yesterday he argued with me when I said any and all of the songs the DJ will play at his bar mitzvah reception in August (the 13th) will have to be sanitized.

"Why can't the DJ just use the beeper when a bad word comes on?"

"Because," was all I said.

Sometimes one word or word note or one verse is all it takes, not that he was any happier.

"Mommy's all right/Daddy's all right/They just seem a little weird..."

The Edge of Living

2011-03-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

I've changed names to safeguard the privacy of residents and their families at the retirement community where I work.

Ellen came home to die. Following major coronary surgery and several weeks at a respite care center, she said simply, "I am tired of all this. I'm in pain. I don't want to be a burden anymore."

I visited Ellen yesterday to deliver her a case of Ensure I no longer needed. I peered into her room and saw mottled skin stretched taut against her face. Her gray hair was brushed back atop her head. Blue veins snaked down from the back of her hands past her bony wrists and forearms.

"I brought you a present," I shouted.

"You did?" said Ellen, who is in her late 80s.

I walked into her bedroom, with eight crosses affixed on the wall above the light switch, a rosary dangling from the portable table in front of her.

"Me."

She lifted her hands at me, palms up, and her eyes widened. She smiled brightly. "I'm glad you're here," she said.

"I dropped off some Ensure," I told her. "I don't need it anymore."

I gulped and held back the tears. I am not going to lose it in front of a dying woman, I thought. Ellen started mumbling about a girl who worked for her and needed to get home. Then she explained the large Impressionist painting of three girls in their Sunday best white dresses, bows in their hair, on the wall next to the crosses.

"The girl there," she said, pointing to a figure in the center of the canvas, "was a neighbor of ours, lived behind us. Her mother was the artist."

"Are you using your rosary?" I ask. "It takes a Jewish guy to make sure you are praying, Ellen."

She smiled again. "Well, yes, that is something you would do." She brought up the worker again and I just nodded. She raised her bony fingers towards me, as if she was about to make a critical point, and we clasped hands. Her fingers were warm, her life force still flowing.

Ten minutes later I visited Fay, who is also on hospice and in her late 90s. Thin oxygen tubes snaked in a V from her nose to her chest. Her eyes drooped and the skin underneath her chin wiggled.

"Hi, hon," she said as I poked my head into her room.

"Fay, you're looking good. Nice to have you back." She'd spent a night in the hospital last week after she'd had difficulty breathing.

"Thank you, hon," she said. I explained to Fay and her two children, Janet and Bob, that they she should not hesitate to order trays and let us know how we can best accommodate their needs. I reminded them that all tray services or guest meals are complimentary while a resident is on hospice.

Janet asked me, "Can I come down at 5:45 after Mom has eaten and get some food?" Dinner closes each night at 6.

"Just tell the hostess I said it was OK," I answered.

I'd first met Fay at Casino Night about a month after I started working here in late 2009. She'd been depressed about her failing body, cancer, and weekly blood treatments, but she'd dragged herself to the evening's festivities. She later told me that my associates and I helped peel away her curtain of despair. "You helped save me that night," she said.

I grabbed her hand just before I left and said we would do whatever she needed. Her eyes darted as if she were preoccupied, but I sensed she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

As I left her room and breathed in the stillness of the hallway, my mind focused on hospice, transporting me back to last June, when Verna's oncologist firmly suggested we contact hospice so Verna could have access to 24-hour almost on-the-spot care. The conversation, the images, and the words still imprinted on my brain, when they told us we were looking at two or three more months.

"But," the oncologist said, "I'd love for you to prove me wrong.

Verna died almost three months after her oncologist's final diagnosis and recommendations.

Ellen and Fay are at the beginning of the process, before the round-the-clock administration of pain-killers, conversations about feeding tubes, hushed words about increasing the doses of morphine or Ativan or some other narcotic. I ache for their families, for the decisions they will soon confront or mull over.

I feel sad for them and it reminds me of the anguish I endured last summer. But, on another level, I felt slightly blissful after I left Fay's apartment. Not because I may have eased their suffering (it may beyond anyone's control now), but maybe because I felt how strongly their spirits pulsed as each braved life amid what could possibly be an imminent death. Both women seemed so present, even if Ellen's mind was foggy. And they pulled me into that Zen-state and reminded me yet again that I have a role to play here: caregiver. Or I could just listen to them talk or ramble as they prepare for another journey on the edge of living.

Waves

2011-03-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

One of the best books I read about grief last year, aptly titled About Grief (by Ron Marasco and Brian Shuff), says that grief does not proceed in linear stages, but rather rises and falls like waves or a roller coaster. You don’t get to one stage and then move on until you are completely over death or grieving. It ebbs and flows basically forever.

I was reminded of their wisdom last night as I was putting Maya to bed. “I have a headache,” she said to me after I’d finished reading her Soft Blanket by Jane Yolen. She’s had a runny nose for 2 ½ weeks and also has pink eye.

“Are you sick?” I was poised to feel her forehead.

“No, I just have a headache because I miss Mommy,” she answered, her lips curled downward.

“Me, too,” I said.

“I miss Mommy,” she repeated.

I crawled into bed next to her and pulled Verna’s picture, inside the balsa wood frame decorated by Maya, off the headboard. “Have you had dreams about Mommy lately?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Take a look at Mommy’s picture.”

“I miss Mommy,” she said again. “I want to hug Mommy.”

“I miss Mommy, too. So much,” I said. “You can still hug Mommy in your heart. Always.”

She smiled, gazed at the photograph, which was taken at Disneyland just before Christmas 2009, and said, “I love you Mommy.”

I should have known Maya was grieving more deeply yesterday afternoon. We were doing the grocery shopping when she said to me, “I wish I’d been there when Mommy died.”

“Well, you were there, Maya. You were upstairs in bed.”

“But I wasn’t downstairs,” she said.

“I know.”

This morning she woke up with sadness etched across her entire face. I thought she was sick. She got up and almost curled into a ball on the floor at the foot of the bed. “I miss Mommy,” she said. “I don’t want to go to school. I miss Mommy.”

“How about a hug?” I was clad in my bike shorts, headband, and light blue North Face t-shirt.

She shook her head.

“I’m not sweaty anymore.” Maya knows to avoid me for I usually put in an hour on the Life Cycle.

But she slowly came over and buried her head on my shoulder. She started sobbing. “I miss Mommy,” she wailed into my shirt. “I want to stay home Dadda,” which is what she calls me. It was the first time she's cried since Verna's death seven months ago today.

Her sadness settled over me, but I had visions of watching a movie together and then doing some retail therapy at Claire’s (a company in which I should own stock) before taking her out for ice cream.

“How about a play date with Maya (her best friend) after school?” I asked.

Maya perked up and grinned. “OK.”

Maya’s mother, Michele, invited my Maya over practically before I made the request this morning just after 8 AM.“No problem,” she said, two words that immediately comforted my Maya, who was listening on speakerphone.

So I ordered three picture books on death and grief from Amazon, though I still think the best is Liplap’s Wish by Jonathan London, one I’ve read to her a few times. But I wanted to do something. A co-worker also suggested I call the formerly known Center for Attitudinal Healing in Sausalito because the center offers sessions for preschoolers like Maya.

I know grieving is a long-term, maybe permanent condition. It comes in waves, the surf crashing to the shore. Again and again and again.

It's In The Cards

2011-03-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

Verna had a maternal and spousal bucket list she tackled before she died with the ferocity of a Lioness.

One of the items was writing greeting cards to the kids and her other loved ones. The bulk of the cards were for Miguel and Maya. Each will now receive a card on their birthdays until they are 18; each will get one upon graduating from high school and college (please God); and they will have one to share with their future life partners should they take a leap into matrimony.

Verna started the cards last summer before she went on hospice. She sat in her electric recliner in the living room, I to her right on the sliding recliner, as she composed words the kids would receive after she died.

Verna was inspired to do the cards by our friend, Amy, who wished her late mother (breast cancer, 2001) had left her something for her to read and experience in the future.

I was slightly nervous and giddy during Verna’s first writing session because she asked me to read the cards as she finished them. She’d set a goal of writing 3-4 each day.

She didn’t want me to analyze or correct the cards; just read what she wrote and give her a general response. And I wouldn’t have wanted any other role--passive listener--for I learned the hard way that being a know-it-all is not healthy for a romantic (or any) relationship.

Many, many years ago, during my freshman year of college, while I was taking nine hours of Hebrew each week as an undergrad at the Jewish Theological Seminary, my girlfriend at the time, Cindy, enrolled in a Hebrew class at the University of Connecticut. She was so excited to share with me her first paper, written longhand in Hebrew.

How did I reward Cindy, who was bursting with pride at her significant accomplishment? I circled the mistakes and corrected her as if I was the teacher (or parent) and she was the student (or child). I will never forget the deflated look on her face and the justifiable anger she felt toward me that day.

So there was never a question for me that I was just going to read Verna’s cards to the kids and respond (but not criticize) only if asked. I barely made it through the first sentence of her first card before tears streamed down my face.

A sledgehammer to the gut as I realized Verna was writing cards the kids would read after her death, which we both knew last May would probably be sooner than later.

But, still, she wrote more than 50 cards. She wrote them while fairly lucid and she wrote them while whacked on a cocktail of painkilling drugs that should’ve felled an army of stallions. She insisted on writing even when her handwriting blurred and her mind grew foggier and foggier and her short-term memory dimmed.

When I volunteered to be her secretary so she could dictate her words to me and conserve her energy, she was emphatic, “No, I want them to see what I was going through.”

She also slipped a savings bond into each card, $100 for birthdays and holidays and $500 for marriage.

I’ve read many of the cards at least once and they are amazing. The legacy and gift Verna has given the kids is truly remarkable.

For Maya’s Christmas card this year, Verna wrote, “I’ll bet you were a good little girl this year and you’ll get whatever you want. What I love about Christmas are all the lights and decorations. I also loved going to Christmas Mass with Grandma. Christmas is not just about getting presents, but about remembering what the holiday is about.”

Verna wrote in Miguel’s Christmas card, with a black puppy, wearing a Santa hat, inside a coffee cup on the front, “I love you. I certainly loved Christmas time. After Grandma Chela (her mother) died in 2008, I loved bringing her Nativity scene into our home as part of our family tradition.”

She wrote in Miguel’s Hanukkah card, “Have you already listened to Adam Sandler’s The Hanukkah Song? Maybe with the money in this card you could buy a new Hanukkah menorah. I know Daddy loves his tin menorah, but it is really getting beat up and is becoming a fire hazard. Believe it or not, I finally was able to sing along in Hebrew when Daddy was lighting the candles. It took me about 15 years. I am sure it won’t take you that long.”

Re-reading the cards is so hard because they remind me again and again that Verna is dead. But the heartbreaking joy comes from knowing that the kids get a gift, Verna’s voice from beyond, at least four or five times a year.

She poured so much of herself into writing the cards. She did a fair amount of Internet research so she could write about her world when she was 15, 16, 17. “What major world events happened in 1981?” she asked me.

While I was caught off-guard and clueless, she found the answers by punching up Google or a similar site.

Verna forgot she wrote Maya a 5th birthday card, so she ended doing another. Maya loved getting two from Verna, one adorned with her favorite princess, Belle, and the other with rainbows, hearts, and sprinkles.

“I want to hang them in the bedroom so I can see them forever,” Maya said.

On Miguel’s 13th birthday card, Verna wrote, “I know you are excited that you can officially watch PG-13 movies. But, remember, Daddy is the one who decides what movies you get to watch.”

Still mothering from beyond the grave.

In her birthday card to her father, who turned 82 on March 5, she apologized for dying first. He broke down and lowered his head to the table as he read it. Tears clouded my eyes as I watched him.

So reading the cards will never be easy, but I will cherish, and I think the kids will, too, the memories Verna shared, the life lessons she imparted, the jokes she cracked, and the love she offered as her ultimate gifts while she lay dying.

Verna and Steve Gone Wild

2011-03-08T23:04:00.000-08:00

I pulled this out of the vault. This is a selective travelogue of Verna’s and my final vacation together as a couple, to Mexico, July 25-August 1, 2008. No names have been changed or details altered, though I should have done both. You will soon understand why.

Verna and I spent a week in Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of the Baja Peninsula, for our first vacation without kids in 11 years. We were last in Mexico for our honeymoon in 1991. We stayed then in Mazatlan at the time-share condo of Verna’s brother, Jim, and his wife, Liz. We transferred their week this time to stay in Cabo.

We spent seven glorious, sun-drenched days lounging by the pool, walking miles and miles around the marina, drinking tequila, giggling in the surf of the Sea of Cortez, dining out for each meal, and consuming more tequila.

After two years spent battling breast cancer before settling into the sometimes tiring and mundane trappings of full-time motherhood, the vacation served as a coming out party for Verna, who reveled—for a few days—in her body, mind, and spirit.

While Verna sat in the lobby of our resort, Sol Mar Beach Club, Saturday evening, writing a postcard to a friend, I joined four women in line for dinner, a Mexican fiesta all-you-can-eat buffet. We shared vital biographical information and I learned they were sisters from Lake Charles, LA, who’d left their children and husbands behind for five days of sibling bonding, freedom, and revelry. They invited us to sit with them at dinner.

As the dinner progressed and the floorshow at the fiesta droned on, they asked us to join them for the evening. They were headed to Cabo Wabo’s, a famed bar owned by rocker Sammy Hagar, in the heart of Cabo’s downtown.

“No, that’s OK. I don’t think we’re up for a late night,” said Verna.

I looked over at her, then whispered, “C’mon, let’s live it up.”

Verna somewhat reluctantly agreed. We hopped in a taxi and arrived at Cabo Wabo’s around 8:30. We climbed the wooden stairs to the main area, a huge room filled with circular tables and high bar chairs and standard booths. We were told the house band went on at 10:30. So we ordered a round of beers.

Three or four rounds later, the sisters, Michelle, Melissa, Colleen, and Denise, suggested we go next to the Giggling Marlin, where they’d been the night before, to see the exciting floor show.

A small group of waiters and waitresses led by the owner of the bar, a white blond male in his 20s or early 30s with awesome dance moves, started the show off with a cleverly choreographed boogie number. Then the owner and MC invited any and all women in the audience to come up for a game of musical chairs.

Melissa yanked Verna out of her seat and the two of them stood with at least twenty women against two rows of chairs lined back to back. The owner/MC asked men in the audience to bet on the woman they thought would win. The $20 bets would go towards the $150 winner’s share. Verna looked over at me several times and mouthed that I was not to wager on her.

No one else did either.

Though Verna is somewhat timid, she is also very competitive. She elbowed and pushed a few women out of the way to remain one of the final eight contestants.

“Now,” announced the MC, “we are going to play Simon Says or Johnny Daddy says. If I say ‘Johnny Daddy says’ then you need to do it as fast as possible to stay in the competition. So, Johnny Daddy says get me a bra.”

Verna was seated at the end of the row, only a few yards away from us. She raced over to us and said what we already knew: “I need a bra.” Colleen, who is 49 like me, somehow pulled hers out of her black tank top in just a few harrowing seconds. Then she crossed her arms over her chest as Verna bolted back to her chair.

After the women returned the bras to their owners, the MC said, “Johnny Daddy says get a man’s t-shirt.” I started taking mine off before Verna had even returned to the table.

I must interject that I was completely sober, which may have been a mistake on my part in terms of what I had to do next. I’d had a few sips of Verna’s beers at Cabo Wabo’s and one shot of tequila at dinner, nearly six hours earlier.

“I want all the men to come up and get their t-shirts. But stay with the women,” said Johnny.

There I was, half-naked, 160 bony and vegetarian pounds, facing Verna, who was holding my orange Buzz Kill t-shirt (from the website www.NothingButNets.net).

“Before you get your t-shirts,” explained Johnny, “you must lap dance your partner.”

Ayyyyeeeeeiiii!!!!

At least it was my wife. So I straddled Verna as she grabbed my hips and did my best and sober Chip and Dale’s routine. We laughed, I turned beet red, Verna egged me on, and we milked our brief moments in front of a friendly and raucous bar crowd as I thrust my pelvis and booty in her face.

Then Johnny brought up the six or seven men who’d bet on the women and had them sit at tables in front of them. Verna still had no sponsor and still didn’t want one.

Johnny paired the final six women into three groups. Verna was in the first duo with a woman who had on a loose-fitting gray tank top, her breast spilling out the sides.

Each woman had to dance and then the judges chose one of the pair. Verna went second and danced up a sultry, sexy storm. The crowd, led by a certain skinny-framed American, hooted and hollered. When she finished, her face flushed and sweaty, Johnny proudly clasped her hand above his head and said, “Girlfriend, you’ve got game. You can really move.”

Verna was clearly the oldest of the competitors, most of whom were in their 20s. Her “partner” had muddled her way through her dance, out of sync, slightly reminiscent of Elaine on Seinfeld. But the “judges” voted for only one contestant. In an extremely close vote, Verna was booted off the tequila soaked island, but not before Johnny ordered a round of tequila for the sisters, Verna, and me because she was such an excellent dancer. She was the only one he acknowledged so fervently.

“I lost out because I don’t have any breasts,” Verna said matter-of-factly when she returned to the table.

“You were by far the better dancer. You were awesome,” I said. “I think the judges were going for the slutty look as well. You just aren’t slutty.”

Verna’s face sparkled when she spoke to us about dancing and losing, but I could see she was disappointed.

However, when she saw what the three remaining women had to do with their male bettors, or jockeys if you will, she felt a bit better about losing. Each couple had 30 seconds to get into as many sex positions as possible. The last couple, with a guy who had a serious paunch, gyrated and hefted themselves into 11 positions before an adoring crowd and snared the $150, which probably made up for the mild public humiliation.

Before another bar wide conga line in which everyone gulped a shot of tequila, I paid $10 to be hoisted upside down by my ankles. My reward? Three shots of juice and tequila. I downed one and shared the other two with the sisters.

We left the bar at 12:40. Verna was way too pumped up to share a taxi ride with the sisters back to our resort, so we walked 20 minutes back to our room and slept until not quite 8 am.

We took our partying and penchant for zany contests to the sand and surf of Medano Beach on Thursday, the day before we had to depart Cabo. We walked 2.5 miles from our hotel under partly cloudy skies and parked ourselves on the sand chairs outside Billigan’s, located literally on the beach.

Billigan’s holds a series of contests throughout the day. Since they offer beer buckets, six bottles for $10, inebriation allows many beachgoers to ignore inhibitions and run wild and wacky.

Again, I was sober all day. I entered the day’s first competition, a Karaoke contest without words to sing by. We had to sing along with Los Lobos doing La Bamba. The first entrant, a woman from Mexico City, knew all the words in her native tongue Spanish. I figured she had it won hands down.

The second contestant never actually sang. She just mouthed the words. The guy before me, another American, sang OK but he was rather boring. I certainly didn’t know all the words but I figured, even though it was only 11:30 in the morning, I could shake and sizzle like Elvis on Ed Sullivan.

The winner was chosen by audience response. I was still convinced the senora from Mexico City would be the victor. I even clapped the loudest for her. But we’d made friends with a couple from Texas and there were several Americans clustered around them, so when my name was called, the crowd erupted. And I was the winner. The woman from Mexico City, her national pride wounded, audibly complained that the MC had cheated.

A waiter came over and delivered my prize, four frozen margaritas, two of which we shared with the couple form Texas.

Seventeen years earlier, on our honeymoon in Mazatlan, Verna won a dance contest on a party boat. After my victory in the singing contest had inadvertently stoked her competitive fires, she was determined not to leave the beach without another contest victory.

The next contest pitted a group of tourists against four waiters and waitresses in a margarita chugging match. Verna volunteered to be one of the four tourists and helped her team to victory.

I am sure we ate some food at that point, maybe even lunch, anything to soak up some of the alcohol. Even though the day began in the mid-90s, it was suddenly cooler and overcast with a few drops of rain. Cooler meant upper 70s. It was still quite pleasant.

The third challenge, for which Verna volunteered yet again, was a time trial. Each contestant had to dash to a table and swallow a shot of tequila, then run to spot near the beach and chug an entire bottle of beer. Then each person had to do ten revolutions around a stake in the sand before racing back to their seats.

The first two competitors, young women not older than 20, did pretty well, one was timed in 1:24 seconds, the other in 1:18. Verna was next and she breezed back to the stage in 66 seconds and was the new leader. The final entrant, a young man in his 20s, flew across the sand, even with one of the waiters, Jesus, who favored the oldest contestant, trying to obstruct him, in 65 seconds.

Just as he was declared the winner, Verna said, “I just want you to know you only beat me, someone who is old enough to be your mother, by one second.”

He looked as if he’d been kicked hard in the stomach. Moments later, the staff at Billigan’s brought in one last tourist, I think a professional drinker, and he ran the course in 57 seconds.

The off-duty waiter, Jesus, a finely chiseled Mexican with a nipple ring, who attempted unsuccessfully to champion Verna’s cause by grabbing her 22-year old rival, had also been making time with another American female, kissing her, grabbing her butt, and bumping and grinding his way to future ecstasy in full view of everyone for most of the afternoon.

Verna started talking with the two young women who’d been in the race with her and found out that the mother of one was also a breast cancer survivor. So the three of them bonded quickly and both girls hugged Verna repeatedly and couldn’t stop expressing their admiration for her. They were also friendly with Jesus.

At one point, he came over and noticed us looking at his chest, which had been shaven because he was an avid swimmer. He asked Verna, who’d been eyeing his nipple ring with curiosity, “Would you like to touch it?”

I jokingly made a move toward him and then Verna said, proudly, “I’ll touch yours if you touch mine.”

So he reached out to grab her and as he did Verna said, “I don’t have any!”

His hand stopped in mid-air, a baffled look on his face. Verna paused slightly enough to cause him a twinge of embarrassment before she explained why she had no nipples.

It turned out that Jesus often donated money to groups fighting breast cancer. Before he got up and returned to groping his buxom American, he hugged Verna several times and told her how much she inspired him.

As I recount the episode now, I am brimming with pride and tears for my wife, a truly amazing person. Verna told me on our jaunt back to the hotel that she was finally fed up with the in-your-face displays of T & A on the beaches, snorkeling cruises, and bars of Cabo. Her defiant gesture was for women everywhere who have felt the oppression of having to conform to a certain and usually impossible body image.

I thought Verna’s dare was priceless, but I also felt it was personally significant. Even though Verna still loathes looking at herself in the mirror each night, her gesture was really a very public affirmation that on some level she accepts who she is. It was a coming out party as Verna realized on some level that she’d conquered all the pain and emotional hardship she’d endured. That she could be bold and brazen about her body in public was, in my view, an unbelievable moment.

But in the immediate wake of her friendship with the two young women and her amusing confrontation with Jesus, Verna was unhappy that she hadn’t one any contests outright.

“I am not leaving this beach,” she stated, “until I win something.”

The fourth and final contest of the afternoon before the evening festivities, when Billigan’s runs another series of alcohol-fueled challenges, was, thankfully, alcohol-free. For all the drinking I didn’t do that afternoon, if there was ever a contest that needed copious amounts of any and all alcohol, the last one we entered was it.

The MC called for at least three couples. Verna and I plopped into a chair onstage, she in my lap. No one else got within 50 feet of us. The MC said he needed at least four more people to continue. Jesus dragged another woman over and I canvassed two people who thought they were going to enjoy a quiet snack of chips and guacamole.

“For this contest,” the MC explained, “each couple must run into the water, remove their bathing suits bottoms, switch them and then run ashore.”

Thank God Verna doesn’t wear a bikini. We were out of our seats faster than anyone, but Verna tumbled in the sand and I, right behind her, flew hands first over my wife. We lost a few seconds but quickly switched bathing suit bottoms and raced back to our seats. I was now wearing Verna’s swim shorts with a Velcro strip right down the middle. It barely covered my midsection. She had on my baggy Red Sox trunks.

Jesus, wearing a loose-fitting fuchsia bikini, and his partner arrived at their seats seconds before me, with Verna trailing just a bit behind me. The third couple was not even out of the water by the time the four of were back on the stage.

The MC announced that there’d be a dance-off between the top two couples, with the audience deciding the winner. Each guy had to booty lap-dance his companion. Again, Verna and I were at a distinct advantage because we were a real couple, so we didn’t have to hesitate—in theory—about thrusting our pelvises, twisting our torsos, or contorting any other body parts at or near each other.

I couldn’t stop laughing and neither could Verna. While she easily grasped my oversized (for her) bathing suit in her hands, I was doing a poor imitation of Elvis, fuzziness sticking out from the top of her water shorts.

The audience vote was close but the MC declared us the victors after two or three tense rounds of applause from both sober and inebriated beachgoers. Verna was ecstatic that she’d finally won a contest.

“Seventeen years ago on our honeymoon in Mexico, I’d won a dance contest,” she recalled to anyone within earshot who was still paying attention to the utter frivolity. “And now I’ve done it again.”

OK, so her competition back in 1991 had been a nine-year-old on a party cruise, and I aided her victory on the beach this time. But who was going to quibble? I certainly wasn’t going to prolong our competitive day. Yes, honey, was all I needed to muster; you are the champion.

And Verna was the champion for beating back cancer and reaching deep within herself and rising above her self-loathing; storming the beach and the pool and proclaiming to a select few newfound friends that she just wanted to have a little fun, enjoy herself and her body, and reclaim some of the joyful abandon she deserves.

Verna and I did go a little wild. But there was deeper message there, and it was basically something we shared privately on the sun-splashed tip of the Baja Peninsula that became our life-affirming nirvana for a week of bliss.

Strangers Among Us

2011-03-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

The front page of this past Sunday's Hartford Courant, my hometown newspaper, featured an article about Dr. George Reardon, the former Chief of Endocrinology at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, CT, who died in 1998 and has been accused of sexually brutalizing and photographing 500 children and adolescents.

Reardon lured his young patients into his perverted lair "after persuading their parents to enroll them in his human growth study", said the article.

The 90 plaintiffs now suing the hospital for possibly tens of millions of dollars claim Reardon forced them to pose for photographs in the nude or with other children in sexually suggestive ways, wrote the article's author, Edmund Mahony.

In addition, the subsequent owners of Reardon's home after his death, wrote Mahony, three boys whom Reardon described as foster children, discovered a secret cache of more than 50,000 pornographic slides and motion picture films hidden behind paneling inside the home.

I was a patient of Dr. Reardon's for nearly fifteen years, and was a participant in his study, with the approval of my parents.

When the story of Reardon's alleged and monstrous pedophilia first broke several years ago, I was shocked. I had a hard time believing that the avuncular and authoritative man who'd treated my hypothyroidism through puberty, adolescence, and into my early 20s was a sinister fiend.

He was tall, with huge hands, which often held a cigarette when he counseled my mother and me in his office, lined with medical books and journals. He spoke in soft and gentle tones, but you always felt he was in charge. He was the one my mother turned to when I had a serious bout of anxiety when I was 11 or 12. Reardon, a father figure, comforted me as I poured out my tears of shame. I can still see him behind his thick wood desk, glass topped, and me, seated in front, a jangle of nearly out of control emotions.

I can also still see and feel his fingers gently clasped around my throat as he repeated, "Sip, swallow," as he tested my thyroid while I drank a cup of water. He was patient.

I was about 15 when I entered his study, for which it appears he did secure grant money from the hospital, after my parents signed the appropriate waivers and protocol agreements. We had one or two sessions that I now recall. I sat, naked, on the examination table while he, standing at the opposite end of the room, photographed me in the dark, the absence of light necessary, Reardon said, for the specific type of growth documentation his was gathering for his study.

He never touched me during these nocturnal-feeling episodes. My parents and I accepted Reardon's explanation that my participation in his study would contribute to science. Years later, after I shared my story with a colleague, she wondered how photographing a nude teenage boy had anything to do with treating one's thyroid condition or documenting my growth.

I now know that included in Reardon's sick trove of pornographic photos and slides are pictures of an innocent and trusting young man who grew up in Bloomfield, CT. And I was obviously not alone. There were hundreds of young patients he attacked or photographed. But I was lucky. I was never a direct victim of abuse.

I ache with pain for the 90 adults who are now reliving their horrendous past with an alleged pedophile as they await the trial that could begin this week. St. Francis claims that the hospital was not only unaware of Reardon's nefarious research and behavior, but had also never received a complaint about him.

Reardon died 13 years ago, so I imagine he is burning (and I hope being tormented and tortured) for eternity. His victims are alive and probably struggling to integrate their awful experiences with Reardon and his kindly and calming demeanor.

I do not consider myself a plaintiff, nor do I know if the hospital is culpable. I only hope that justice is truly served. Reardon's alleged crimes and their aftermath, especially how he conned people into believing he was a dedicated medical professional, are scary to contemplate for me and reveal yet again that dangerous people can be successful at hiding their true selves.

Reardon's story at its fundamental core is about the abrogation of trust, and how a portion of my history has been ripped to shreds.

Viva la Revoluccion

2011-03-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

Miguel and I anointed ourselves the world’s greatest wave jumpers and divers last week in the warm water of the white sands beach at Playa del Carmen, 41 miles south of Cancun.

“We are the only two in the world,” he added.

There may actually other wave jumpers and divers on the many shores of our planet, but as we frolicked in the turquoise waves, we imagined ourselves as the world’s sole practitioners.

“I’m number one and you’re number two,” said Miguel, his competitive spirit intact as we body surfed at Mamita’s Beach.

We spent a week in Mexico at the invitation of a friend from Wisconsin, who winters there with her four-year-old daughter every February in order to escape the frigid temperatures of the Midwest. When Anita, who visited us in San Rafael on the first night of Hanukkah, suggested we spend Miguel’s February break, known here as ski week, in tropical Mexico, my first thought was, “No way. We can’t afford it. It’s too much to pull together.”

Then I pondered her proposal later that evening and decided, “Why the hell not? After all we’ve gone through we deserve it.”

So we packed sunscreen, bathing suits, shorts, and sandals (yes, underwear, socks, and t-shirts, too), and flew down for a week of relaxation and few responsibilities.

One night we went to a circus, which featured one performer, a kind of jack-of-all trades who juggled, told jokes (mostly in Spanish), rode a unicycle, and performed a magic trick or two. Before we entered the tiny neighborhood theater, Miguel said, “I’m hungry. Let’s just go to dinner.”

I sensed, though, the show would be fun, so I gently insisted we go inside. Miguel was called onstage during the show and handed the performer four bowling pins to juggle while he was atop the unicycle. At the end of the week, Miguel said, “The circus was definitely one of the highlights.”

On our first day there, as Miguel and I almost lounged in the blue-green surf clear enough to see to the bottom, he and I said almost instantaneously, “I could do this forever.”

The weather certainly aided our sense that we’d never want to leave our Mayan paradise. Daytime temperatures hovered near 80 all week, and were in the mid-60s in the evenings. Pleasant breezes blew in off the ocean, cooling us as we lay on the sand, under umbrellas and on beach chairs.

When Maya first reached the ocean, she squealed with delight and jumped up and down for literally ten minutes. She was that excited. I only wished Verna could have been with us to see the smile of sublime joy stretched across her daughter’s face.

We drove forty minutes south mid-week to Tulum, a sort of hippy, counter-culture, sacred space, carved out of the forested coastline, and stayed at a hotel right on the beach. Coconut palm trees rustled outside our windows, creating the sound of rain whooshing up against the hotel room. Miguel and Maya jumped on a trampoline, and he and I tossed dried coconuts as if we were playing baseball.

Because there is virtually no ground light in Tulum, the luminescent canopy of stars under which we found ourselves at night was truly breathtaking. Miguel and Maya just smiled in awe. Maya said, “They’re all Mommy’s stars.”

During the week, we also ate tacos, I drank one margarita (my goal had been one a day), we saw a small fish dart by us in the ocean, and I watched Maya shake, rattle, and roll to a live blues band at the Bad Boys Bar on the beach.

It was a great, great, and memorable seven days, even if I only achieved status as the world’s second greatest wave jumper.

Not A Valentine's Day Massacre or a Total Eclipse of the Heart

2011-02-27T23:01:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day was never too big a deal for Verna and me. We celebrated it with occasional gifts and dinner out and always a card. The cards were great because Verna, usually reticent about expressing her feelings or musing about our relationship, used them as an opportunity to open up to me. Although I communicate (too) well and Verna usually knew exactly how I felt, I used the cards as a way to remind her (and myself) why I loved and respected her so much.

Yes, I bought her flowers or chocolates on occasion, and I received an iTunes card or a CD, but I bubbled with excitement on Valentine’s morning when I opened Verna’s card to me and absorbed her heartfelt sentiments. Really, I’d ask myself, you love me for that?

But the bouquets of double-delight roses and the bars of fair trade chocolate and the quiet dinners at local restaurants are now hazy memories that spark my heart with unequal parts sadness and joy.

Valentine’s Day 2011, being the first one without Verna, was one I’d hoped would come and go, preferably, with the speed of light.

One of my friends, and my boss, sensed this and invited the kids and me over to his house for dinner. He and his wife share their Mill Valley bungalow with their two-and-half year son, two dogs, and a cat. His wife was more than 38 weeks pregnant when we showed up on their doorstep with pie and juice.

Erik and Megan bounced up against each other in their kitchen as the taco meat sizzled in the pan and the vegetarian beans bubbled, while Maya and Brady, the soon-to-be big brother toddler, shrieked, er, played throughout the house. Miguel kept laughing out loud at a book Erik gave him, S**t Your Kids Mess Up (or something like that).

The mixture of domestic tranquility and zaniness and impending birth anxiety was oddly comforting and definitely took my mind and heart off Valentine’s Day, which has grown way too Hallmark and unwieldy for a widower like me.

So we left with two tired kids and one parent who didn’t focus too much on loss and sorrow and Cupid’s arrow ripping a massive gash on my left side that may never heal.

Then I put Maya to bed and was confronted again with pain and sorrow and memories. I flossed and brushed her teeth, read her a story, and then lay down next to her for ten minutes. As we gazed at the ceiling she said to me, “I wish Mommy could come down and hug us. I miss Mommy.”

I gulped, and wondered if there’d be tears. “I miss Mommy too,” I said. “So much. I’d give anything to hug Mommy.”

Then my mind clicked into sheltering parent mode, and I said, “Let’s give Mommy a hug.”
So I crossed my arms over my chest and shook from side to side and said, “I love you, Verna.”

Maya did the same and said, “I love you, Mommy.”

A poignant and heartbreaking Valentine’s Day, 2011. Gratefully over and out.

Heaven Is Not A Place On Earth

2011-02-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Maya asked me on the way to pick up Miguel from basketball practice, "How did Mommy get to Heaven?"

We were about to turn at a traffic light opposite a Safeway. "God put her there," I said, quite relieved that my five-year-old could not peer too deeply into her agnostic father's heart (or mind).

"When you die," I continued, "God lifts you to Heaven."

"I want to die," she responded. "So I can be with me Mommy."

Then she kept repeating "I just want to die, Daddy, so I can be with Mommy" over and over. She asked me if people live in Heaven. "They can talk right, Daddy?"

"Well," I said to my theologically and cosmically advanced preschooler, "people can talk in Heaven, but Heaven is where people go after they die."

It wasn't as if I was holding back the tears, but I was stuck in a state of shock, a relentlessly thick river of emotion-stultifying goop. Maya didn't want (or understand what it meant) to die, but she misses Verna so much that she wants to join her in Heaven, a place I later told her where Mommy is no longer sick or feels pain.

"Do you want to die and see Mommy?" she asked.

"Well," and I knew I was treading on shaky ground for I could not return to the everyone dies conversation without provoking a psychic meltdown, "I don't want to die now. I want to be here living with you and Miguel and all our friends and family."

That seemed to mollify Maya, and she did not ask if everyone we know also wants to die. She said, "That's right. We're going to live forever, me and Daddy and Miguel."

I gulped. Then I gladly lied yet again to her. "Yes, we are going to live forever. I am not going anywhere."

Which is what Maya wanted and needed to hear. Just before bed, dressed in her light green Tinkerbell pajamas, she said, "I miss Mommy. I wish she could come down and see us."

"So do I," I said. "I miss Mommy so much."

When she is older I can tell her about the surreal dream I had last week. I went to bed just before midnight and drifted into the first stage of sleep, where one can be awakened easily. I was standing next to our king-sized bed and I felt Verna's presence, powerful and close. As I neared the bed, I also felt a malevolent force, something very evil, trying to yank me downwards, almost in a tangle of white bedsheets. I felt awake and everything seemed very real.

I called out, "Verna, Verna, Verna," and suddenly her hands appeared. I saw them on top of the bed. So I reached for them and Verna pulled me away from whatever was tormenting me. Then my eyes opened, though I still felt as if I was in the dreamy, not quite asleep state, and I saw bright light.

I actually opened my eyes and saw Maya's breathing steadily next to me, peacefulness and innocence etched on her face, as she slumbered for the evening. I was OK. I felt as if Verna had either rescued me or sent me a message from beyond.

The message? I have no idea. But I do keep reminding Maya (and myself) that we have another Guardian Angel, watching over us as we go about living life to (I hope) the fullest. And missing Verna, but knowing she is there as a beacon.

Wedding Guy

2011-02-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a referral from my friends, Michelle and Patrick Gannon, who run nationally recognized workshops--Marriage Prep 101--I am officiating at a wedding of a wonderful couple in mid-May. Two weeks later, I fly to Seattle to officiate at the ceremony of another great couple.

I consider it a sacred honor to help people get married and celebrate their relationships with a community of friends and family. I specialize in helping couples realize their vision for their wedding day by I tailoring the ceremony to their needs and preferences. The day should be all about them.

I have been officiating at weddings since 1997, and every couple--more than two dozen--is still happily married.

I love the joy, the celebration, the reverence, the love, the passion, the humor, and the zest for life that each ceremony can possess.

Please contact me to help you make your wedding day a special memory.

Email: steven_friedman@sbcglobal.net. Cell: (415) 235-0323.

Thank you.

Maya At 5

2011-01-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

Maya turns five tomorrow. Or Maya turns 25. Or 2,225. She's an old soul, for sure. Many of her insights and comments, filled with wisdom and compassion, make me shiver in awe and wonder how long she has been around.

Yesterday, while I was scrambling to prepare her breakfast and tend to Miguel (who has strep), Maya said, "I wish Mommy could come out of the stars and come down to see us. Then she could give us a big hug because her back doesn't hurt. But Mommy isn't alive anymore."

Boom.

Maya knows and sees so much. Before Maya was born, Verna and her friend Tony went to see some program at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The presenter, also a psychic, told Verna that her baby-to-be would be a healer. Verna was diagnosed a few weeks later with cancer, Maya was yanked out early, and Verna and I assumed the healing the psychic referred to was for her life threatening illness.

And Maya's arrival did provide Verna (and everyone) with physical and emotional solace and focus. While Verna labored through chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and days filled with horror and sickness, pain and fear, Maya's life force centered us on living and hope and the future. We still had a tiny life to nurture.

As Maya grew, oblivious to Verna's illness and the subsequent specter of cancer and disease that haunted us since Friday, January 13, 2006, she clearly absorbed life around her. It saddens me that Maya has had to grow up faster than most girls ever, ever should.

Last week she said to me, as we lounged in bed after I'd turned off the lights, "I don't want to be a Mommy, just a big sister. I don't want breasts."

I wanted to cry.

She added a few days later, "I hope I don't get the cancer. I don't want to die. Then you'll be sad."

Beyond sad.

Maya's world was irrevocably altered by cancer. Cancer robbed her of her Mommy and revealed (yet again) the grim reality that life is often not fair or just. But Maya shouldn't be acquainted with that painful reality as she learns in preschool how to identify numbers or that dinosaurs are extinct or sings songs about the seasons.

But Maya is still, in many, many ways just five years old. She wants to marry Daddy, believes in Santa, and wonders if all the characters in The Nutcracker ballet sleep behind the stage at night.

She is innocent and wise. She is my angel and princess. And I celebrate her birth (and also the amazing woman who birthed her, my late wife, Verna).

Maya the (almost) five year old is a total girly girl. She loves sparkly jewelry, bracelets and necklaces, and wearing her psychedelic pink and purple peace sign sneakers that sparkle when she stomps. She plays elaborately imaginative games in the house while I make dinner and Miguel does homework or, more likely, glues himself in front of his Play Station 3. She is the Mommy or school teacher, tenderly caring for her stuffed animals, baby dolls, Barbies, or Disney Princess dolls. Or she sets up tea parties in the living room on the blue table with the large pencil legs.

Maya is all smiles and sunshine and laughter. She embraces and enjoys life and friends and playing. I love how she and I make up silly words. I call her 'Basha basha' and she calls me 'Boopie loopie'. How she loves for me to tickle her back before she nods off to sleep or sing her a song about Bella (the Princess) who lost her umbrella and always enlists the aid of the other princesses: Aurora, Jasmine, Tiana, Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel.

I adore Maya because she has such a big heart. She brought a gift from her own toy pile to a friend's younger sister because we were celebrating the elder's birthday. "She will be sad," Maya said. "So I am giving her something, too."

I will never, ever forget what she said to me moments after I told her that Verna had died. First, she raced downstairs because she didn't believe me. Then when she came back to bed after having seen that the hospital bed was empty, she said, "Mommy died, I am sad. Poor Daddy, I will take care of you."

Where does that come from?

She constantly jolts Miguel and me with her sublime view of the world. She loves to hug and kiss, and continually affirms her love for you. She is going to be five and has lived lifetimes through her mother's illness and death.

Through all of the madness of our Twilight Zone-like nightmare, though, Maya still clutches tightly to the reins of life as someone who has been alive for 60 months. She said to me last week, her eyes brimming with joy and abandon, "I am so excited. I can't wait to be five. I'm going to be a big girl."

Amen, sweetheart. Never, ever forget to let the sunshine in.

Take Out the Papers and The Trash

2011-01-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

When I was an at-home father, the house was usually a mess when Verna got home from work, which frustrated her almost daily.

"Can't you pick everything up before I get home?" she asked, with children's books and wooden blocks and dozens of Thomas the Tank Engine trains, tracks, and toys strewn across the floor and couch.

"But, why?" I asked almost innocently. "We're just going to make a mess after dinner?"

"Because coming home to a clean house matters to me," she responded, a flash of anger in her eyes.

At the time, I thought Verna's logic was harsh. Now I know that Mother Truly Knows Best, or at least Verna did. A clean house is relaxing and helps one feel in control...for a few moments anyway.

The other night, as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and Miguel was sprawled on the couch with strep throat, Maya was quietly terrorizing the house. She'd pulled out her toy cellphones, books, mini-photo albums, puzzle pieces, several stuffed animals and dolls, clothing, keys, paper bags, three or four pocketbooks, a walkie-talkie, dirty socks, and jewelry and unceremoniously dumped everything in several piles across the living room, kitchen, and dining area.

Maya is so great at entertaining herself and playing imaginatively all alone, but she manages to use at least a hundred different items and then just leaves them on the floor when she is done.

Somewhere in heaven, Verna is cackling: "Ha! Now you know how I felt." To which I respond: "You're not kidding."

So I looked at Maya, who was innocently pulling another book or two off the shelf, and said, "Oy, what a mess. Who's going to clean this up?"

"Daddy," she answered too quickly.

"Daddy?" I asked in mock anger. "Why daddy?"

At this point, I expected Maya to start bawling, "I don't want to clean up alone. Daddy help me." But, no, she surprised me. "Because it's daddy's house."

"Because it's daddy's house," I repeated, not sure if I should laugh, cry, or raise my voice. "Why do you say it's daddy's house?"

"Because you were born first," Maya said.

Hard to argue with that logic, so I cleaned up the living room with a bit of help from my energetic preschooler. And it was hard to get mad at someone who lumbered down the stairs this morning in polka dot feet pajamas, sleep still stretched across her face, hair tangled, and said sadly, "I wish Mommy was here right now."

"Me, too," I said.

Then, just as I dropped her off at school today, Maya burbled excitedly, "I wish it was Christmas everyday."

No, no, no. Christmas every day? Do you know how much gift wrapping I'd have to pick up?

Grateful...

2010-12-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

This year has certainly been the worst of my life, but I do feel grateful for so many things despite the trauma and tragedy we've endured.

I am grateful for my friend Bob Welch, a columnist for the Eugene, OR, newspaper and award winning author (http://bobwelch.net/) for inspiring me to also focus on giving.

Bob writes a column each year around the Christmas holidays about an anonymous donor who gives him $1000 to disburse to needy people in his community. Bob and the donor's example helped me this year after Kaiser Permanente adopted us and showered the kids with at least fifteen gifts each and a trove of gift cards.

So I bought twelve $10 gift cards at Starbucks, and Maya, Miguel, and I handed them out on Christmas Day and on the 26th.

My only instructions were to give a card to someone who seemed to be in need. To Miguel I said, "Maybe someone homeless."

"How can you tell?" he asked.

Maya gave one to a man seated a few tables away from us at Starbuck's. He came over a few moments later, smiling, and thanking us as he tried to surreptiously slide the card into my hand.

"I don't need this," he said. "Please save it for someone else."

"But my daughter gave it as a gift to you," I said.

"Well, thank you, sweetheart," he said to her.

Miguel gave one to a young man drawing caricatures on the sidewalk. I handed three to a trio of firefighters outside the station, and three more to some guys eating pizza at a local sports bar.

Pay it forward, I hope.

I am grateful to my father-in-law, Martin, for being one of the most generous people I know. He babysits for Maya most Tuesday afternoons, and he is always beneficent with his time and money.

I am grateful for my mother, Beverly, and her husband, Fred, for sending us bi-monthly checks and babysitting for Miguel and Maya in 2008 when Verna and I took our first (and last) vacation without children in 11 years. We had a glorious time in Cabo San Lucas.

I am grateful to my father, Marvin, and his wife, Joyce, for trekking out to California when Verna and I renewed our vows in late July, and seven weeks later for her funeral.

I am grateful to my brother, Scott, and his wife, Amy, for coming out to California many times just to help out.

I am grateful to my brother-in-law, Jim, and his wife, Liz, for being there with me when Verna took her last breaths.

I am grateful to my brother-in-law, Marty, and his wife, Donna, for taking our dog, Gigi, who was diagnosed with epilepsy in early August. After Verna's death, I really could not handle the extra responsibility of caring for her, so they opened up their loving home. Now the kids and I can still see her.

I am grateful to my friends Amanda and Mercedes for staying with me for several hours on the morning of Verna's death. Both came over almost immediately and sat with me on my kitchen floor, consoling me, listening to my stories, and helping to ease my pain with their presence.

I am grateful to our neighbors and friends who organized meals and cared for all of us, especially Miguel and Maya, which meant I earned some time to myself.

I am grateful to my co-workers at Drake Terrace Retirement Community for shouldering extra responsiblities all year, and for comforting me during my darkest days.

I am grateful to Hospice by the Bay of Marin, Jewish Family and Children's Services of Marin, and the Living and Dying Project for their compassionate and professional support and guidance for Verna, our family, and me during the last several weeks of her life.

I am grateful to so many member of BHS' Class of 1977 for their cards and FB wishes and contributions to Verna's Caregiver Fund. It's amazing to reconnect with people at such a difficult time and be supported so graciously and lovingly.

I am grateful to Miguel and Maya for entertaining me and frustrating me and challenging me to be the best father possible and for blessing me each and every day with their love and unique approaches to the world.

I am grateful to Verna, the best friend I've ever had, for giving me Miguel and Maya, and for setting the parental bar fairly high, but not too out of reach. Her examples will guide me as I strive continually to be the type of person and parent she asserted to Hospice that I was when she said goodbye to us a week before she died.

To 2011, upward and onward.

Liar! Liar! Pants On Fire

2010-12-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

I've been lying to Maya a lot lately. Death, Santa Claus, nothing sacred is immune to the prevarications I'll serve to my soon-to-be five year old daughter.

The falsehoods began flowing several weeks ago when we were talking about dying. She obviously knows that Verna died and isn't coming back.

"But Daddy's not going to die," she said.

"Well, someday, we all will die," I said. "When we're much, much older."

She started crying. "I don't want to die. I don't want you to die."

Uh oh. So I quickly reversed myself and said, "No, we're not going to die. Daddy's not going to die."

She stopped sobbing and calmed herself down.

I never thought I'd lie to my children about death, though I never imagined they'd experience it so up close and personal at tender ages.

When I was about ten years old, I had several bouts of anxiety about death for no apparent reason. Existential angst, perhaps, or the fact that we lived about two miles from a sprawling cemetery. I would plop myself down on the lavender carpet in my parents bedroom, gripped with fear about dying, about not being alive anymore.

My mother soothed as she said, "Well, when you're older they will have a pill to take so you can live forever."

Yes, she lied. But it helped me fall back asleep and settle my anxiety. Would Dr. Spock or any other child expert approve? Probably not. I was grateful, though, for the lie and the sense of peace it brought me so long ago.

So I am not worried that I completely trashed the truth and told Maya that she and I and everyone else she loves is on the highway to eternity. She's lost her mother and there is no sane reason to heighten her fears now by being truthful about the nature of life (and death).

And this is the season of lying. By late October, early November at the latest, as holiday decorations and pre-Christmas sales emerge in public, I began spinning tales of the jolly old fat guy in the red suit who will be sliding down chimneys or walking magically through front doors to bring presents to all the good children of the earth.

Miguel believed in Santa until he was ten. Then he caught me in my web of deceipt. He wondered why there was lipstick on the glass of milk we'd left for Santa.

"That's because Mommy and I put out the milk and cookies," I admitted sadly, fully aware that the Polar Express moment had arrived.

"Aha," he said. "I knew it. But there wasn't any lipstick on the glass. I just tricked you."

But, under threat of never receiving a holiday or birthday gift ever again, Miguel complies with my order to maintain the magic for Maya. We believe in Santa again in our house, and Miguel actually seems to enjoy making the myth appear real for his sister.

So there we were on Saturday, Christmas Day 2010, as Maya gazed at her new, unwrapped bike, straight from the North Pole. The exact model she'd eyed at the local bikestore about 6 weeks ago. And there was Miguel, feverishly excited about his new Play Station 3, the very system he and I bought with Maya, who was completely oblivious, at Target two weeks ago.

"Daddy," she exclaimed, "look what Santa brought."

Miguel and I smiled.

Because of rain on Christmas, Maya didn't get to ride her new 20" bicycle until yesterday. Miguel waited patiently all day Saturday until Maya was asleep to destroy me in NBA 2011.

Christmas did not have the same oomph this year, but the kids, family, and close friends did make it special and bearable.

This morning Maya said to me, "Mommy came in the room last night and gave me a hug and told me she loved me. I love Mommy and Daddy. Did you see Mommy?"

"Yes," I said.

Honest.

So This Is Christmas

2010-12-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

Warning: this blog contains stories about me celebrating Christmas. If you find it offensive for a Jewish person to do so, please discontinue reading. Some people were extremely bothered when I wrote about kneeling in Church with Verna on Easter in 2006, three months after she was first diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer.

Maya and I kicked off the Christmas holiday season this past Saturday afternoon. While Miguel was long-boarding with his buddy Chris, Maya and I were spooning homemade ice cream into our mouths at Silberman's in San Rafael. She ordered creamy peppermint, I went for egg nog.

"I love it, daddy," she said. "This is our playdate." Flecks of bright pink peppermint ringed her lips.

To be perfectly honest, I really, really wanted to skip the holidays and be magically transported to January, lying on a secluded beach and buried in an engrossing book. Thanksgiving was essentially hell. I missed Verna so much and I was so overwhelmingly sad that I moped around the house her family had rented in Lake Tahoe. I actually felt as if I was in the throes of the Jewish mourning rituals, where one removes him or herself from joyous living and concentrates on grief and coping.

I did not party in Tahoe. I did not go out gambling (which I hate) or drink to excess (I had one beer in five days and no hard liquor). I avoided singing Karaoke, a Wefald Family tradition that, even though we sound more like the Manson family than the Andrews Sisters, is always filled with fun and laughter. One of my sisters-in-law called me a party pooper.

But I did force myself then to live in the moment. I went running every day, even in an all-day snowstorm with limited visibility and icy roads. I took Miguel and Maya sledding twice, made snow angels, raced Miguel in two-foot deep snow, and threw several snowballs at my children and family. All that helped me to cope.

However, I was fearful that Christmas and all the build up to the world's major holiday would overload my emotional circuitry. Christmas had always been huge for Verna. She loved the lights, the smells, the trees, the giving. Christmas music blared in our home pretty regularly from the end of November until December 26.

How would I deal with my pain and longing and prepare for the holiday and give the kids at least a chunk of something to celebrate?

Hospice by the Bay came to the rescue. They offered me free tickets to the Marin Ballet's late afternoon performance of the Nutcracker last Saturday.

"Miguel, do you want to see the Nutcracker with Maya and me?" I asked son #1 early last week.

"No way," he said. "Count me out."

"But you saw the Nutcracker in San Francisco three times."

"Yeah, dad, that was when I was a little kid. A long time ago," he said.

Ouch.

So Maya and I had ice cream and bought a birthday gift for a neighborhood friend and ate an early dinner at home so we could get to the Nutcracker by 5 PM. One friend insisted I dress both Maya and myself up. I just wanted to warble, though, "But I gotta be me."

Maya wore a floral print dress over a long sleeve shirt and pants. Her usual array of necklaces and bracelets dangled, making her appear, to me at least, very stylish and festive. I had on blue jeans, a t-shirt and zippered sweatshirt, and a Giants World Series cap.

Maya had never been to any kind of show in an indoor venue before. She hasn't even yet seen a movie in the theater. So I was slightly concerned how she might fare during the performance. Would she talk and talk and talk, as she often does, when the lights dimmed, forcing me to rush her into the lobby?

As it turned out, she knew a fair amount about the Nutcracker because her ballet teacher was working behind the stage and had shared with her students just that morning details of Tchaikovsky, Petipa, and E.T.A Hoffman's creation. Her ballet school had sponsored and put on the performance. Maya told me about Clara and other characters. She seemed mesmerized. At one point she asked me if the characters lived onstage. It was very real for her.

On the way back to the car, Maya twirled and pranced with a mile-wide grin on her face as if she were a ballerina. I couldn't help but smile even though I wished Verna had been there to share the precious moments with us.

Hospice by the Bay came through in a way the following day as well. Hospice counselors and literature advised that creating new holiday rituals is one way to cope with the onslaught of grief and emotions during the festive times of the year. A few weeks ago, one of my friends and co-workers suggested we chop down our own Christmas trees this year, breaking with the tradition of purchasing one from a tree lot.

"I'll find the place for us," he said.

So we drove 20 miles north to Petaluma this past Sunday to a family Christmas tree farm, where you pay one price no matter how high the tree, $49.99. Miguel and Maya scouted out the Douglas firs as our friends Erik and Megan and their two-year old son, Brady, shopped for their ideal tree.

Miguel held the red saw as Maya and I pulled the specially designed tree cart. He set his sights on one tree, slightly lopsided and rising at least 15 feet in the air.

"No, Miguel, that's too big." I said.

"Yeah, Miguel, look how it's tilting," Erik said.

Miguel exclaimed that he wanted at least a 10-12 footer. I said six to seven feet max. Erik then chimed in yet again.

"Miguel," he said, looking at me, "Two words: honor roll," which Miguel had made a few days earlier.

"Erik," I said, "Two words: F.U."

Miguel and Erik chuckled. With my prodding, er, encouragement, Miguel and Maya finally settled on a tree that, with its star branch pointing upward, was about seven feet tall. Miguel knelt down and made an initial cut before he started sawing. It was slow going because there were several underbranches blocking him from leveraging his body against the saw and tree.

"Miguel, do you want some help? We could be here until tomorrow," I said.

"No," he said. He was a young man on a mission.

While Miguel and I postioned ourselves next to the tree and Erik and Megan contemplated which tree to slice into, as if they were deciding when to launch the Allied invasion of Europe, Maya and Brady strolled through the rows of trees.

"Let's hold hands, Maya," Brady said. "Let's hold hands."

Miguel only let me cut for thirty seconds or so. He insisted on doing the bulk of the work. Determination etched on his face, the tree succumbed and we loaded it onto the carriage. For an extra $3 you can have it shaken and bound in a manner not too dissimilar to what many are advocating for Julian Assange.

I loaded the tree into the back of our 2001 Chrysler Town and Country and we then hugged Erik, Megan, and Brady goodbye. Erik and Megan were also on a mission: get Brady down for a nap so Megan, who is 7 months pregnant, and Erik could relax.

We hauled the ornaments and lights up from the garage after we positioned the tree against the wall near our dining room table. I was completely unsure of how the decorating might go. So many of our ornaments were really mini-memory factories containing stories of shared moments with Verna.

There was the Baby's First Christmas one Verna and I bought before Miguel was born on a weekend outing to Monterey and Pacific Grove. Or the thin gold leafy one we bought at Multnomah Falls, where Miguel, Verna, her mom, and I hiked for 2 1/2 hours in 2002. Or the only remaining ornament from Verna's childhood, a vital generational link now for Maya and Miguel, a tiny bird with a feathered white head and a blue breast.

Miguel and Maya asked if they could go outside and play in the park. I later saw them zooming down toward the house, seated on Miguel's longboard, Maya's hair flowing in the wind, laughing, as her big brother grasped her tightly.

So I decorated the tree alone, and, strangely, I felt at peace. I felt as if I was carrying out Verna's wishes and acting as her earthly Christmas agent. When I finished putting up the bulk of the ornaments (I left some for the kids), I gazed at the tree and felt satisfied. Then I heard the tiny Nativity carousel Verna had inherited from her mother, that no one had touched for several days, twinkle three notes. I sensed Verna's presence, so I said, "Verna, I miss you so much. Thanks, I think I did a good job. For you and us."

Ho, ho, ho.

London Calling

2010-12-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

Miguel entered the qualifier for the school's geography bee as a joke. His friend, Sam, said, "I'll do it if you will."

Miguel said, "OK." They both raised their hands and were entered. He never even told me.

Then he shared last week that he had qualified for the school-wide geography bee held earlier today.

"Miguel, that's great," I said. "How did you do?"

"OK."

"How many questions were there?"

"Forty," he said. "I got 23 right."

"Wait," I said, driving dangerously close to the side of the road. "You missed 17 out of 40? Just better than 50%?"

While I was proud of his accomplishment, I wondered how someone, even my son, could qualify for a school-wide test of knowledge after only answering slightly better than half the questions.

"The questions were hard," Miguel explained with a hint of defensiveness in his voice.

He then explained that the top 30 kids automatically qualified for today's competition. So, conceivably, one could have missed even more than half the questions and still made it to today's final showdown. Sam was bounced from the preliminary round for talking too much.

"Miguel, you need to study. Did they tell you about some websites with sample questions?" I asked.

"I can Google them," he said.

Turns out that National Geographic, the main sponsor of the geography bees, has sample questions and test-taking advice on its website. There are three or four other free sites as well. We immediately went to them on Friday and Saturday.

"Miguel, the biggest advice is that the question often contains a clue for the answer," I said. As an example I read one question to him: which European country possesses oil reserves and is known for its famous fjords?

He was stumped. I said that the clue is famous fjords. He'd never heard of a fjord. So he didn't know the answer was the country from where his grandfather's ancestors called home, Norway.

I read him another question: which state's climate is suitable for growing citrus fruits, California or Maine?

"Maine," he answered.

"Maine?" I bellowed. "Maine?"

"California," he said meekly.

I then explained how the clue was in the question. Citrus fruits grow best in warm and sunny climates, which would lead one to answer California, a much more temperate state than Maine. I started thinking, "He's going to get creamed. I am proud of him for making the school tournament, but he doesn't know that much."

He did several practices tests and quizzes over the weekend. He said they were hard. They were. Questions such as Dresden, a city that has been rebuilt since WWII, is situated on what river? The three choices are the Darling, the Elbe, or the Thames River. The correct answer is the Elbe. Or name two large islands separated by the Strait of Bonifacio. The choices are Corsica and Sardinia, Corfu and Cephalonia, or North Island and South Island. The correct answer is Corsica and Sardinia.

Miguel went to school late today because he got just two braces and his headgear this morning. Within nine months his whole mouth will be glittering silver.

"I don't want to stay for the tournament," he said. It was held after school. "I barely studied."

"Miguel, you are staying for the geography bee," I said. "You brought your permission slip?"

"Yes."

I told him I'd pick him up outside school at five. He called me at 4:30 and said, "Dad, can you pick me up now? The geography bee is over."

But I couldn't leave work because I was covering the break for one of my staff. One of the teachers helping to proctor the competition volunteered to drop Miguel off.

Miguel advanced to the final round to determine the Miller Creek Middle School 2010 Geography Bee champion. The final question was in which European city would you find the Piccadilly Circus? Miguel thought it was an actual circus and he did not know the answer.

"I guessed the first city that came to me, London," he said. "The other kid, a 6th grader, said Rome."

Miguel was right and was crowned school champion. Next he competes in a regional tournament to decide who goes to the state bee in April in Sacramento. Each state winner will be flown to Washington, DC, all expenses paid, for the chance to win the National Bee and a $25,000 scholarship. Miguel said he plans to study, study, study.

He showed up at work wearing his winner's medal and proudly flashing his winner's certificate. He also got a gift card to Jamba Juice, a specially engraved pen, and a earth globe keychain, which he gave to Maya.

I beamed with pride as he walked into the retirement facility where I work and shouted to two of my colleagues, who were probably discussing work, "Miguel just won his school's geography bee." My voice had jumped at least three or four octaves.

"Miguel, I am so, so proud of you," I said, stunned and amazed and ecstatic.

"I was so nervous in the final round," he said, "I was shaking."

When we left the house a little while later, after retrieving Maya and one of Verna's closest friends, Joan, on our way to a celebratory meal at BJ's, a lone star twinkled just below the moon. We all looked up and greeted Verna.

"Miguel, Mommy would be so proud of you, too," I said, a rush of sadness mixing with the sweetness of his accomplishment.

Posters on the Wall

2010-12-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Farrah Fawcett's lustrous locks greeted me each morning when I was a teenager. As did Raquel Welch, clad in a torn and clingy-wet blouse, her bright eyes shining right at me.

Both Sex Goddesses and best-selling pin-up babes adorned my ceiling on two posters I bought at Treasure City, a local department store in Bloomfied, CT. Fawcett and Welch were the Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth of my pulsating teen years. My parents still joke that I've always had a fondness for the opposite sex. So slapping up the posters made logical and biological sense.

Miguel, on the other hand, has not shown much interest in girls at all. I've teased him a few times about potential love interests, even going so far as to choose my future daughters-in-law, but Miguel has basically and not so politely asked me to "Shut up."

I realized, of course, that if I continue to press or tease I risk alienating him and giving him ample reason to shut me out when he may need his father to lean on.

For the most part, though, girls have not been part of Miguel's social orbit. He never even approached anyone at the 6th grade school dance last year. In fact, he went out of his way to blend into his surroundings. He even ordered me not to acknowledge him in any way: no nods, no smiles, no waves, and definitely, most definitely, he said, no dancing. He also said I couldn't even tap my feet or sway to the music.

So, for Miguel, school and his social life have been about boys, sports, sports, boys, and video games, which is an extension of boys and sports.

Until now.

A few weeks back, Miguel mentioned Megan Fox, a name I'd heard but an exact person I could not picture. He reminded me she starred with Shia LeBouf in the Transformer movies.

"Dad, she's hot. Really sexy."

Huh? My son, the uber sports fan and player, expressing a serious, and most likely hormonally driven, desire for a female and turning into another kind of player? I felt the Earth tilt slightly off its axis. (And, yes, I smiled inward with pride as well. Not that I need a chip off the old block, but I will admit I appreciated his--for now--heterosexual longings.)

Then he asked me to buy two, not one, but two posters of her for his bedroom.

"Miguel, your walls are already filled up. Which ones can I take down?" I asked.

"Obama and the Red Sox World Series one (from 2007)," he replied.

Obama? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The Red Sox? Hey, his heart has never been fully part of the Red Sox Nation, so good riddance to my Yankee-loving teen-to-be.

So the posters arrived today, and I invoked parental my authority and decided not to remove Obama or the Red Sox.

"How about if put the Megan Fox posters on the ceiling?" I asked.

"That's fine."

I am not ready to visit the wider implications of the Megan Fox posters, one of which displays an ample view of her breasts. About objectifying women. About objectifying women's bodies, especially breasts. Verna would never have allowed these posters into the house, not even the garage.

At some point in the next year or so, Miguel and I will have many conversations about young women, sex, how to treat women, how society portrays women and all that.

But, for now, I am going to let him revel in having Megan Fox on his ceiling as a adolescent symbol of lust and confusion and powerful feelings and emotions.

Farrah Fawcett and Raquel Welch's images above me didn't hinder my social development too much. And I turned out pretty well, well enough to treat Miguel's mother for more than two decades with all the respect she deserved as a woman and a person. And he witnessed that for 12-plus years. Those lessons will be the ones he absorbs most.

Texting God

2010-11-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

"Text God," Maya blurted out the other day.

"What would you say?" I asked.

"Text God," she answered with an impish grin.

"But what message would you say to God?"

"1,2,3,4," she replied.

"What message?" I asked again. I was really curious. Not that Maya was ceding me much.

"1,1,1,1," she said. "That's God's numbers." She obviously has a firm understanding of the nature of monotheism, God's oneness.

"But you can use words to talk to God," I suggested.

"Give me a present," she said.

"Isn't that what Santa does?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What does Santa do?" I wondered.

"I don't know," Maya said.

"I don't either," I agreed.

Maya had the final word on this topic: "God brings out the stars."

My daughter, the budding philosopher, clearly primed to take Heschel's leap of faith into the sublime. Maybe she's already jumped. What also fascinated me was the notion of texting God. I know people leave crumpled notes to God in the cracks and crevices of Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, but texting God is so 21st century.

I don't text anyone. I am not a neo-Luddite, but the idea of punching tiny buttons to send messages to someone seems silly. What's wrong with using another completely modern invention, my cell phone? Then again, talking in public or the car with a radiation-emitting device balanced between shoulder and ear is hilarious.

I know, I know, eventually I will have to join the human race and succumb to the world of texting. As Miguel inches towards being a teenager, the only mode of communication available to us as parent and child might be texting.

But, still, I resist. I am usually quite late to technological innovations or improvements. When I was a sportswriter for the college newspaper in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I wrote out all my articles in long-hand and then punched them out on a metal typewriter, a wildly ineffecient use of my time and energy.

After my editor forced me to type an article inside the newspaper's office, one the filled the entire back page of the Columbia Daily Spectator, I was hooked on the value of the typewriter, which lasted until it also went the way of the dinosaur as computers entered our world.

Now I can't imagine ever using anything but a computer and the ease it provides to create articles, blog entries, and other assorted documents. I mean, what would I ever do without cut and paste and spell-check?

Texting, I feel, is part of today's generation. I had one student two years ago tell me that she sent out (or received) 15,000 mesages in one month. AT&T informed me today that the average teenager sends out about 3500 per 30-day period. I have resisted this form of communication that I see as highly impersonal (what's wrong with cell phones or writing letters?), but I also know I am a hypocrite because I occasionally use Facebook's IM.

I also know the day is fast approaching when I am going to need to reach Miguel at school or a friend's, and texting will be the simplest way to communicate. He'll ignore my calls, but easily tap in a few words to say that he is OK, will wear his skateboard helmet, and no, is not drinking Pepsi or Coke.

Miguel, like just about everyone else under 30, is completely enamored with the technology of cell phones and iPods. He actually said, when informed that iPods and cell phones are relatively new technologies and were not part of my childhood, "How could you have lived back then? It must been really boring."

You can't miss what you never had or knew about. Hey, we had Pong.

Maya just wants to be like her big brother. She owns three or four toy Disney cellphones, and hears him and me talking about texting, or in my case fighting off Miguel's pleas for a texting plan on my phone. So her desire to text is normal.

But texting God? Where did that come from? Maybe she is onto something. Reinvent an impersonal but convenient technology by connecting to the Divine. Call it prayer for the generation[s] on the go, go, go. A possible direct line to an obviously over-worked Deity? I wonder if this kind of thing is covered by the unlimited texting package?

I Am Missing You

2010-11-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

"I ain't missing you since you've been gone away
I ain't missing you at all
No matter what my heart might say."
~John Waite

"What's up honey?" I said into my cell phone last night as I joked with our neighbor who was expecting Maya and me for dinner. Miguel was already at their home.

"Was that Mommy?" asked Maya who was finishing up her first dinner with other neighbors. She thought if I said 'honey' it must be Verna.

"No, that was Corinna, wondering where we are," I answered. "But that'd be really cool if we could talk to heaven. But we can't."

Miguel, Maya, and I know Verna is gone from this Earth forever, but that doesn't make the reality any easier to swallow. And I know our devastating sense of loss will eventually evaporate and be replaced by a constant ache in our hearts. For now, though, the sadness and pain I feel is heavy and weighs down everything I do.

Not that I'd want it any other way, but everything seems to remind me of Verna. On Saturday afternoon, as I walked to the neighborhood park, where Maya was waiting for me with yet another neighbor and his two kids, I passed Matt, who was pulling apart the rollers on the bottom of his vacuum cleaner.

"Well, the reason it got stuck, honey," he said to me in mock anger directed at his wife, "is because of your hair."

His comments immediately reminded me how strands of Verna's hair, which was waist long before her initial cancer diagnosis, clogged our vacuum and spilled onto the sink, toilet bowl, and floor of our bathroom.

I wanted to say to him, "At least your wife is still alive so she can shed." But I didn't. Nor should I have gone that far over the edge to hurt a neighbor and friend.

Then late last night, as I was walking our epileptic miniature poodle, another neighbor walked by with tears in his eyes.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked.

"Oh, it's J----," his wife, "she's missing. She and I fought pretty hard a few days ago. She just left tonight, went somewhere without her wallet or driver's license."

He'd repeatedly phoned her cell, but she wasn't answering. He'd also called her first cousin and close friend, but he wasn't picking up either.

Frankly, while I certainly felt sorry for him alone with four kids, ages 5-20, I couldn't really handle the personal drama, nor muster up enough emotional energy to share his pain and truly empathize. I wanted to say, "At least your wife is still alive to run away." But I didn't because even in pain I am not that cruel.

Verna is gone but memories of her are everywhere. When I cross the Golden Gate Bridge, I think of how we biked across it in 1990 when we'd been dating for a couple of weeks. We left San Francisco, Verna on her mountain bike, me on a freebie I'd inherited from a friend whose husband probably should've donated it to a scrap yard.

We breezed into Marin County on a 40-mile bike ride (OK, Verna breezed while I chugged) that Saturday afternoon more than 20 years ago, looped around Paradise Drive and into Tiburon before our ascent through Sausalito and back over the bridge, urban pioneers, exercising our hearts and bodies on two wheels amid the freshness of our nascent relationship.

On Saturday afternoon, I stopped off at the video store for Miguel and me and ran into the director of Miguel's preschool. Just seeing her flooded me with memories. She mentioned how Verna was the best treasurer the school had ever had.

"She was so organized and efficient and dedicated," she said.

"That was Verna," I said, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

The thing is, I don't want the memories to fade or stop; I just want to feel better and have this deep, dark sense of emotional emptiness, which I know is raw grief, to subside. I happily summon Verna's memories. It's just that I miss her so much, and therefore the memories are also laced with sadness.

But I still punish myself by confronting those memories and testing my ability to handle them. On Saturday night, after Maya and Miguel went to bed, I watched When Harry Met Sally, a movie we'd enjoyed and was in Verna's instant DVD NetFlix queue.

Of course, as I watched Harry and Sally's animosity for one another grow into love, fondness, and deep friendship, as Meg Ryan brought herself to fake orgasm in a diner, and as Rob Reiner featured actual married couples waxing romantic over their long-term unions, I kept thinking, "All of them get a happily ever after except Verna and me."

Not fair. Not fair at all.

Well, tonight I channeled Verna with memories meant to honor her (and sustain our children). I made her pasta with spinach cream sauce, a dish she and the kids renamed green pasta. Miguel and Maya have been asking me to make the recipe for weeks.

It was probably the healthiest dish Verna made, culled from an issue of Vegetarian Times. You prepare the pasta of your choice and top it with a sauce made from cottage cheese, garlic, broccoli, spinach, and milk. You swirl the ingredients in a food processor. I never liked the dish because the broccoli and garlic gave it a overpoweringly pungent aroma. A former boss of mine banned the dish when I brought it in for leftovers. She said the smell permeating the funeral home was not good for the customers.

I was nervous as I poured the broccoli-spinach sauce onto the pasta and began to stir. Would this dish hold up to the high culinary standards established by Verna, who always adored food and cooking?

It certainly was green, and looked just liked Verna's. "How is it?" I asked.

"Good," said Miguel with a smile. He liked it. Miguel liked it.

"Good," said Maya. "Just like Mommy's."

I almost reached over and smeared her face with a garlic green broccoli spinach kiss. But I stopped and just gazed at her smile. It reminded me of Verna.

Love and the Cathode Rays

2010-10-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

At some point in the next week, I will finish watching season 6 of The Office on NetFlix and part of my connection to Verna will dissolve. I’ve been half channeling, half mirroring Verna since she died, and at the conclusion of season 6, the last one available instantly, I will probably stop watching the shows Verna viewed for the last several months of her life.

Shortly after she was first diagnosed with cancer in 2006, family and friends brought her DVDs to watch while she recovered from her biweekly doses of chemotherapy. We were reformed TV addicts at the time, but Verna quickly renewed her habit out of necessity.

A cancer memoir that appeared shortly after Verna first got sick captured Verna’s state of mind. Cancer Made Me Shallow Person, an illustrated narrative by another woman who ultimately lost her battle to cancer, is funny, irreverent, poignant, and a brash statement of identity amid a terminal illness.

Verna loved the book (which I also read) and used it to defend and rationalize her sedentary lifestyle. So she watched Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, The Sopranos, 24, The Medium, Curb Your Enthusiasm, MI5, both the original British and later American versions of The Office, countless movies. She said she just didn’t have the energy or ability to concentrate long-term on reading books, though she still devoured them, albeit more slowly.

I alternately resisted and embraced her TV viewing. I preferred reading, but TV is so mindless and, yes, watching a show together meant being together even if it was a very passive form of connecting. Sometimes I would read on the landing leading to our garage, huddled against the first step while Verna, resting in her recliner 20 feet away, cackled at some comedy or was engrossed in a tense drama. And at other times, I employed a can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em approach and sat on the couch and watched with her.

When we were laughing together or nervously awaiting the outcome of a show, I still preferred to be engrossed in engaging fiction or non-fiction, but it wasn’t as if Verna and I had no prior TV viewing history.

When we were first married, Thursday nights were Cheers. Then we drifted to Mad About You, a show that resonated because it was, like us, the story of a Jewish guy married to a non-Jewish woman. Tears of laughter streamed down our faces at the various family situations, often involving Paul Reiser’s neurotic Jewish relatives, Paul and Jamie navigated.

Then we had Miguel, and TV became less and less important. Verna went back to work, I did some writing, and we spent our evenings cleaning up or relaxing with books, magazines, or the newspaper. We still watched movies, pretty faithfully every Friday evening and often on weekends, but we avoided the boob tube (no pun intended).

So, now as season six winds down, and Jim and Pam just got married, escaping their own ceremony to secretly wed in the mist of Niagra Falls, I feel wistful and miss Verna so damn much. I sit in her electric recliner and, like her, have the computer propped on my knees, and I imagine myself laughing at the same scenes and instances in The Office as she did.

And that is why the soon-to-be conclusion of season 6 is so sad. In some ways, I feel Verna is with me when I watch her show. Once the show ends, I will have to confront in even starker terms what I have been living with since August 30: Verna has died and is not coming back.

Then, again, another one of our shows, the surprisingly witty and often hilarious How I Met Your Mother, season five, is now available on DVD. Verna and I watched seasons 1-4 together. I’ll have to see this one alone.

Technicolor Salvation

2010-10-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's official. The family bed has been revived at our house. I am now sharing my California king-size bed with Miguel and Maya. Eight years after Miguel left our intentional family bed, both kids are sleeping with me. Maya joined me two weeks after Verna died after waking up two nights in a row in a state of terror. She would not be comforted until I came to bed and she was tucked next to me.

Miguel signed on last week in that casual and coy preteen way. "Dad," he said, lying next to his sister as I read to her, "your Tempurpedic mattress is so comfortable."

"You can stay here anytime you want," I said.

"OK, I'll just stay."

And he did. Given what has happened to him this year I was surprised he didn't express the need to be closer sooner. He was mugged in the late spring; his mother died at the end of August; and not quite two weeks ago one of his friends, a 13-year old eighth grader, committed suicide on October 10 (10/10/10).

Miguel spent that weekend with his best friend, who lives two or three houses away from the boy who killed himself, so Miguel saw him all three days, including his last day. I saw the boy twice, once on Friday when I dropped Miguel off on Friday and tossed the football to the boys, and on Sunday when I picked up Miguel. The boy jokingly and harmlessly put a neighborhood cat on top of my car before we left.

When I found out on Monday the 11th what had happened I was shocked (as was everyone in the community), but I was also concerned about Miguel. Would the roiling emotions swirling inside of him surge out of control? He and I talked, though I wasn't sure exactly what to ask him.

"Miguel, how are you feeling?"

"I was a little depressed when I found out about-----"

"Depressed enough to hurt yourself?"

"No," he said.

"Would you tell me if you had anything planned?"

"No," he answered. "But I am not planning anything."

Whew. There have been two parent meetings with school officials, group counseling, grief counseling, interventions, including having several students taken into psychiatric custody, and an open door policy at the school for the community. Miguel's home room teacher phoned me to say Miguel was being watched. I spoke with the principal and the school counselor. I met with Miguel's therapist, spoke to her twice on the phone, and Miguel saw her once.

A full court press of assistance is in place. Everyone says Miguel is doing fine. And they will alert me immediately if he changes. He is eating well, playing with friends, participating in sports, and doing well in school.

But, still, a nagging fear gnaws at my shaky psyche. What if reverberates over and over in my mind. So I bought two tickets to tomorrow night's National League Championship Series game in San Francisco because Miguel (and I) deserves the bubbling excitement of a playoff game in our backyard.

I am not normally pessimistic, but my optimistic nature has been battered this year. So it was Maya, as usual, who provided me a measure of comfort. She came to me last week and said, "Daddy, I had a dream last night about you and Mommy."

"What was it about?" I asked.

"There was green. And red," she said. "It was beautiful."

I still don't know what nocturnal images Maya saw in her sleep, but the coupling of colors was oddly comforting. The smile on her face and twinkle in her eyes made me feel that, yes, this too shall pass and the beauty of a preschooler's dream can conquer all and provide me strength to cope. Something like that.

Birthday Blues and Revelation

2010-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was Verna’s 46th birthday, so I feel compelled to share something about her. Though she was generally quiet, she possessed a finely tuned sarcastic wit. One time, at a party where we dressed as grown-ups, Verna in a long, low-cut black dress, me in a striped suit with a floral-print tie, we capped on each other so much that by the end of the evening our excitement levels had soared into the stratosphere. We traded barbs all night long and the result was a combination of verbal competition and lust.

I miss Verna. I miss being able to joke and tease and cuddle with her.

I celebrated her birthday by talking to her more during the day. After work I went to the cemetery. A few of our neighbors had left flowers. Our friend Amanda left flowers and a postcard, which ended perfectly: “Wish you were here.” I felt tears well up in my eyes.

We celebrated her birthday as a family at a local brew pub. Verna’s father, my mother and stepfather, and Miguel and Maya joined me at the Broken Drum, though I was feeling like the Broken Heart. I ordered my meal as soon as we arrived. I had to dash out for my first support group at hospice: Spousal or Partner Loss.

Our friend Tony said, “Don’t stay in the group if it doesn’t work for you.”

So I got there early and watched people enter the bereavement wing of the hospice building, thinking, “If I am the youngest person here, I am not coming back next week. I can only relate to people in my situation, those with young children.”

I sat in a large sofa chair, lips pursed, arms folded across my chest, just expecting everything not to work out.

Once the group settled in, I was clearly the youngest griever by at least ten years. We began by briefly sharing our stories. Of the ten people there, half had lost their wife, husband, or partner 8-12 months ago, and half of us had lost someone within the past 4-6 weeks. One woman’s partner, a man, died in early September.

On an intellectual level, I know that loss is loss is loss and that age is unimportant. On a visceral level, though, I felt I’d be unable to connect to people so far beyond my age cohort.

I was wrong.

As the evening wore on, I saw and felt how similar we all were. One woman spoke about crying outside the Safeway, unable to go in because she’d always shopped there with her husband. Another woman said how sad she was now just going home to an empty house and having no one with whom to share her day. A 61-year-old man talked about the double loss of his wife’s death in late August, a week before Verna died, and seeing his 18-year-old daughter off for her first year in college.

So I realized something deep inside of me that I already knew inside my foggy brain: loss is loss is loss. We are all grieving, together, apart, and this group of strangers, I knew, could come together and ease each other’s pain.

Another woman, in her early 70s, spoke of feeling lost without her mate of 55 years. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

We also shared what have been our hardest challenges since our loved ones have died. I said telling the kids that Verna had died, and now it’s balancing my overloaded life as I am back to work 30 hours a week. One woman, a corporate officer in a bank, said she may working too hard too soon. Her husband died two months ago.

As I scanned the room I saw and felt the loneliness and sadness, emotions that are part of my daily existence. Through grief and pain and moments of joy and blessing I felt extreme kinship to those people. When the facilitator asked us why we’d joined the group, I said, “Misery loves company. And being to share with people who really get it.”

Almost everyone nodded.

I guess it was fitting that I began my support group on the evening of Verna’s 46th birthday, as the raw emotions of grief still bubbled on the surface. I am not much in the mood for sarcastic repartee, but I’ll get there slowly.

Happy Birthday Verna. I love you.

The Way We Were

2010-09-28T16:30:00.001-07:00

I tried to kill Verna the day after my brother got married in 1996.

We were at the Sunday morning brunch, saluting the newyleds, just a few hours before Verna and I were to fly home. There were two chairs in front of me and it appeared she was going to sit in the one to my left. So I pulled the one to the right toward me, the seat she was aiming for. She hit the floor hard, wrenching her neck and back. We spent our remaining hours in Boston in the emergency clinic as Verna was heavily sedated for the flight home.

Our marriage, like everyone else's, was a collection of memories, some funny, some poignant, some happy, some sad. One of the most painful parts of the grieving process for me is that I basically only remember Verna from photographs. I've been inundated with pictures, ones I've dug up or have been sent or given to me, and those images are the ones I now see in my mind's eye. What did she really look like? I'm afraid, very afraid, I will only see Verna in the two-dimensional images captured by a camera.

But, fortunately, I have memories, plenty of them, and I can see an endless loop of Verna caught live and up close over the twenty years we were together.

There was the time after work in 1990, when we were counselors at summer day camp in San Francisco, when Verna leaned over to me, a week or so after we'd started dating, and said, "How can you stand it? Don't you just want to kiss?"

So we did. And then one of colleagues walked in and immediately left, embarrassed that she'd interrupted our private time in a communal office.

Or the time in Israel when we'd eaten in an Italian restaurant in Jerusalem in 1992. I had pasta sauteed in oil and heaps of garlic. Verna went out for drinks with one of the women on our tour while I went to bed. As soon as Verna returned and opened the door to our hotel room, she shrieked, "Ohmigod, you reek of garlic."

Or the births of both Miguel and Maya.

Or the time she ran a 5K race in San Francisco just days after she found out she'd miscarried in 2004. She crossed the finish line, sweaty, in a light drizzle, and collapsed in tears about what her body could and could not do. Eight months later she was pregnant again with Maya.

The memories come to me at all hours, but often at night as I sit alone while the kids are asleep. Sometimes the memories trigger powerful emotions. This past Sunday, right before the start of the Race for the Cure 5K in San Francisco, the announcer said, "We'll be led today by so-and-so a breast cancer survivor..."

At that point, tears started streaming down my face. I remember when Verna ran this race in 2007 and hadn't really trained, but still managed to finish 4th in the Survivor's Division, only two or three minutes behind the winner, who earned roundtrip airfare courtesy of Southwest Airlines.

"If I train," she'd said at the time, "I could win this thing."

She never ran the race again.

So when I heard "survivor", all I could think was, "Verna is no longer a survivor, and it's not fair." I hugged Verna's brother Marty, let out a loud sigh, and rubbed Miguel's head (he was in front of me) as we waited for the horn to blare and the race to start.

And, yes, the memories are mostly wonderful, Verna in bright colors, smiling, funny, zany, adventurous. Like the last vacation she and I took in 2008 to Cabo in Mexico. It was our first vacation without kids in 11 years, and it was an amazing week of food, relaxation, snorkeling, drinking, meeting fascinating people, and waking each morning to say, "What do you want today?"

"I don't know. What do you want to do?"

We toured the real Hotel California, met an awesome Mexican artist, partied late with four sisters from Louisianna, sailed at dusk on the ocean, swam on the beach, played in the resort pool during happy hour, walked 4-5 miles each day, and never, ever felt more relaxed or at peace.

The memories, which also include Verna's face, indeliby frozen on my brain, as she took her last breaths, comfort me and haunt me and provide me solace for they are real and they were our lives. Memories of the way we were.

Misty water-colored memories

Of the way we were

Scattered pictures,

Of the smiles we left behind

Smiles we gave to one another

For the way we were

A Tale of Two Children

2010-09-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

“Mommy made the moon for us,” squealed Maya, looking at the Harvest Moon shimmering in the sky. “Look, Daddy. Miguel said so.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said, happy that Miguel was initiating conversations about Verna.

Not that I have the energy or desire to wade into the nature versus nurture debate, but both our kids, like everyone else’s, are proof positive that they do come to us with at least a broad set of biological potentialities. In other words, we are not completely blank slates when we are born. To what degree we are influenced by culture is for graduate school. All I know is that Miguel and Maya have distinct personalities, and that reality has informed how they’ve reacted so far to Verna’s death.

Miguel is more like Verna: quiet, stoic. But unlike Verna, who fretted about so much and internalized her anxiety and then pondered it for days, he doesn’t process what he is going through in any measurable way. He has actually said to me, “Dad, I don’t want to deal with what’s going on,” just not in those exact words.

Miguel copes by being preoccupied with sports, friends, music, watching movies, or chilling on the Internet, which often includes finding funny videos on YouTube or episodes of Zack and Cody on NetFlix.

Maya, like her father, articulates all her feelings right away. Three days after Verna died, as I was pushing her in her stroller to school, Maya said, “I dreamed about Mommy last night.”

“Oh,” I said. “What was your dream about?”

“I dreamed that Mommy came back. I know Mommy isn’t coming back, but I made myself have the dream, just pretend. Do you have dreams like that?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I hope I do soon.”

All I could think was: how did I ever help make this highly evolved four-and-a-half year old who shares my last name? And I immediately knew the answer: all credit to Verna.

On the day of Verna’s funeral, as Maya and I were walking our dog in the early morning, Maya glanced up at a cluster of clouds and said, “I see Mommy in the clouds. She speaks to me in my heart.”

She said that again tonight and Miguel actually said he was blown away. He added, “Where does she come up with that?”

“I think Maya is a living angel who came down here to help us,” I answered, and I more or less believed what I said. Really.

Miguel will grieve in his way, even if he chooses to avoid, deflect, and preoccupy. I will not force him to talk or open up. I will always be there for him, as I was when he had a mini-meltdown just before Verna’s funeral.

Maya opts to voice her feelings directly and through games in our garage, bedroom, and with her play therapist at the hospice office. Tonight as I carried her home from the park, she also said, “I see Mommy in the house. She comes to sleep in our bed because she loves me and you and Miguel.”

As autumn dusk settled on the chilly evening, I was slightly spooked by our daughter, a soul whose wisdom is both comforting and scary. She may be as gregarious as her father, but thank goodness she possesses her mother’s insight and empathy.

But what really topped off the evening’s magic for me was Miguel. As he and I tossed a baseball, I said, “Check out the full moon. Maybe Mommy sent it to us.”

“That’s what I told Maya,” he said.

Miguel may not be processing Verna’s death very much, but he is processing and progressing. And being a sweet big brother.

A High Degree of Visibility

2010-09-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Verna sometimes felt invisible next me to me, her loud and gregarious husband. Her sense of being indistinguishable may have been on her mind a week or two before she died when she told me, “Let anyone who wants to speak at my funeral, speak.”

St. Raphael’s Church’s rules, however, precluded a litany of family and friends singing her praises, but a standing room only crowd of more than 400 people filled the San Rafael parish cathedral on a windy day last Wednesday as we laid Verna Mercedes Wefald to rest.

Verna need not have worried that she was ever invisible. The packed church, with overflow crowds snaking out front, was a veritable This Is Your Life gathering that included the woman who ran (and still runs) the daycare program Miguel attended at the City Attorney’s Office in San Francisco when he was 10 months old, Miguel’s preschool teacher, attorneys and paralegals Verna worked with for 11 years, a priest from Southern California who knew Verna’s brother, Marty, but hadn’t seen him in 35 years, a woman I’d never met but had corresponded with via a political chat room, and countless family and friends.

Six days before she died, Verna had a reading done by an internationally known forensic scientist who claims to have psychic powers. She is a medium. One thing she said that I will never forget is that, “Verna, you have touched the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. You don’t realize what an amazing impact you’ve had on so many people.”

I believe the medium’s words were quite comforting to Verna as she neared death. As I scanned the crowd on the day of the funeral I knew everyone was there to honor Verna, the woman who bravely lived her life so well before and after her cancer diagnosis.

Ten minutes before the ceremony began, I was standing in the aisle greeting people when I looked over at Miguel, seated in the first pew. He was crying, bent over, head hanging against his hands, in one of the few outward expressions of emotions he’d displayed for Verna in five years. I sat down next to him and pulled his head to my lap. He was actually bawling.

“Miguel, do you want a Kleenex?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“That’s OK, you can cry on my pants. What’s a little snot?”

A few minutes later he asked for a Kleenex, and one miraculously appeared behind me. I stroked the back of his head and was glad to see his release. He sat up, I put my arm around him, and then he resumed joking with his first cousin, Dominic, who is 17.

At just about noon, Father Paul, the senior pastor at St. Raphael’s, gathered all of us—Miguel, Maya, Verna’s family, my parents, my stepparents, my brother, and the two others who were also pallbearers—at the back of the church. The six pallbearers (Verna’s two brothers, Marty and Jim, her first cousin, Jim, my brother, Scott, our dear friend, Tony, and me), all selected by Verna, descended the steep steps in front of the 19th century church toward the hearse. Once we carried Verna’s casket to the lobby, Father Paul said some prayers and sprinkled holy water on the coffin.

Unlike when I served as a pallbearer in 2008 at Verna’s mother’s funeral, and cried so hard, I was in a state of shock as we gently pulled Verna toward the church’s altar. I was so focused on carrying out my sacred mission that no tears fell as I marched with the casket.

The first part of the service was a blur of Father Rossi, holy church music, and scriptural readings. Tony did the first reading, one I selected from Genesis. When I’d met with Vicki, Father Rossi’s pastoral assistant, she suggested I choose something from the Old Testament.

“We want to make you as comfortable as possible,” she said. “And be sensitive to your Jewish faith.”

I immediately chose something from Chaye Sarah, the life of Sarah. Chaye Sarah is Maya’s Hebrew name and was my grandmother’s actual name when she grew up in Poland. I just didn’t know if there’d be verses that would resonate with me.

But Providence shined down on me—something like that. I found a portion inside Chaye Sarah that deals with Abraham sending his servants back to Haran to find a wife for Isaac. The servants knew that Rebecca was the maiden for them because when they met her at the well she offered water to them and their animals.

Rebecca in these passages is seen as compassionate and caring, traits that Verna certainly possessed. I was ecstatic that Chaye Sarah presented me such a worthy portrait of a Biblical character to link with Verna.

Amanda did the second reading, something from the Book of John. Then Father Paul talked briefly about Verna, but in the context of explaining the significance of the Biblical texts.

Miguel, Maya, and I carried the Communion wine and wafers from the back of the Church to the altar. When Vicki had invited me, during our planning meeting a week or so ago, to participate in the service by carrying the wafers with Maya, I said, “But what if we drop them?”

I could clearly see the headlines in the Catholic Times: Jewish Mourner Carelessly Drops Host on Floor of Church.

“They’re not holy until Father Paul blesses them,” Vicki said.

See, even I learned something new about transubstantiation.

After Communion, Verna’s brothers together shared reminiscences of her. Moments before they began, Jim whispered in my ear, “I hope it’s OK if we poke a little fun of you.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said.

Jim mentioned how Verna and I were polar opposites in many ways: she was a carnivore, I am a vegetarian; she was Catholic, I am Jewish. She was athletic, and then he paused without saying another word. It was very funny.

The carnivore-vegetarian split reminded me of the first time I met Verna’s family at their fog shrouded home across from Ocean Beach in San Francisco’s Richmond District. Her parents hosted both her brothers and their wives and two grandchildren, and Verna’s aunt and uncle. Because Verna was so accommodating (and I was inflexible about my diet), she lovingly prepared a vegetarian lasagna. At several intervals during the meal, both her brothers chimed in, “Verna, this lasagna is so delicious.”

But Jim also spoke about how Verna and I shared core values about parenting, the world, and life in general, and that helped forge the close bond between us. Then I got up and delivered the eulogy I have already posted.

After the service, close to a hundred of us gathered graveside at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, also in San Rafael. Father Rossi shared more prayers, and then several of us placed flowers on Verna’s casket as it was lowered into the ground. Maya chose to toss in two bracelets, one for Verna and one for her mother (as they are buried in the same plot) that she’d bought with her Auntie Donna a few days earlier. My brother, Scott, then invited people to shovel some dirt into the grave, according to Jewish tradition whereby mourners ritually honor the dead.

I’d be lying if I said the service, the graveside ceremony, and the reception afterward outside our home were anything but surreal. Yes, Verna is gone, but the reality has not fully sunk in. It’s still so very hard to grasp viscerally what I know intellectually to be true: Verna died.

But, then again, Maya and I see Verna every night as she shines brightly in the nighttime sky before millions, if not billions, of people.

Eulogy For Verna

2010-09-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

Delivered today at Verna's funeral:

There may only be three good things about this nightmare. One, Verna is no longer suffering or in pain. Two, I get to be surrounded by the love of family and friends. And, three, I get to say whatever I want for the next few weeks and most of you will let it go.

I do want to acknowledge three service providers whose amazing care helped sustain us these past several weeks. Hospice by the Bay, which tended to Verna and our family with such love and dedication. Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Marin for their wonderful caregivers and support. And the Living and Dying Project out of West Marin for spiritual support and comfort for Verna and me.

There are loads of people I could also mention, but I want to focus on Miguel and Maya. Miguel and Maya, Mommy did not want to die, Mommy did not want to leave us. She fought as hard as anyone to stay alive for as long as possible. But she died. She died because of cancer, an evil, evil disease that all of us must work to eliminate in quite possibly our lifetimes. She did not die because she wanted to, or because she didn’t pray hard enough, or because she didn’t think positively enough. She did not die because she gave up. She died because her breast cancer was stronger and it killed her. But the breast cancer did not crush her spirit and could never erase our memories of her.

Mommy was so brave and so amazing during her entire ordeal. I truly hope that during your lifetimes, Miguel and Maya, when you are faced with adversity or other hard times, whatever those instances may be—having to speak before people, going to a new school, applying for a job, dealing with a break-up, playing sports or participating in ballet—that you will remember Mommy and how she never, ever stopped living as she fought her cancer. How brave she was and how hard she tried to be there for you and me even when she was in such pain and so scared about her future.

I also want you both to remember what Mommy said to you when she said goodbye a week before she died. Mommy said, “Be passionate.” That means find things to do in life that you love and enjoy and pursue them, do them. Being passionate about life can bring you much happiness.

Another important thing Mommy said was, “Be good. Do the right thing. Treat others the way you want to be treated.” You both know what this means, the difference between right and wrong. Let Mommy’s voice be the voice inside you that gently reminds you, when you are faced with a choice, to do what is right. I, of course, will be there as well to guide you, nag, er, prod, er, lead you to the path of goodness and kindness. But I don’t think I will have that much work to do. Both of you, Miguel and Maya, are kind and sweet people. Mommy and I are so proud of you, and we always will be.

Miguel and Maya, Mommy will always, always love you. She loved being your Mommy more than anything. Miguel, before you were born, Mommy read more than 20 books to prepare us for becoming parents. She used to get mad at me because I didn’t read as many as her, but that was Mommy: super, super organized. She was ecstatic, Miguel, that you were and are our firstborn. Maya, you came to us when Mommy was already sick with cancer, but having you, our daughter, helped Mommy feel so much better and gave her a reason to put her energy into healing and dealing with her sickness.

Miguel and Maya, you are here on this planet because Mommy and I love each other so, so much. You are alive as an expression of the love Mommy and I shared and will share forever. Mommy may be a star in heaven, but she will always, always love you, and be proud of you. And Mommy will always be with us. As long as we remember Mommy in our hearts, she will never go away. We keep her alive by remembering her and honoring her memory.

Miguel and Maya, Mommy will always love you, and I will always love you. I am not going anywhere. I am here for you, and I am supremely blessed to be your father. Being your father brings me happiness and joy every single day. I love you so, so much.

Verna, I am eternally yours. This is not goodbye. I love you.

This Is Not Goodbye

2010-09-06T21:56:00.001-07:00

I don't believe in spirits from beyond or ghosts or ESP or telekinesis or mediums or any of that hocus-pocus mishmosh.

Until now.

I was slumped in Verna's electric recliner chair on Friday night, past midnight (so it was actually Saturday morning), after having just watched Date Night. (Why I chose a romantic comedy just days after Verna's death is beyond me.) A wave of sadness washed over me and I could feel a creeping sense of despair. I missed Verna. I thought, "I'll never see her again. I'm alone. The kids are alone. I'm scared."

So I got up and decided to fill one of the photo albums I bought for the kids as memory books. I chose Maya's, which has Disney princesses on the front and back, and started putting in about 50 photographs, mainly of her and Verna.

When I finished I walked into the kitchen to clean up a bit before going to bed. It was 12:30 am. Suddenly I heard an alarm, so I rushed into the living room and stopped right in front of our entertainment center, the one from Sear's that took me several years to build after deciphering the instructions.

I cocked my head to the left, thinking the alarm could have been coming from upstairs in Miguel's room (he was at Lake Tahoe with a friend and the friend's family). I thought, "I've got to silence that alarm so it doesn't wake Maya."

As I looked to my left I saw that the screen light on Verna's iPod, atop the entertainment center, which hadn't been played or touched since the night before she died, was on. I saw the black strip highlighting a song and I did a double take. "No," I thought, "it can't be."

The light disappeared, so I pressed the middle of the button, the spot that turns the light on only, and saw that my eyes hadn't failed me. The song showing was This Is Not Goodbye (by Melissa Etheridge), which Verna used in her DVD photo tribute to her mom and is the first song--chosen by Verna--in her DVD to be screened at her funeral this Wednesday.

And as soon as I pressed the middle of the click wheel, the entire docking station turned on and the song started playing. I pressed the pause button, because, frankly, I wasn't in the mood to hear the song, but nothing happened. I pressed it a second time. A third time. A fourth time. Finally, I got the message: listen to the damn song, Steve, Verna is communicating with you:

Bravely you let go of my hand

I can't speak yet you understand

Where I go now I go alone

This path I walk these days of stone

And the angels are calling

I must go away

Wait for me here

Silently stay

And don't ask me why

Only believe

This is not goodbye

All of my strength all of my desire

Still cannot melt this breath of fire

I go to meet some kind of test

Bury the truth that scars my chest

And the angels are calling and calling

I gathered all my courage

I shaved off all my fear

With this banner on my shoulder

I hold your essence near

And the angels are calling and calling

As the song ended and my breath had skipped a few beats, I knew for certain: Verna was speaking to me, reaching out to let me know that everything would be OK, and that this is not goodbye. We will see each other again. Go in peace.

I felt better, much better. I thought I was the last person who would ever, ever believe in anything remotely otherworldly. Even though I told Maya that Mommy is a star in heaven and we locate her every night before Maya goes to bed, I didn't really believe it. I just wanted to offer my sweet four-year-old something tangible to relate to after she lost her mommy. I don't believe in Santa, but I would never burst Maya's beliefs. Tonight I even told her she could ask Santa for a bigger girl bike this year.

But after Friday night, I am a believer. Do I believe in Santa? No. But I do believe with all my heart and soul that Verna spoke to me. And I now believe that the spirits or souls of our departed do exist somewhere in the universe and do connect with us through electrical devices and other ways.

Verna's message--This Is Not Goodbye--has brought me a sense of peace the past two days, a sense I know will be severely tested on the day of her funeral and for many days after. But just knowing that she is here and can communicate with me is comforting enough for me to battle the demons of despair.

As for that star in heaven, the one twinkling above our house each night? Verna, Verna, Verna. For sure. Absolutely.

Farewell, My Lovely

2010-08-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

Verna, my wife for slightly more than 19 years, died this morning peacefully in her sleep at 12:07.

For the past ten days or so I had been going to bed between 11 pm and midnight and then leaving Verna with a nighttime caregiver. Her two brothers, Jim and Marty, and Jim's wife, Liz, alternated sitting vigil each night since this past Tuesday.

But I sensed Verna might die some time in the middle of the night, so I decided to remain downstairs with her. I climbed onto her hospital bed and lay down beside her. She was very warm. I clasped my hand into hers and told her how much I love her, will always love her, will send all our love with her on her journey, and be enveloped by her love after she is gone.

"Verna, when you are ready to go," I said, "and join your mother in heaven, you should go. She is waiting for you."

Hospice had urged me to remind her several times during the day that I released her. I did. But I also knew that Verna, on some level, had to be aware I was her unconditional advocate because I administered alarmingly high doses of several pain medications--as prescribed by hospice--when some people wavered as she slipped into a deep, deep sleep Friday evening just before 11 pm.

I fell asleep for ten minutes next to her with our apricot-colored miniature poodle, Gigi, atop my stomach. Gigi jumped off of me onto the floor, waking me up. I looked over at Verna and stroked her hair and lightly touched her face. Gigi started to growl-moan as if to say, "OK, I took my late night pee already, aren't you going to give me my treat and put me to bed?"

So I got up and led Gigi to her kennel, where she beds each night, and carried her up to our bedroom. When I came back down, I could hear the Verna's breathing was more labored and her chest was heaving.

It was close to midnight, so I went to the kitchen to prepare her medications for the night, while the caregiver, Faye, sat by her side. As I was loading either liquid morphine, methadone, and ativan into various syringes, Faye said urgently, "Steve."

I bolted into the living room. "You didn't have to run," said Faye. Verna's chest still heaved and the gaps between each breath were a few seconds. She was very pale. I knelt down almost diagonal to her chest and knew she was about to die.

"Faye, please go upstairs to the bedroom on the right, and wake up her brother," I said.

Jim and Liz padded downstairs and minutes later Verna exhaled for the last time. We watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and then stop. She was gone. I buried my head in her left arm and cried. Jim and Liz, each seated above her head, cried. Faye, who later said she was experienced with client death as a caregiver, sat quietly, a stunned look on her face.

Jim left the room to call Verna's other brother, Marty, who was resting at his hotel room with his wife, Donna, one of Verna's closest and dearest friends. He came over and sat with us. He and I held hands and cried over Verna. Marty then phoned his father, Martin, and told him Verna was gone. Then Jim and Marty drove 25 minutes into San Francisco to bring him here to honor his daughter and baby girl.

I phoned hospice and the on-call nurse, Robert, said he would arrive within 45 minutes, by 1 am. He also said he would request that the mortuary come to take Verna's body away at 3 am.

Verna's father arrived at 1:45 am and rushed to her hospital bed, wailing in disbelief. He, too, buried his head against her.

Saying goodbye isn't easy, but everyone does it differently. Since I feared Verna might die over the weekend, I phoned the parents of Miguel's best friend and asked if he could stay there on Friday and possibly Saturday night. Miguel had already told me he did not want to be home when Verna died. I said to him, "Miguel, I know how much you love Mommy and you know how much Mommy loved you. It's OK if you don't want to be home. I am happy that you are making the choices."

His friend's father lost his mother to breast cancer when he was 13.

Maya chose to engage with Verna. She climbed into her hospital bed many times to stroke her arms and hair, and say, "It's OK, Mommy, you will feel better."

I finally got to bed at 4 am and heard Maya rustling at 7. She came over and I pulled her into bed with me. "Maya," I started, "Mommy is now a star in heaven. She is with Grandma Chela," Maya's late maternal grandmother who died in 2008.

"No," she said, "You're joking."

"No, she died," I said. "But she's a star in heaven and will always be in our hearts."

"I'm going to check downstairs," she said.

But the hospital bed had already been stripped clean of its sheets and air mattress. Maya came back moments later.

"Oh, I am sad," she said. "Mommy died."

Then she climbed back into bed and said, "Poor Daddy, I will take care of you." I hugged her tightly and felt such immense love for her, for Verna, for Miguel.

"Maya, you have a playdate today with Annika after school," I said, hoping to keep her daily routine.

"I don't want to go to school," she said.

"What about your playdate with Annika?"

"I just want to go over to Annika's," she said.

I spent the day with two close friends, Amanda and Mercedes, and Verna's brothers, sisters-in-law, and Verna's father. I dropped Maya off in the parking lot of the school so she could go with Annika and her mom, who is from the Faroe Islands, which lie northwest of Scotland and halfway between Iceland and Norway.

After a 35 minute ride on the LifeCycle to sweat out some of my shock and anxiety, which I know cannot so easily be discarded, I showered and then drove to pick up Miguel. I was waiting for him on the sidewalk near his middle school as he strolled up eating a Ben and Jerry's bar. I put my arm around him.

"Hey, Miguel," I said, my voice wavering, tears clouding my eyes, "Mommy died early this morning just after midnight. I think she was peaceful. She just stopped breathing."

"You were there?"

"Yes," I answered.

He looked sad, but revealed no other emotion. He'd called last night and asked if he could spend a 3rd consecutive night with the Allen family. His friend's mom said he'd been much quieter during the day. I said, "Sure." His friend's parents drove over and picked up a change of clothes for Miguel.

"I put $10 in his shorts' pocket for snack," I told them.

On the ride home this afternoon I shared some of what happened with Verna leading up to and including her death. Miguel said very little. I'd given him three choices: return home for the night, return home to have dinner with family and then bed down at Casa Allen, or dash over to the Allens as soon as he finished his homework. He chose door number three.

"Can I spend the next few nights with Chris?" he asked.

"Yes." I reiterated that he could choose how he wanted to spend his after school and evening time amid this nightmare. I repeated my line about his love for Verna and hers for him. "Just make sure you communicate with me what you need."

Communicating her needs has never been Maya's problem. She played for three hours with our next door neighbors before going to Annika's house, then returned to the park with the neighbors and to their house for dinner after she got home. By the time she came trudged up the front steps after 7 pm, she was exhausted and, I knew, very sad.

After her dinner here of two cupcakes (hey, I can spoil her on this day of all days), we went outside and looked at the night sky.

"Tell me which star is Mommy," I said.

Maya pointed to a very bright one that was twinkling right above our home. "That's Mommy," I said. "And look how she's smiling down on us."

"We can go out every night and look at Mommy," Maya said.

I gazed at the shining star and said, "I love you, Verna."

"I love you, Mommy," Maya said.

Verna, our lovely mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend, may be gone, but she will never, ever be forgotten. I believed she willed herself to die at a time when Maya was fast asleep and Miguel was away and I was right beside her.

Farewell, my lovely. I am eternally yours.

Part of the Plan?

2010-08-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

Maybe the Azande had it right.

A water tower collapsed, killing two tribespeople, while anthropologists studied the north central African tribe. The Azande blamed witchcraft. The social scientists surveyed the water tower and concluded that termites had eaten through the wooden posts and weakened the entire structure, causing it to fall on the men. The Azande thanked them for their explanation, but asked, "Why did it happen to those two men at that particular time?"

Whether life is a series of random coincidences or is fated one way at the most profound times, as the Azande clearly believed, has occupied my thoughts since Wednesday.

Shortly after Verna was first diagnosed with breast cancer in early 2006, she commissioned a photographer (thanks to our dear friend Christa), who specialized in mothers and their newborns to take a picture of her and Maya before Verna had her double mastectomy. In the photo, Verna reclined on our bed, virtually bald, naked from the waist up, her full breasts supporting the back of Maya.

A year later she had the same photographer shoot Maya and herself in similar poses. Maya the toddler smiled at Verna, sans breasts, and her full head of black hair.

The framed dual photos adorned the wall above our bed for nearly four years until Wednesday. I'd noticed a slight gap in the frame about a week ago but thought it could easily be repaired once I made the time. But when I went into the room Wednesday morning, two sides of the frame were dangling off the photo.

Again, I don't believe much in signs or messages from beyond, but I did pause to wonder why the frame ripped apart at this time? As Verna battled between a state of hallucinations and semi-lucidity, was what happened to the frame some cosmic communique or an explainable coincidence that was bound to happen at some point given the weight of the photographs and the cheap frame?

I know what Verna's answer would be if she could offer me anything. She believed in signs and portents with utmost conviction. She suspected she might have had something wrong with her before her original diagnosis after a series of dreams in which a poisonous spider lowered itself onto her chest.

But she cannot look me in the eyes right now and shout, "Aha! I told you so. The breaking of the frame clearly represents or is a message from the universe." Or tell me that it symbolized the damage we are witnessing to our beloved Verna and to our lives. Or that I am no longer supposed to have the framed pictures in the house.

She cannot speak because since last night, about 24 hours earlier, Verna has been asleep and, I fervently hope and pray, comfortable beyond measure after hospice upped her pain medications yet again.

I don't have the answer to the dilemma of the dangling frame and wires. And I don't believe the Azande's superstitious notions of the world make them primitive versus the rationality of trained scientists. I just don't know how to explain what happened here. Maybe the Azande were right.

Heart of the Matter

2010-08-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Terms of Endearment meets the Twilight Zone meets the Wefald and Friedman household. Verna basically said goodbye to Miguel and Maya. And, like the moment when Debra Winger addresses her children from her hospital bed, buckets of tears gushed forth.

It all started last week when Verna asked the spiritual support counselor in a barely audible voice, "I want to say goodbye to my kids."

So hospice arranged for a social worker and a bereavement counselor, who is also trained as a therapist, to help Verna facilitate the conversation. We decided on yesterday because Miguel was still home (school started today) and Maya returns from preschool in the early afternoon.

Prior to the meeting Verna asked me, "So hospice thinks I'm going to die?"

"Yes," I said. "But they don't think it's imminent. They just wanted us to schedule the meeting sooner rather than later."

Verna was pretty alert on Saturday, but dazed and slightly confused most of Sunday, so I was worried how coherent she'd be when she spoke to the kids. But she was surprisingly present once the gathering began.

Our social worker Deborah Schwing started by asking the kids to assess how Verna was doing through their eyes. Miguel said, "She's been getting weaker and is in a lot of pain." Maya parrotted Miguel's view.

"Maya," I said, "What's happeing to Mommy?"

"Mommy's going to die," Maya said.

"And then how will we see Mommy?" I asked.

"She'll be in star in heaven like Grandma Chela," Maya said.

Deborah then asked Verna to describe her feelings and how she understood her situation.

"Well, I'm dying," Verna said. "I'm angry that I won't get to see the kids grow up, won't be there for so many milestones--graduations, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings. I am sad I won't ever meet my grandchildren."

Tears were flowing freely down Verna's face and mine. I felt intense anger and sadness as well that we and Verna were being robbed.

Deborah asked Verna to talk to the kids and share her hopes and dreams for them.

"I want you to find your passion in life. Always be good," she said. "Do unto others as you have them do unto you. Work hard. Work hard in school. Always do what is right. Be a good role model."

Miguel was quiet, head down, and preoccupied with a booklet near him on the recliner chair. Maya moved from the hospital bed, snuggling against Verna, to my lap. She was growing restless. At one point the beareavement counselor, Andrea, who will soon see Maya for play therapy, took Maya upstairs to play.

"The two best days of my life," Verna said, "were February 9, 1998, when Miguel was born, and January 19, 2006 when Maya had to come early through a c-section (so I could start cancer treatments)."

Maya and Andrea returned. "I love you both so much," Verna said. "And I will always love you forever and ever."

Deborah asked Miguel how he was feeling about Verna dying. Tears welled in his eyes, one of the few outward expressions of emotions he's allowed himself.

"I've been thinking about how I'm going to be without a mother," he said. I lost it again and rubbed my wet, wet eyes.

"And it's OK for you to be angry sometimes, Miguel, with your dad for not being your mom," Deborah said.

"I could wear one of her dresses," I said as Deborah and Miguel smiled.

"Just be gentle with each other," Deborah added. Then she turned to Verna, "Is there anything else you want to share?"

"Miguel's 12 so he'll have memories of me, but Maya is so young. I am worried she won't remember me as she gets older," Verna said, tears streaming.

"That won't happen," I said. "We will always remember you."

"No, Mommy," Maya said, "I won't ever forget you," a look of unconditional conviction on her face.

We will never forget Verna. Her life will always be a blessing and a legacy for the children, me, her friends and family. I truly hope our session brought her comfort. As her pain increases, she needs that positive energy to cope and rest.

Cosmic Stars

2010-08-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Our emotional roller coaster continues.

Maya sat on the living room floor this evening with me next to her and Verna's sister-in-law, Donna, on the couch. Miguel was at soccer practice after having spent the day with me and a buddy of his at a water park. Verna was asleep on her special recliner chair right behind us.

"Mommy's going to die," Maya said, lying on her back.

I got on my knees and edged towards her. "Yes, she is," I said. "But she will always love you so much. And she always be able to tell you how much she loves you. She'll be a star in heaven--"

"--Just like Grandma Chela," Maya interrupted. Verna's mother died in October of 2008, and we've always told Maya that she is a star in heaven illuminating the cosmos (but not in those words).

"That's right, Mommy will be a star in heaven," I responded. "I hope not too soon. But then we can go outside every night and see which star is Mommy shining down on us."

Maya looked up at the ceiling and said, "There's Mommy. Let's pretend Mommy died." She waved. "Hi Mommy."

Verna suddenly woke up and said, "Hi Maya."

Our hospice social worker said when these moments occur to take extreme advantage, which is why I engaged Maya and affirmed for her that, yes, Mommy is going to die. I tried to maintain an almost light or humorous demeanor as she and I talked. Donna, however, turned towards the window with tears in her eyes. Later, she and I held hands and I admitted, "I almost lost it out there with Maya."

But Maya knows what is happening even if she can't fully digest what death means. Last week, on the day Verna and I found out she might only have a few days left, I was driving Maya to her 1/2 hour swimming lesson after preschool.

"When we get home," I said, "we can see how Mommy's feeling."

"Mommy's going to die," Maya said. "And I'm going to be sad."

I reached for the proverbial brass ring and said, "Yes, Mommy's going to die. And we're all going to be sad. But we'll always have Mommy in our hearts, and she will always, always love you very, very much."

Yes, Verna is going to die. Sooner rather than later. Just not yet. Today her pain level hovered at a seven (on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the most pain), she said, and didn't subside very much even with all her pain medication. Aside from insisting on going out to help Donna bath our dog who'd thrown up on herself in her kennel last night, Verna slept or was in a foggy state for most of the day. So tonight, just before I helped her upstairs to bed (she still prefers to sleep in our bed mainly because Maya, who shares a room with us, wants her around), I said, "Verna, where's your pain level right now?"

"Seven," she answered.

"Is it unbearable?" I asked.

She clearly shook her head. We have an agreement that once her pain becomes unbearable, she wants me, as her healthcare agent and POA, to instruct hospice to steadily increase her pain medication and cease the steroids, both measures that will hasten her death.

But tonight she did not hesitate to move her head quickly from side to side against the hospital bed pillow. Sometimes non-verbal communication is a beautiful thing.

What The !@#$&%?

2010-08-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

Verna picked out her casket today. Yes, that's right. I wheeled her around a room filled with steel and wood caskets, ranging from $3200-$11,000, and she chose a dark wood one with the Pieta (Mother Mary cradling Jesus) and the Last Supper etched into the metal moulding around the perimeter of the coffin.

Surreal beyond the Twilight Zone would not begin to describe the swirl of emotions we experienced today at Montes Chapel of the Pines in San Anselmo (we get 10% off if I mention him in a blog--just kidding), about five miles from our house.

As I pushed Verna in her wheelchair to the front entrance, the door opened and two friendly beagles greeted us. Verna immediately smiled. I was worried for many reasons how our appointment might go. As hospice has increased her medication she has grown foggier and drowsier, so she spends a chunk of the day sleeping on her hospital bed in the living room. Would she even be awake or semi-lucid?

I'd promised Verna months ago that she'd be able to choose her casket. Knowing that her situation was becoming graver by the day, I called the mortuary this morning. The receptionist transferred me to the voicemail of one of their intake counselor's, Ed, who we later learned is the funeral director, owner, and sole fulltime employee. He also drives the hearse.

"I've worked here for 15 years," he told us. "And I bought it two years ago from the family that'd owned it. Mr. Montes still works with me parttime."

Well, my fears about Verna's cognitive condition were unfounded. I haven't seen her this alert in at least two weeks. She chose her casket, guest book, and prayer card scenes and poem, and decided to forego embalming and a rosary service on the eve of her funeral.

And as I sat there amazed yet again by my wife's unshakeable spirit, I also kept thinking, "This is not happening. This is not happening. When will our nightmare end?"

We shared that crushing anxiety with her father, brother, and his wife before we left the house for the funeral home. Maya was at school, Miguel at baseball camp. In the presence of a hospice nurse, the five of us kissed Verna's forehead, rubbed her arm, and cried. She cried, we cried, and all of us not so silently railed against how unfair it is that we are days, weeks, months away from Verna's death.

"The hard part is not knowing," Verna said to the hospice social worker as tears streamed down her face. "I just wish I could know how much longer I have."

The social worker nodded and then said, "I know."

In the middle of our appointment with Ed, the phone rang. "You can take that if you need to," I said.

"It's the Humane Society," he said. "I have to."

It turned out that either Ed or his assistant left the door open after we wheeled in and one of the beagles ambled into the neighborhood, where he was found by a Good Samaritan who'd called the Humane Society and left her phone number. While Verna and I surveyed the caskets, Ed walked a couple of blocks away to retrieve Fletcher.

Although we found out last Thursday that Verna could be dead within a few days, according to hospice and her oncologist, she seems to be doing pretty well after hospice adjusted some of her pain medications. "And I still have things to do," she has said.

She's been writing cards to the kids for all the birthdays, graduations and other special occasions she will miss; she's helping plan her nephew's wedding in mid-September. He and his fiance, who have a gorgeous 20-month old daughter, decided to take the marital plunge sooner in order to accomodate Verna. Today was also part of Verna's process of accomplishing tasks and creating more peace of mind for herself, and another of example of how she controls as much as possible in a situation that has mostly spiralled beyond all control.

"Well, we took care of that," she said as we left the mortuary.

Yes, we did. Verna picked out a casket today and I still can't f@#$%ing believe it.

I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll

2010-07-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

The bride wore a non-traditional black and white floral print dress. The groom, sans jacket, wore black dress slacks, a blue shirt, and a multicolored silk tie bought by the bride in Italy. Almost 19 years after they were first married on a typically overcast San Francisco summer day in 1991, they renewed their vows before 60 family and friends this past Saturday.

There were already tears in my eyes when Verna’s father guided her, gripping her cane, along the sidewalk outside our home. “Now that you really know me,” I said to her father as they arrived in front of me, “are you sure you want to let her go?”

He sort of smiled, and I clasped Verna’s hand in mine as we walked closer to Marie, our dear friend who also officiated at our wedding ceremony in Golden Gate Park’s Rose Garden on July 28, 1991. Trailing just behind Verna and her dad were our daughter, Maya, clad in a green chiffon dress and holding a bouquet of roses, and our son, Miguel, who was one of my best men, the ring bearer, and the DJ, ‘DJ Miggy’.

The weekend had been a whirlwind for all of us, as family streamed in from Arizona, Central California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I was concerned that all the activity would adversely affect Verna, who tires easily because of all the medication she’s taking from hospice. So, prior to the ceremony, I spoke to the crowd before Verna and her father walked to the strains of “Here Comes the Bride”:

“First, I’d like to thank all of you for being here and sharing this special day with us. Also, since we want to preserve Verna’s health, I ask most of you to use the bathrooms in the park,” about 300 yards away, “or go like Gigi (our dog)”, who was at that point sniffing around the bushes.

As it turned out, Verna and our sister-in-law Donna (wife of Verna’s eldest brother, Marty) sequestered themselves upstairs during the day prior to the ceremony at 4:15 pm. Verna took two naps, got a pedicure and manicure from Donna, and more or less relaxed without anyone bothering her. Maya occasionally squeaked through to be with her mommy, but we’d ordered everyone else to stay away. And they listened.

Marie briefly introduced the ceremony and then shared a story that, she said, aptly demonstrated our strength as a couple. Several years ago, residents in Bernal Heights (a neighborhood in San Francisco) claimed that the stone relief of the Virgin Mary, outside a Church, was crying. Verna, Marie, and I went to investigate, and, sure enough, both Verna and Marie saw tears gently streaming down her eyes. I said, though, “No, it’s the light hitting the wall.”

Marie said that even though Verna and I often had two ways of seeing the world, we were of one mind and heart in terms of our love and commitment and willingness to accept our varying perspectives.

Then in a nod to something we included in our original wedding ceremony, Marie shared some humorous vows I’d written earlier in the week. “Steve, do you promise not to swill any more of Verna’s liquid morphine?” And, “Verna, do you promise to let Steve hop on the back of your wheelchair with you in it and coast downhill in the park?”

While both Verna and I acknowledged her cancer in our renewal vows, we also said almost defiantly that we wouldn’t let it define our relationship or family. Love and our bond are stronger than Verna’s life threatening illness. So the humor was our attempt to accept reality and also playfully attack the incurable enemy that is ravaging her body.

Next we jointly lit a candle our dear, dear friend Amanda recently sent us from Lourdes, a Catholic shrine in France, where many believe the waters are healing and Bernadette saw a vision of Mary, that Verna and her mother visited in 1993 as part of holiness tour sponsored by a local church. She and her mom also toured holy sites in Portugal and Italy, which is where she purchased my tie.

We shared our renewal vows next, with Verna going first, and, unlike 19 years ago when she was nervous and no one could hear her, confidently pronounced how I was still the one for her and how our love has grown stronger amid the past four often horrendous years.

With tears brimming in my eyes and, surprisingly, words catching in my throat, I said, “It took your cancer for me to be able to surpass you on a bike.” I also said, “I am forever yours through all eternity and beyond”, which was similar to Verna’s vows.

Miguel then handed me Verna’s wedding ring and I moved to place it on her finger. But suddenly Maya grabbed the ring and slipped it on Verna’s finger. People giggled at Maya’s gesture. I then gave my ring to Miguel and he imitated his younger sister and put it on my finger.

Marie said, “Then by the power vested in me by this community of love I pronounce you still married.” I leaned over and Verna and I kissed twice as our family and friends clapped. I felt a mixed wave of sadness and profound joy. There was nothing better than renewing vows with my soul partner and the mother of our children while our Miguel and Maya had such active roles in the ceremony. But I also wondered if Verna and I would celebrate together our 20th wedding anniversary next summer.

Verna and I admitted to each other in 1991, weeks before our ceremony, that there are no guarantees in life. We wholeheartedly pledged ourselves to each other, but knew that love ebbs and flows and only time would tell if we’d survive the journey of love and life. We acknowledged, though didn’t really expect, that our love might someday cease. Yes, we said over and over, there are no guarantees, but we’re going to try, try, try and work, work, work.

We just didn’t know then that cancer would prove us right in a way we never expected.

To love and life. And to eternity and beyond.

Father's Day

2010-07-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Father’s Day is Maya thumping on the end of the bed at 6:30 in the morning on June 20, and then climbing in without an invitation. After a whisper or two with Verna, Maya said, “Happy Father’s Day, daddy.” It was pretty hard to get upset about having my slumber interrupted after that sweet greeting.

Father’s Day is mountain biking with Miguel. We decided about six weeks ago to hit the twisty trails of Marin County, where mountain biking was born, and bond even further as males. The morning of our first ride I had my weekly phone call with my mother, who lives about 3000 miles away in Connecticut.

“What are your plans for the day?” she asked.

“I’m going mountain biking with Miguel.”

She went on about how he’d gain so much because of my extensive cycling experience. I’ve been a fairly avid road biker since 1994.

“But, Mom,” I said, “I’ve never been mountain biking before.”

“Well, I hope you’re going to wear elbow and knee pads,” she said in true Jewish mother fashion.

Yeah, right, I thought. “No, Mom, I’ll be OK.”

Well…

I don’t even own a mountain bike. Our neighbor, Ken, who works tirelessly as a regional manager for Kentucky Fried Chicken, bought a high-end mountain bike a decade ago that he hasn’t ridden in two years. “Borrow it anytime,” he said. “Store it in your garage. No one is using it.”

So Miguel and I unloaded the bikes from our minivan and headed toward one of several China Camp trails, a series of dirt-packed paths along the shore of San Pablo Bay. In deference to my not yet pubescent son, I decided to hang back a bit and not show him up with my superior bike riding skills.

“Where should we go?” he asked.

“Your choice,” I said, not realizing the Frostian option I was offering. I just assumed he would choose the flatter and more popular trail near the parking lot. But he went literally for the trail less traveled and we made a hard right onto a bumpy path with exposed tree roots. He was already well ahead of me and looked quite comfortable.

I felt anything but comfortable as the bike fishtailed around corners and I lurched forward as if I was about to be hurtled into space. The brakes were damn good. I pulled into another switchback turn and lost control of the bike, falling forward into a thicket of poison oak.

“Hey, Miguel,” I shouted. “Hold up, I fell off the bike.”

After chugging uphill for about 20 minutes, one of us (probably me) suggested we turn around and sample the flatter terrain on the populous trail. Much to my slightly battered ego and bruised shins, Miguel agreed.

We finished the ride sweaty and satisfied, each of us having drained our hydration packs of all water. I was completely excited that my teenager to be not only kept up with me (OK, surpassed me), but also enjoyed an athletic experience with his middle-aged father.

“Let’s do this every weekend,” he said as we climbed (OK, I limped) back into the minivan.

Father’s Day is painting Maya’s fingernails and toenails. Maya is our princess and total girlie-girl, who is obsessed, no, enamored with all things princess (Belle, Snow White, Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, and Cinderella). She loves frilly dresses, necklaces, rings, bracelets, hair bands, and twirling like a ballerina. Last week she asked me to polish her nails right away.

“I’m having a Girl’s Day with Daddy,” she said as I applied bright pink polish. It may have been the fumes, but I wasn’t sure if was going to hug her or cry. Or both.

Father’s Day (and Mother’s Day) is every day. Thanks goodness.

Stayin' Alive

2010-07-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

One of the songs playing lately on the soundtrack that loops endlessly in my brain has been “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. I close my eyes and visualize John Travolta strutting his disco king stuff to the high-pitched warbling of Barry, Maurice, and the other brother.

“Aye-aye-aye-aye, stain’ alive…”

Staying alive has been on my mind because Verna’s oncologist told us last Tuesday that we should contact hospice.

“Are you saying this is the beginning of the end?” we asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Now, I don’t know how long we’re talking about. Could be a few months, two or three, but we just don’t know.”

I tried to pose a few more questions, but the words came haltingly as the tears welled in my eyes. I looked over at Verna in her hospital bed and she was also crying.

So we cried, tried to breath, and cried some more as the reality of the doctor’s words seeped into our consciousnesses. The cancer support manager, who no longer even cares for breast cancer patients but sees Verna because she adores her, asked Verna to share her understanding of what the oncologist had said.

“But I’m not ready to die,” Verna said after she answered the cancer support manager. “I have a lot left to do.”

“And that’s OK,” said the manager. “But sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard we want to live.”
Verna mentioned our renewal of wedding vows, planned for July 24, the wedding of our nephew (for a date to be determined), and the wedding ceremony of one of our closest friends in late October.

As the anxiety and anguish of the moment dissipated and we retreated to the comfortable confines of sarcasm and dark humor, I said we were definitely having the renewal of vows ceremony. “I can always do it alone.”

But I am pretty sure Verna will be there. Physically there, that is. Maybe that’s the hardest part of this latest body blow, the highly unnerving uncertainty. There is no way for anyone to predict how long Verna has left to live. All her doctor can offer is, “We don’t know.” On the other hand, not knowing is less definite.

The latest chapter in our journey began late last Sunday night just before midnight. Verna’s full body pain had been escalating for a few hours before she finally declared, “We need to go to the hospital.” She was unable to move. She later said, “It feels as if my legs are in vise clamps.”

So I quickly wrote Miguel a note that I’d be back soon (though I doubted he or Maya would wake up) and drove Verna to the hospital, which is 2 miles away. After she was admitted to the emergency room and we met her nurse, Glen, a Filipino native we’ve known from previous visits, I returned home and tried to fall asleep.

Monday was a nightmare. Verna was sedated in a fog of narcotics, wracked with pain. She mumbled half sentences, had trouble swallowing, and her normally golden glow was pale. We met her hospitalist, the doctor in charge of her case while on the 5th floor, and a palliative care nurse, who offered suggestions to further control Verna’s pain. The cancer support manager and a Reverend with the spiritual support team visited and quickly arranged a single room for Verna.

I left to feed the kids and came back later. The nurse was just hooking up Verna to an IV blood transfusion when I split for the evening around 8:45. I was seriously afraid that Kaiser was going to call me in the middle of the night to say Verna had died. She looked that ill.

I dragged myself out of bed a 6 am and hopped on the Life Cycle. I stuffed the iPod ear buds in and opened my book as I pedaled into a relative state of escape and relief. Suddenly the phone rang. The caller ID read ‘Kaiser’, and I gulped. It was Verna.

“I feel much better,” she blurted out as I finally started breathing again. “The blood transfusion worked.”

Maybe Dracula and his ilk were on to something. The transformation in 10 hours was miraculous. The hospitalist had explained to us that if the transfusion worked it would provide lubrication for her bones, which were rubbing up against each other and causing the intense pain, and re-energize her anemic body.

By Tuesday afternoon we were ready to host Verna’s oncologist and the cancer support manager, both of whom shed nearly as many tears as we did. The oncologist explained that hospice would make it easier for Verna to manage her pain and avoid returning to the hospital.

“And we’re going to put you on a low dose chemotherapy pill because we’re not giving up,” the oncologist added. “I would love for you to prove me wrong by living a lot longer.”
So Verna’s challenge is anything but simple. She needs to stall death by staying alive. Somehow I know and feel she’s up to the challenge.

“Aye-aye-aye-aye, stayin’ alive…”

Letter From My Sister-In-Law

2010-05-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Dearest Friends and Family of Verna and Steve, My name is Donna Wefald;

I am Verna’s sister-in-law, her brother Marty’s wife, and one of her best friends as well. I just returned home from a visit with Verna last night, and this morning when I woke up, I realized that reality is still in place. I started daydreaming, as we all do, about how I feel and how I could let Verna know. Last week when I felt overwhelmed with sadness and helplessness, I wrote those feelings on a notepad. I thought I might give them to Verna, but instead I looked her in the eye and told her.

Over the next few days she told me, through tearfulness, how she feels and what she wants and needs. I never thought I’d be conversing with any person, planning out their “To Do” list before they die, but that is the reality. By the time I left her yesterday, in the good hands of my daughter Jillian, I felt she had been healed in some small way.

That brings me to the reason I’m writing to you. I know you all received a request for donations. My request is a bit different; I’m asking you to write a letter to Verna. Write anything you want . . . don’t be afraid. . . say what you’re feeling and tell her why, retell a memory you have about how you met her, or something that stands out in your memory about her. Send pictures of yourselves, your families, or your memories with her. Say anything you want, but please say something.

I am confident that she would look forward to your letters every day and that they would bring her happiness.

Her address is: 111 Almond Ct., San Rafael, CA 94903

With most sincere thanks, in advance, Donna

Go Ahead, Punk, Make My Day!

2010-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

My cell phone buzzed in my left pants pocket as I about to help a co-worker move a piano. I was expecting a call from Verna’s oncologist, so I quickly answered the call. Miguel’s voice was shaky on the other line.

“Hey, what’s up Miguel?”

“Dad,” he said haltingly, “I was mugged.”

“What?!? When? What happened?”

“I was riding my bike to the mall. Mommy gave me money to buy my saxophone reeds.” I could hear him sobbing. “And these guys, some kind of gang, asked me if I had any money…”

It appears that three men at least, one he described as bearded, wearing a black backpack, and in his 50s, and two young Hispanic males, maybe teenagers, intimidated Miguel on the dirt path alongside the railroad tracks a mile from our home. He immediately turned over the money, $35, and then raced back home, shaken and stirred.

“I’ll take care of it, Miguel.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going over there to find them. Do you want to come with me and identify them?”

“No!” he said with total authority.

After I got off the phone I could feel the anger bubbling inside of me. How dare these hoodlums rob my relatively innocent and usually very sweet 12-year old son? The anger was rising quickly and I knew exactly what I was going to do. I bolted for the front desk of the retirement facility where I work. I saw one of my other co-workers, Walter, a big, burly guy who is the director of housekeeping services.

“Walter, what are you doing right now?”

“Um, nothing, really,” he said, though he was clearly reading paperwork. “What’s going on?”

I explained what had happened to Miguel and my plan to retrieve the money. “I’m going to confront these guys. Got a tire iron or some other weapon?”

I guess the housekeeping director might have assorted broom handles, bottles of sanitizer, and anti-bacterial wipes. But nothing lethal enough for my vigilante purposes.

As Walter and I walked briskly to my car (OK, he lumbered), I opened the trunk and pulled out the tire iron. As I looked at it, I thought, “Who am I kidding?” The Toyota Corolla tire iron is about 8 inches long and can be lifted with one finger. There was no way it’d help me unleash any Charles Bronson-Clint Eastwood fury at the scum who’d stolen Miguel’s money.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Walter assured me in a tone that really said, ‘I plan to stay right behind you.’” He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Seattle and added, “If this was 30 years ago (he is now 43), I’d get you that money right away. I had to be that way growing up.”

Clearly, though, Walter’s days of teenage self-protection amid urban violence had faded into distant memories. I was on my own. But then I realized, “I am on my own!” Who was I kidding? Verna is at home, couch-bound, because her physical and emotional health have been zapped by radiation, chemo, and a plethora of medications, each with its own funky side effects. I can’t do anything stupid and jeopardize my own health while Verna is sick. (Plus I am a coward.)

So I drove the car onto the other side of the railroad tracks and watched four young people, late teens, three who definitely Hispanic, amble along the path on the other side. Moments later, a bearded guy, black backpack, black sweatshirt, but in his early or late 20s at most, strolled by toward the highway underpass above the train tracks. Bingo, I thought; a cluster of guys who fit Miguel’s description.

I flipped open my cell phone and dialed 911. After querying me for several minutes, the dispatcher said, “We’re going to need a statement from your son. Is he home? Then we’ll send someone as quickly as possible to the spot where he said the incident occurred.”

“But the guys are now headed away from the railroad tracks, past the storage facility on Merrydale Road. I’m afraid they’re going to get away.”

I asked the dispatcher to have the police meet me right away at Dandy Market, which is halfway between the railroad tracks and a major street away from the area. I slowly followed the group, watching to see where they were headed. There was a McDonald’s, an A & W, and a carwash right across from the market.

The group then split up. The four youngest males, three Hispanics and one African-American, sauntered slowly along the sidewalk while the bearded white male picked up his pace and headed toward the other side of Merrydale, a hilly street, that leads up to a trail near the highway.

I drove across the street, away from the market, but turned my car to face the traffic light at the intersection of Merrydale and North San Pedro Road. As soon I saw the patrol car, I honked my horn, flashed my light, shouted, and waved my arm out the window.

He pulled up alongside me and I told him the suspect was near the top of Merrydale. He dispatched yet another patrol car to hold the alleged thief. Then he asked for my ID as he wrote down some basic information about the incident.

“Exactly what denominations of money did your wife give your son?” he asked me.

I called Verna. “A twenty, a ten, and a five,” I told the officer.

Moments later a third patrol car raced by with Miguel tucked in the backseat. The police had asked him to ID the suspect. The officer questioning me drove up to assist. Since I had to wait, I pulled out Sports From Hell: The Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition by Rick Reilly. Miguel was involved in a frightening process of potentially identifying the man who’d robbed him and I was laughing my ass off at people, for example, who competed in the World Sauna Championships where the temps inside the sauna are 261 degrees. The person who stays in the longest wins the top prize: sauna speakers. The winner boiled and baked himself for more than 12 minutes.

Seven pages into the book, the patrol pulled up behind me and Miguel and the officer exited the car. I greeted Miguel by rubbing the top of his head. “You did the right thing Miguel,” I said. Yes, he did, said the officer. Miguel had positively identified the suspect, who was carrying one twenty, one ten, and one five.

I then noticed that Miguel was barefoot. The officer thanked him and gave me his card. “Here is the case number. Usually in cases like this they plead out and there is no trial. We’ll be in touch about your money.”

“Miguel, you’re in your socks?” I said as the officer laughed.

“We went out the front door,” Miguel said, “so I didn’t have any shoes (we keep the shoes down in the garage).”

I joined the laughter as Miguel and I walked to the car. He had calmed down as I told him I was proud of him for accompanying the police. I shared the same sentiments with him as I put him to bed last night. He was worried the other guys might find him and beat him up. I said I didn’t think that would happen.

“Maybe I should carry a knife?” he wondered.

After he was asleep Verna and I began to process what our son had experienced earlier in the day. “You know what’s really sad?” I said. “Miguel lost some innocence today and that’s not fair.”

“I know,” was all Verna said in response.

Because I get up at 5:30, I sleep on the couch during the work week so I won’t disturb my bedmate (Verna) or our roommate (Maya). Miguel tapped me at what I thought was early, early morning. I rolled over and saw it was 11:50, only 45 minutes after I’d gone to bed.

“Dad, I’m scared,” he said.

“Miguel, why don’t you sleep in our bed?” Verna occupies a king-size bed by herself. Maya sleeps in her princess bed nearby.

“OK.”

Miguel returned a half-hour later. “Dad, I’m still scared. I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see the faces of those guys.”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

“Can I sleep down here on the floor?”

“You could, but I don’t want to wake you when I get up at five-thirty. Why don’t you turn on another light in your room?”

Yes, I know, I should’ve just gone up there with him. But given all the stress we’re under with Verna’s health, my busy job, and family life, I need that hour to myself every morning. Then, again, this was rather unusual.

But Miguel liked my bleary-eyed suggestion. The three lights in his bathroom pack more than 180 watts of luminescent energy. They are, in short, very bright.

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said.

I rolled over to my left and felt a rush of sadness. His world would never be the same.

War--What Is It Good For?

2010-04-30T15:17:00.001-07:00

We are at war with an insidious enemy who seeks to destroy the very fabric of our freedom. No, I am not talking about the misguided debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am referring to pigeons, “the stout-bodied birds with short necks and slender bills”, according to Wikipedia. The feral rock pigeon variety has invaded our neighborhood and is attempting to permanently relocate to our back deck.

How did this happen? Several months ago, the Homeowner Association’s Board of Directors, of which I was the president for four years until my term concluded two weeks ago, allocated more than $15,000 to control these ornithological pests with a series of spikes and nets strategically placed along the rooftops and eaves of our 63-unit townhouse community.

Part of the pigeon control program also included high-powered cleaning along the sides of homes with several severely clogged downspouts that were filled with assorted detritus and tons of pigeon poop. Some of the clogged spouts overflowed onto roofs and caused water damage to a few units.

The other four directors supported the initial outlay of money, which targeted designated areas around the complex, but were against a total assault and solution. They said it was too expensive.

Only one director, the outgoing president and financially generous author of this blog, favored spending more money now to rid ourselves of the persistent pigeon problem with a complete and relentless campaign of shock and awe.

The board was desperate for a solution to a potential large scale health hazard and total community nuisance, so we even entertained the idea of arming neighborhood kids with BB guns and authorizing them with a license to kill. Alas, our stronger sense of morality and fear of massive lawsuits caused us to abort that plan before it was hatched.

I guess we could have acted as our neighbors in Arizona, and treated all pigeons as suspect and deported them back to their native countries.

What we have now, though, a few months outside the initial treatment, is a grave and unhealthy situation as the pigeons continue their stealth attacks on decks, rooftops, spouts, and sides of buildings. Unsightly pigeon poop is caked on several driveways, ledges, and roofs. One resident refuses to take any measures against the pigeons on her back deck unless the HOA board agrees to reimburse her. Another resident, who hates the birds, is afraid of destroying the nests on her back deck because they are filled with pigeon babies. Daily the adult pigeons and their fluffy offspring defecate on the deck, the house, and the driveway.

When the pigeon problem first began, Verna and I opted for a $7 solution. We bought a not scary scarecrow from the local crafts store and frightened the pigeons that’d begun congregating on our back deck.

All was well until two weeks ago. No longer could we just pound the glass on the back door and terrify the vulnerable pigeons. They started leaving piles of sticks as if they were hunkering down for the long haul.

The first time I saw the nest-to-be I grabbed it and flung the sticks over the railing. The next day the pile of sticks was back. I tossed them over the side of the deck again.

“Maybe you shouldn’t just throw them into the street,” said Verna, my sensible wife. “Put them in a bag and throw it into the garbage.”

I complied with my wife’s wishes and the sticks have not reappeared. But I am not going to let my guard down again and be lulled into a false sense of security. No, with an enemy as vicious and opportunistic as a pigeon I plan to utilize the most modern of resources, technology, and weaponry.

Shortly after the board voted to spend some money to address the pigeon problem but leave the responsibility on homeowners to fund any future issues, one of our neighbors installed fine mesh netting across his deck and a wooden barrier at the bottom.

His solution is relatively inexpensive and works. A few days ago, my father-in-law started taking measurements for our netting and wood. We are not afraid to keep up with the Joneses, or in this case, the nice guy from Armenia whose last name I cannot pronounce.

My wife helped me get rid of the sticks for now; my father-in-law will install the netting and wood; and we imitated our neighbor. Sometimes, birds of a feather need to flock together.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

2010-04-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

So Miguel has asked us several times over the past year or so if he can have his own Facebook page.

“Why?” I’ve responded to our twelve-year old.

“Because everyone has one,” he has answered.

If ever there was a response designed to make a parent grab a child and scream, “Is that the best you can offer? So if all of your friends (fill-in the blanks) ‘jumped off the Golden Bridge’ or ‘robbed a bank’ or ‘sucked in massive quantities of tar and nicotine through their noses’…would you do the same?”

But I didn’t seize him by the neck and utter anything angry. I merely said, “Well, Miguel, Mommy and I don’t see the point. You’re not old enough yet.”

Believe me, I see the value in Facebook. I like reconnecting with old friends, sharing family photos, and learning a myriad of mundane details about all my friends’ personal lives—what so and so ate for breakfast, how the weather is at so and so’s mountain cabin, how so and so hates social media but uses social media to tell us, and how so and so coped while the spouse and kids were away all week.

I just don’t think Miguel needs to be rushed into that world before he is a teenager. Having a Facebook page is just adding another layer of less-than-personal brain numbing media to occupy his neurons when he should be engaging with the world, in my view, in healthier ways. Such as reading books, playing board games, babysitting at the park for his little sister, doing household chores, or tossing a baseball with his father? Oh, wait, Miguel already does all that.

And truth be told, there is some merit to the ‘because everyone has one’ argument. It’s the reason I begged my parents to buy me my first pair of white high-top Converse Chuck Taylor All-star sneakers when I was about 10 or 11.

For the most part, we all want to fit in and have that secret language or objects to share at work or school about something, anything, the latest news from American Idol, the raciest gossip about Tiger Woods, the newest fashion fad, etc. So I certainly want Miguel to feel included or cool or whatever someone poised to become a teenager needs to be to avoid hours of therapy (fat chance), blaming his parents for his social retardation (fatter chance), and becoming a ward of the state (fattest chance).

Fitting in is often good, but conformity sometimes exacts a high measure of revenge. I was picked on fairly often when I was in grade school, but I never shied away from attacking someone else when the target was Kathleen Nauss. I remember vividly on several of us taunted her mercilessly one day on the school bus, with the purely fictitious charge that she’d gone to the bathroom in her pants and stained her underwear, so she bolted one stop early, tears streaming down her face.

Years later, while we were in high school, she died in a car crash. In my simple view of the world back then, I looked at some of the rougher kids in her crowd, dangerous types with whom she sought solace after years of childhood abuse during school, kids who let her fit in, and blamed her associations with the ‘wild’ crowd and alcohol for her accident.

I could not have even told you who her friends in high school were, much less what they did for fun and to escape, but I blamed myself for being part of the cruel brigade that ‘forced’ Kathleen to choose delinquency and inclusion that led to her death.

Five or six years later, at our first high school reunion, I confessed my sins to another classmate, Dorothy L., who corrected me and said, “Kathleen wasn’t drinking and driving. Her car malfunctioned, something about the steering, and that caused the crash.”

I didn’t really breathe any easier. I still never got to apologize to her for willingly conforming to the mob and acting like everyone else.

Not that I shared any of this with Miguel.

Yet.

I will save the story for another day. In the meantime, I was on Facebook last Friday, once again contributing to America’s massive decline in workplace productivity, when I plugged in my email address in order to see which of my contacts might have Facebook accounts. Lo and behold, there was a picture of Miguel Friedman, our son, clad in a Yankees t-shirt (which only heightened his crime) and smiling out at the world.

No, I said to myself, it can’t be. Miguel has a Facebook page after Verna and I expressly told him he could not yet have one?

Miguel was on vacation last week, which included four sleepovers, so he was actually at another friend’s house. I quickly placed the call.

“Hi Allison (not her real name), may I speak to Miguel?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled when he got on the phone.

“Miguel, what did Mommy and I say when you asked about getting a Facebook page?”

“No.”

“And no means what?” I asked.

“No.”

“So then tell me why I just came across your Facebook page? When did you do this?”

“At Aaron’s (not his real name) house a few nights ago. Can I keep it? I already have 75 friends.”

“Miguel, you got a page after we told you no.”

“Can we discuss it?” he pleaded.

“Yes, we’ll talk about it later. I’m going to have to tell Mommy.”

During the day I queried one of my co-workers, a father of two, including a young teenager, and one of the residents at the retirement community where we work, a woman in her 70s. I debated back and forth. I called Allison, at whose home Miguel was still enjoying the day—Monopoly, two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and baseball soccer on the front lawn (it involves a bat and a soccer ball). On one hand, I was inclined to let this one go. Miguel’s had to take on extra responsibility and control himself more as Verna’s chemo treatments have progressed. On the other hand, he went behind our backs and betrayed our trust.

Everyone I talked to agreed I had to terminate his Facebook page. I phoned Verna to make sure we were on the same, um, page. As a side note, Verna does not and will not ever have a Facebook page. She emails, surfs the Internet, and watches Netflix movies on her laptop. But she can’t be bothered with anything involving social media.

So after dinner, before Miguel settled in to watch the Giants baseball game, I said, “Miguel, you’re going to have to get rid of your Facebook page?”

“Why?” he asked.

After I explained our reasoning, he didn’t look upset, just resigned to the reality of our authority. “And if you can maintain our trust, we can re-visit you having a Facebook page when you are 13.”

It turns out that Facebook is as ubiquitous as fungus and right-wing talk radio (you just can’t get rid of the stuff once it spreads). With Miguel watching, I was only able to deactivate his account. He can resume it at anytime, after, presumably, he and his computer hacker buddies figure out how to hide his page from the public and overly curious parents.

On the car ride the next morning, I elaborated, “Miguel, Mommy and I have to able to trust you. What’s next? Are you going to drink and smoke behind our backs when you sleep at a friend’s house? Do we need to stop the sleepovers?”

I was half expecting in an overly optimistic parental way that he’d respond, “Dad, no need to worry, I don’t have to be like everyone else.”

But he’s not there yet and may never be. Time will tell us all how Miguel defines fitting in.

Strat-O-Matic Lives

2010-04-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Strat-O-Matic lives.

I received my first Strat-O-Matic game set for a bar mitzvah gift when I was 13. I played simulation baseball games with my dad and later a college friend, but mostly alone, for several years. I enjoyed the simulated competition and being thrust into the role of manager for teams from the 1971 baseball season.

Just in case you are wondering, according to the official website, “Strat-O-Matic produces sports-simulation games that rate real players and teams accurately for professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey, and college football.”

Somehow, in the various moves I made after college, the original Strat set did not survive. About 13 years ago, before we even had kids, I decided to buy another game replete with old timers’ teams from the 30s and 40s as well as some of my favorites from the 60s and 70s. The game gathered dust on top of our bedroom bookshelf and later in the garage until last winter.

That was when I decided to introduce Miguel to Strat. Even though many of today’s kids are addicted to videogames, X-boxes, Playstations, and all things instant stimuli media, Miguel loves all games and I thought this one might rope him in.

I was right.

Unlike other board games, Strat is largely based on the roll of the dice. Yes, the player cards do reflect actual statistics, so a world class hitter or pitcher has greater odds of “performing” well. But anyone can be a star at any given moment if the right numbers pop up. Call it game board egalitarianism.

Miguel and I decided to each select ten teams, play ten games per team, and then have playoffs and an inter-conference World Series. One each of our teams we drafted from a pool of Hall of Fame All-Stars.

Among the teams he chose were the 1927 New York Yankees, featuring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and called by some as one of the greatest offensive squads in baseball history. He also had the 1975 world champion Cincinnati Reds, 1920 Cleveland Indians, the 2007 Los Angeles Anaheim Angels, and the 1909 Detroit Tigers, which included otherworldly base stealer and inveterate racist Ty Cobb.

My Hall of Fame All Star team was pretty stacked. I had Frank Robinson and Roberto Clemente on my bench and my team boasted pitchers Three Finger Brown, Kid Nichols, and Chief Bender and hitters Frank Baker, Jackie Robinson, and Heinie Manush. I had the 1924 Washington Senators and the 1905 New York Giants. I also picked the 2004 and 2007 Boston Red Sox teams and learned an important lesson: it’s not always good to lead with your heart.

Those Red Sox squads may have won the World Series (and brought me unbridled joy), but their real world success does not always translate well in the chancier world of simulated baseball. They won a total of four or five games out of 20.

Miguel scored the most learning by acquiring knowledge about players from different eras. How many other twelve-year-olds know that the 1906 Cubs featured the great double-play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance? Or that Mantle and Maris combined to hit nearly 120 homeruns in 1961? Or that several old time pitchers were virtually unhittable in the dead ball era?

Well, Miguel does, and more. I recently added the Negro Leagues All-Stars to our stable of players, and last week we each drafted three teams. Miguel is now familiar with Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Bullet Joe Rogan, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Cool Papa Bell, and nearly a hundred more men who were denied entrance to the major leagues solely on the basis of the color of their skin. I hope the six-team inclusion of Negro League stars will educate Miguel and increase his sensitivity to matters of race and tolerance.

And I think Strat is paying off. Over the weekend, the parent of one of Miguel’s friends said to me, “Miguel’s pretty smart. He was telling us all about all these old-time baseball players.”
So I explained to him that it was largely because of Strat. Then he asked for the website and said he might get the game.

“Kids just don’t play board games much these days,” he said, impressed by Miguel.

No, they don’t, I said. Miguel and I used to play Star Wars and Major League Baseball Monopoly, but he gave up on both games because he said I won too much. Hey, I may be a proud progressive-leftie-commie-rabble rouser, but plop me down in front of Monopoly and I turn into a blood-thirsty capitalist with enough cutthroat ambition to rival Vanderbilt, Trump, or Murdoch.

Anyway, we began our second season last night after we chose teams and assigned them to various divisions. Curiously, most of the players on one of Miguel’s Hall of Fame All-Star teams formerly played on my team, the team that won our inaugural World Series.

As we climbed to stairs to his room, he said, “You’re going down.”

“You’re going down,” I said.

The game pitted his other Hall of Fame All-Star squad with Ty Cobb, Christy Matthewson, and Joe DiMaggio against one of my Negro Leagues teams, with Satchel Paige, Bullet Joe Rogan, and Dizzy Dismukes.

Miguel’s team scorched mine, 11-3.

Strat-O-Matic Lives. Long live the games.

Farewell, Kind Sir

2010-04-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

I said goodbye to Mr. W. last week. His breathing was labored and he snorted loudly as he inhaled, but he looked relatively peaceful as he lay in a coma. His fight against leukemia was winding down.

He died the next day.

But I am glad I got to see him before his death. I developed a fondness for him in the brief time I’d known him. He was one of the residents at the retirement facility where I work, one of six who died here in a seven-day period.

Everyone—staff, residents, families—was affected by the deaths, coming in such rapid succession, staccato bursts of intense pain straight to the heart.

Death is never a real surprise when you work at a place where the average age is 87. Everyone dies, and older people are just naturally at a greater risk for, well, a secession of life. But the deaths were and are still a shock to our systems.

So in the ten weeks I knew Mr. W., he touched my heart. Maybe it was because he was always so friendly and chivalrous. Maybe it was because he served our country in the Navy during WWII. Or maybe it was because two of his four dining tablemates were often cranky and downright pains in the ass, but he endured with a cherubic smile and a quiet sense of humor. Or maybe it was because he handled his impending demise with such grace and so little fanfare.

Maybe another reason why Mr. W.’s death also pricked me more deeply was because my wife has incurable cancer and I am very sensitive to matters of life and death.

Mr. W. had a strong pointed nose and large ears and wore sweaters that reminded you of Mr. Rogers. He always smiled in the folksy manner of Jimmy Stewart and his awe-shucks demeanor never wavered.

I didn’t meet him until early January, but at some point last year he announced to our executive director that he had cancer and he was going to die.

“I just wanted to let you know,” he said to the executive director, “that I have leukemia. I’m not going to do anything to fight it.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. W.,” the executive director responded.

“No, no, no,” he said, waving his arms. “I’m really OK with it. I’ve led a good life.”

The executive director checked in with Mr. W. regularly and in late December Mr. W. reported that he’d found solace in the wisdom of Norman Cousins.

“I heard somewhere about Norman Cousins,” Mr. W. explained. “He locked himself in a hotel room and watch funny movies, and laughter helped cure his life-threatening disease.

“I know this won’t cure me,” he added, “but I thought it was a great idea. So my kids set me up on Netflix, and now I have a queue. Let me know if you have any recommendations.”

The executive director suggested The Office, Blazing Saddles, and a few other knee-slapping, tear-inducing comedies.

Alas, the laughter did not cure Mr. W.—as he knew it wouldn’t—but brought him a measure of comfort during his final months of life.

I also checked in with Mr. W. at least 2-3 times a week after one of his daughters told me about a month ago that the end was near. I walked over to him when his family pushing him in a wheelchair a few weeks ago.

“Mr. W., just let me know what I can do for you,” I said. He clearly didn’t want to be a bother or have anyone fuss over him.

“No, no, no, that’s OK. Everything’s OK,” he said.

“What about meals? Can we send you up some trays?” We generally do not charge people for trays of food or guest meals during times of crisis.

“Actually we’re taking him out to shop for food,” said his daughter. “Peanut butter and sweet pickle sandwiches. One of his favorites.”

A few days after Mr. W. died, a group of residents asked if we could shuttle them to his funeral. I volunteered to attend the ceremony as well. It was held at St. Raphael’s, the parish church he and his late wife had attended for many years.

During the mass, I found out that Mr. W. and his wife were devout Catholics, active in the church, and members of the Catholic Daughters. His faith, the priest said, was an active kind, exemplified by his dedication to the St. Vincent de Paul Society, an organization that helps the needy with food, clothing, shelter, and other material assistance.

When Mr. W. moved into our retirement facility, which is located in another parish, he met with St. Raphael’s leading priest, Father Rossi.

“Father,” Mr. W. said, “I’m moving to Drake Terrace, which is out of the parish. But will it still be OK for me to attend St. Raphael’s?”

Mr. W. attended his home church for a few years, volunteered in the community, and greeted parishioners in the lobby. Then his retirement facility started shuttling residents to a church in the neighborhood. Mr. W. was back in the office of Father Rossi.

“Father, would it be OK if started going to St. Isabella’s?” Mr. W. asked.

“Yes, it would,” the Father said simply. “It doesn’t matter where you worship. You’ll always have a home at St. Raphael’s.”

Father Rossi concluded his remarks and said Mr. W. embodied the values and spirit of Christ and touched everyone with his compassion, humility, and sense of service to others.

One of Mr. W.’s four children, Steven, spoke haltingly, tears welling in his eyes, and thanked everyone for helping to celebrate the life of such a great and devout man. Tears flowed freely throughout the sanctuary.

I didn’t actually say goodbye to Mr. W. His caregiver invited me to his room as she left for the day. She had tears in her eyes for she knew Mr. W. was almost gone. She said, “Go on up and say goodbye.”

One of Mr. W.’s daughters was there. We hugged and I asked her how else we could help or if she needed any food. Just like her dad, she said she fine and everything was OK. Her eyes were red but she seemed serene.

But I didn’t say goodbye because Mr. W. was in a coma. I poked my head into his room and watched him breath and listened to the music his daughter had playing.

“He so loved his Gregorian chants,” she said with an impish grin.

Goodbye Mr. W. Rest in peace.

Ouch

2010-03-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

I’ve had two ouch moments recently that jolted me out of my relatively comfortable middle aged existence.

Last Sunday, moments after the 6th grade CYO basketball team I help coach won its quarterfinal playoff game, we huddled together outside the gymnasium for a postgame wrap-up. Coach Connor, who just turned 17 and plays JV ball at a local high school, also reminded the team how important our final two practices would be this week.

“We’re going to work on our inbounding and beating the press,” Connor said. “But I won’t be there Thursday.”

“Coach Martin and I can handle that practice,” I said. Coach Martin is the father of Connor. His other son, Patrick, plays on our St. Isabella’s squad.

From out of nowhere, my son, Miguel, swooped in with a major dose of reality. “If you two are going to run practice you have to pay attention this time. No talking to each other on the other end of the court.”

Ouch. Double ouch.

I looked at the team and saw grins on their faces. Miguel’s smile was wide and slightly sheepish.

“I think I was just dissed by my son,” I said.

“Well, it’s true,” he said.

And he was right.

Martin and I understand the game of basketball, but we couldn’t diagram or design a play to save our lives. That is Connor’s territory. He lives and breathes basketball. Before our first round playoff game he said to me, “I was up playing basketball last night until midnight.”

Not video game basketball. Not on the computer. But real live bouncing the ball on the hardwood inside some school gym basketball for serious aficionados basketball.

So Martin and I gladly step aside at the practices when Connor is there, and what else can the two of do but converse about life, love, and avoiding serious prostrate issues for two men at or near 50?

But Miguel’s semi-serious admonition was a wake-up call for me. Then Martin called me Monday morning as I was driving Miguel and a neighbor to school.

“Maybe we could move practice to another day,” he said. “Then Jacob and Kendal (our two big men) can be there.” Both of them have never been able to practice on Wednesdays because of a previous extracurricular activity.

So Martin and I agreed to switch the practice to Tuesday and keep our usual Thursday schedule. Then the proverbial shoe dropped.

“But Connor and I won’t be there Thursday. We’re going to see the Warriors. Connor’s a big Brandon Roy fan. The Warriors are playing his team, the Trailblazers.”

Then the other shoe dropped and I nearly careened off the side of the road.

“And Connor won’t be at the game on Saturday,” Martin continued. “He’s got the SATs.”

When I shared the conversation with Miguel before we turned into his school, all he said was, “You better take notes at practice on Tuesday.”

Ouch.

Martin and I are on our own this Saturday bright and early for the first semifinal matchup at 9 am. If we win, we play in the championship game on Sunday afternoon. If we lose, we busy ourselves with Little League baseball, which began in late January, with regular season games beginning this weekend.

My next ouch moment occurred last night at work. Verna went into San Francisco for a special talk sponsored by her breast cancer support group. So I had the kids with me because I needed to work later, until 6:30. Normally I work until five or so, but one of my co-workers is off this week due to a death in his family. So I have to cover his hours, as I am his supervisor and those hours are at the front desk of a retirement facility, which must always be manned, as it were.

I brought Miguel with me after his baseball practice, which lasted fifteen minutes (batting practice). Verna dropped Maya off en route to her event. At one point, Maya came up to the front desk while I was talking to a private duty aide. The aide, a nursing student at a nearby university, said, “Oh, is this your granddaughter?”

I nearly choked.

“Granddaughter?” I asked. “I’m going to have to bar you from the building.”

I know I am Senior Dad, father of a 4-year old and four weeks from turning 51, but grandfather? OK, I know it’s quite possible. Verna and I met a 43-year old woman two years ago in Cabo who has eight grandchildren. I have cousins younger than I am with grandchildren. And my brother-in-law, who isn’t yet 50, has a one-year-old granddaughter.

After I recovered from the shock of her remark, which was quite innocent, she said something about her age, 33. I quickly did the math and figured out that when I was 33 my mother was 55. So being a grandfather at 50 is entirely plausible. Too plausible for comfort. But, as Miguel is only 12, he will meet a swift and untimely demise should he bless us with his off-spring in the next few years.

The hard part about being mistaken for Maya’s grandfather is that I still think of myself as somewhat youthful. Besides being in decent shape, I run around with the kids as much as possible. I play tag in the park, chase Maya up and down the slides, play several sports with Miguel, and race Maya upstairs in order to get her to bed.

Shortly after my grandfather ouch moment, one of my colleagues said to Maya, “You love your daddy?”

Maya said, “Yes.”

“What do you like about your daddy?”

“He’s silly,” Maya said. “He makes me laugh.”

Nothing like a sweet four-year old to nearly remove the sting of the grandfather comment. Then a little while later, as I shared the grandfather incident with another colleague, a young woman who is twenty and works as a housekeeper and server in the dining hall, she said, “But you’re not that old.”

“How old do you think I am, Veronica?”

“In your 30s.”

Give that girl a major raise. Promote her to CEO.

“I’m 50,” I said. “I’ll be 51 next month.”

She looked at me and said, “No way.”

The second ouch was now completely gone, having been pummeled into submission (for the most part) by someone whose mother is only 46. Hey, I had to ask. So I was essentially saved from an evening of sulking by two females not old enough to legally drink alcohol, one of whom is in preschool and recites the ABCs to help her fall asleep at night.

As for basketball, I paid serious attention on Tuesday and am completely ready to guide the boys tonight and Saturday.

Father doesn’t always know best.

Ouch.

Meet The Grandparents

2010-03-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

My mother-in-law, Maria Graciela “Chela” Wefald, should have turned 86 today, but she died a week before Halloween in 2008. Verna went to Mass this morning, where the priest mentioned Chela, and planned a quiet celebration of her mother’s birthday after dinner. The four of us shared a fruit tart, topped with blueberries, kiwis, and strawberries, and filled with white and chocolate custard-pudding. Then we watched the 12-minute DVD Verna and her brothers commissioned for Chela’s memorial service, which was on Election Day 2008.

Maya was excited this morning as she readied herself for preschool about eating cake after dinner, but she was also focused on her grandmother. “Grandma died,” she said to Verna as Miguel and I rushed to get ready. “I want to get another grandma.”

Verna reminded her that she already had two grandmothers, my mom, who is Grandma Bev, and my stepmother, who is Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) Joyce. Maya was relieved and happy.

As Miguel and I dashed out the door, I started thinking about my grandparents. I was fortunate, very fortunate to have grown up with four grandparents within 10 miles of where we lived in Bloomfield, CT. And by the time I was in my late teens or early twenties, three of them resided in my hometown, so I saw them pretty regularly when I was home from college and beyond.

Unlike Verna, who saw her paternal (she never met her maternal grandparents) grandparents maybe 6-10 times in her entire life, I saw four grandparents at least 1-2 times a month, including all major American and Jewish holidays and assorted birthdays.

Sadly, Miguel and Maya only live near one grandparent, Verna’s father, Martin, who continues to play a major role in their lives, so they won’t have the same, expansive relationship with multiple grandparents as I did. And Maya especially did not have enough years with Chela, who absolutely adored her last grandchild. I won’t even mention that Chela did not live to see her first great-granddaughter, Lola Chela, enter this world on the final day of 2008.

But back to my grandparents: My mother’s father, Sam Bernstein, came to this country from Russia some time after the Bolshevik Revolution. His father, Benny, raised him because his mother wasn’t well physically or mentally. She died when Sam was young. Benny was often harsh and distant.

Sam died when I was 12 so I really didn’t know him well. I remember him giving me a Tonka truck when I 10 for my birthday (that was when Tonka trucks were really sturdy and metal). Another time my mom gave him a lunchbox for either Father’s Day or his birthday and he cried. He was not overly educated, but he loved to create and solve math problems, and then beam with pride when my mother or I checked his work.

My paternal grandmother, Fannie Friedman, was cold and demanding at times. She made great matzah ball soup and pickled tomatoes, which she left in jars on her porch. She died in 1988 when I was 29.

She was, er, frugal. She would send us to the store for a dozen eggs with two dollars and expect the change back. One time she treated me to bingo night at the synagogue and I won the coverall and $50. She said I had to split it with her because she’d paid for my bingo cards. Then one of my cousins asked me what I planned to do with the money. It was late August.

“I’m going to use it to buy school clothes,” I answered.

Fannie then gave me the other $25. “Since I was going to give you money for school anyway,” she said, “I might as well give it to you now.”

I loved sleeping over her house in East Hartford, CT, which she shared with my grandfather, Myer, Myer’s sister-in-law, Lillian, and another boarder, Simon Rutt, the father-in-law of Myer and Fannie’s daughter, my Aunt Sari. We always got to eat candy, play cards, watch TV, and one year, on New Year’s Eve I think they let me and a neighbor sleep in their bed.

Myer died in 1992 of congestive heart failure. He was 86. He was one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. After he retired he continued to work part-time as an aide to physically disabled adults. He regularly chauffeured people to synagogue for morning and evening prayers, no matter the weather. He religiously cut coupons out of the newspaper and either shared them with family, used them himself, or left them on the items in the stores.

He never stopped talking about how great Roosevelt’s New Deal had been for working people. He drove a delivery truck for 35 years for Drake’s Cakes, which meant we always had ample supplies of Hostess-like coffee cakes, devil’s food cakes filled with crème, and fruit pies. He always straightened out the Drake’s displays in whatever store we were in, whether it was his day off or past his retirement.

For a year after he died, I wanted to ask my father, as had been my tradition during our long-distance phone calls, how Zadie (Yiddish for grandfather) was doing. As I type this, a framed photograph of Myer Friedman, his face grinning down at me, hangs to my right.

My maternal grandmother, Ida Bernstein, was the other most compassionate person I’ve ever known. She migrated to this country from Poland in 1921. She spoke no English and didn’t understand anything about American customs or cuisine. When someone gave her a banana for the first time, she didn’t know what it was so she threw it under the table.

She, too, loved to cook. She made great spaghetti and meatballs, matzah ball soup, kasha and varnishkes (buckwheat groats and bowtie pasta), pudding, and jello. She kept kosher, but was never dogmatic about her religious beliefs and practices. She was one of the few people in my family who was truly excited when I married a wonderful Catholic girl because she knew how happy I was with Verna.

When she sent us to the store for a couple of groceries, she gave us $10 and always insisted we keep the change. One year, when I was 15 or so, I spent the night with her on New Year’s Eve and we made cookies at midnight and proclaimed that we were the first to bake cookies in the New Year.

She inspired me with her devotion to Judaism and her acceptance and respect for all people. She never went beyond high school, but she listened religiously to informative radio talk shows, read the newspaper daily, and watched the news at night.

We brought Miguel cross country when he was six months old in 1998 to meet his great-grandmother, who lived then in the Hebrew Home in West Hartford, CT. After cleaning him up following a massive poop on the sidewalk of the Home, we surprised Ida in her room. She immediately exclaimed, “The baby, the baby, you brought the baby.” We were there with my mother, stepfather, brother, and sister-in-law, and everyone was crying joyfully as Ida gazed at Miguel. We quickly posed for a photograph of the four generations together.

Ida died in early March 1999, just two weeks before her 90th birthday.

I miss all four of my grandparents, one whom I didn’t know well, one who was flawed but loved us deeply, and two who were amazing and deserved to be sainted in a Jewish-secular kind of way.

Missing them was certainly on mind as the DVD of Chela ended and I said to Maya, “You miss your grandma?”

“Yes,” she said. “I want to share my cake with her.”

Growing Up

2010-02-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

While Miguel and I were watching the Olympics last night, I asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I don’t know what prompted me to ask, but maybe I was curious because I am reading a book about parenting (Becoming a Jewish Parent by Daniel Gordis). Of course, for some strange reason, I picked the most inopportune moment to query him: we were watching the four-man bobsled competition, in which the US earned its first gold medal in 62 years.

“An athlete,” he answered. “Baseball or basketball.”

I couldn’t help being a parent at that moment. “Do you have a fallback position in case you get injured?”

“A doctor,” he said.

“What kind?” I asked.

“One who works with kids.”

Yes, I beamed inside. My son the doctor, crowed the Jewish parent that I am. But I was a little sad, too. I wondered if Verna would live long enough to see Miguel realize his dreams and become a professional athlete or pediatrician (or any other choices he makes). Time will tell, I know.

When Miguel was six he announced that he and his schoolmate, Oscar, wanted to room together and become janitors at the zoo when they were older.

“We’re not going to get married,” he stated firmly.

“That’s OK,” I said, trying to be the supportive parent.

Later he said he and Oscar could always adopt children. I quickly went to Verna and said, “Miguel’s gay. And a chorus from Seinfeld erupted, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

And there isn’t. But I am a product of the larger society and radical-liberal-vegetarian-commie-pinko-Jewboy that I am, I am also imprisoned within very traditional notions of how life ought to be. So while I intellectually support equal rights for everyone, on a visceral level I was disappointed that Miguel wasn’t opting for the wife, two kids, dog, and picket fence scenario that has clogged my mind for so many years.

Verna probably said something about me overreacting, which was true, but, hey, I’ve refined anxiety and neuroses to award winning dimensions. And the reality is I will love and support whatever decisions Miguel makes, whether he is gay, straight, Democrat, or…oh, never mind, or becomes a Trappist monk.

I phoned Oscar’s mom, a friend of ours, and she just laughed. She hadn’t heard about his career goals, but she found it touching that Oscar and Miguel were close enough to ponder a future together.

Miguel’s revelation yesterday got me thinking about my dreams so very long ago. The first career I envisioned for myself was as a mechanical engineer. I have absolutely no reason why I chose mechanical engineering, because as an eight or nine year-old I had nary a clue what a mechanical engineer was or did. In fact, today I still couldn’t satisfactorily explain the details of a mechanical engineer’s job description.

The first vocation I recall choosing was that of consumer advocate. I wanted to be a lawyer just like Ralph Nader, one of my earliest public heroes. I loved that he fought against corporations that betrayed the public’s trust and cared more about profits than people. I even spoke about the legal profession to a friend of my parents who was a Legal Aid attorney.

The next time I confronted grown-up career goals was in high school. We had to take one of those seemingly useless personality achievement tests that determined, based on the answers we gave, what profession best suited us. My results came back as teacher-social worker-guidance counselor.

At the time, having just turned 18, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I “grew up”. I was fairly smart, but lazy and had elevated procrastination to an art form of the highest capacity.

However, that prognostication was pretty close to where my heart truly lies. I taught school for 12 years, have continued to tutor for another 11, and spent a year as a funeral counselor. Now I work with elders in an independent living retirement facility.

I guess I am really impressed that Miguel knows what he wants to do. Or at least he has an idea that may change, evolve, mutate, or dissolve several times over before he reaches adulthood.

We will nurture his dreams even if I was taken aback by his declaration. Medical school is so hard and the profession so demanding, that I wonder how he will deal with the challenge. Not that I doubt Miguel’s resolve, but so far he is happiest with a baseball, basketball or football in his hands or watching any televised sporting event. I can’t yet picture him hunched in a college library study carrel, sucking down massive quantities of caffeine and pulling another all-nighter as he struggles through biochemistry.

Last night, though, I was reminded that the present often bears little relation to the future. I ran into an old friend, whose son I taught 15 years ago. The son was a spirited kid, rock solid build, who, despite being super bright, couldn’t hold his behavior or focus together in class. After running a successful landscaping operation in the Caribbean for a few years, this “kid”, now in his mid-twenties, his proud father informed me, is currently getting his master’s degree at Berkeley in project management. The student I knew so long ago probably couldn’t have spelled the words project management (OK, I am exaggerating).

So, to borrow an Olympic motif, Miguel should reach for the gold (or silver or bronze or forego medals) and settle into a career and life path that satisfies his deep desires as a human being.

Yes, I am being corny yet again. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

A Commercial

2010-02-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

If you or someone you know is aware of anyone (at any time) who is interested in senior living at a wonderful retirement facility, please contact Drake Terrace (where I work), just 15 miles north of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, to arrange a tour. Please tell them I referred you: http://www.kiscoseniorliving.com/communities_draketerrace.asp

The Long (and Not So Long) Run, R.I.P.

2010-02-01T22:26:00.000-08:00

I wasn’t exactly Jekyll and Hyde as a kid, but in an area of life I didn’t really like—school—I was a classic underachiever by choice. In an area I loved, loved, loved—sports—I just wasn’t that good. I was Yin and Yang and two seemingly disparate entities all wrapped up as one.

I spent most of my school years, through early college, leafing through the Cliff Notes rather than read The Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick in high school, or memorizing 75 Spanish words moments before the quiz, or taking yet another incomplete because I just didn’t do the work or study for the final. I was content to skate by on my photographic memory and general intelligence. And by the time I hit college, that wasn’t nearly good enough.

As for athletics, sure, I dominated the three neighborhood kids with whom I was closest in basketball, towering over them and swatting away their shots like a mini-Manute Bol. But put me into the larger pool of neighborhood or school kids who had some talent and I was, maybe, mediocre at best.

I was passionate about sports (and still am), but I froze up during basketball tryouts in 9th grade, struck out more often than not in Little League, and chickened out of playing soccer in high school after the coach asked me to try. He truly was desperate: the team hadn’t won a game in nearly three years.

I was also the guy who once scored so many points in a pick up game of basketball outside my cousins’ house in Massachusetts that the other team refused to play a second game. But I was also the guy who scored a total of ten points in the Jewish Community Center league in four years, and eight of those points came in one game, after which my coach blurted, “What’s gotten into you? Why can’t you play like this more often?”

My academic career was beset by intentionally missed opportunities, and my athletic endeavors were marked by, ahem, er, failure.

Until running.

I started running in 1978, several weeks after a conversation I’d had with the security guard in my college dorm. He was a retired firefighter, and he told me about a fireman with a bad back who had just won a race up the Empire State Building. I told him about a mayor in New Mexico who trained a year for a marathon.

Then I had an epiphany. I raced upstairs and told my best friend, Dan, “I am going to train for a year and run the Boston Marathon.”

He said, “So will I.”

So we wrote out pacts to each other and promised to train and run the marathon together. Dan had been a high school runner, so he could draw on his past. I was the underachiever who was usually picked near last for any organized sport. But I took to running like a junky craves his fix.

I didn’t have to be good or fast or graceful. The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment and victory came from just finishing a one, two, or ten mile run. I remember sprinting one night up the dead end street we lived on in Bloomfield, CT, and screaming the last 150 yards with blissful abandon, clearly in the throes of the fabled runner’s high. I slogged miles in the rain, or in the 95-degree heat with matching humidity. I once ran in a blizzard and someone called me crazy and I felt so proud to be doing something that few people did. And I was physically and mentally fit.

I loved running. I used to hold up my first pair of running shoes—New Balance 320s—in those first few weeks of newness and inhale their rubbery smell. Running was my friend, someone who accompanied me daily and often made me feel better. I met famous people while I ran—Frank Shorter, once, in a 10K race in Hartford, CT. I used to wave at the actors William Hurt (The Big Chill, Body Heat, Altered States, Children of a Lesser God) and Clarence Williams III (from the Mod Squad) as I passed them in New York City’s Riverside Park when I jogged during college.

More important than scrapes with fame, were the times I ran with friends and strangers. While I preferred to run alone, I’ve had running partners who have helped me as a runner and person. I learned how to stretch in college even if I ignored Marcia Markowitz’s advice then. She and I often went out for an hour or so after I picked her up at her dorm outside Barnard College. And my most recent running buddy, Kei, mother of four and ICU nurse, gave me an opportunity to talk about anything, mostly parenting and growing older. We teased and harassed each other and joked and cried together. She was a neo-natal nurse who couldn’t help but take some of her work home.

Running wasn’t always fun, but the benefits far outweighed the effort I sometimes needed to prod myself out the door. When I broke up with a girlfriend in the mid-80s and my heart was shattered, running daily in preparation for a marathon was a constant that aided my recovery. My life may have been falling apart in many ways, but running was there for me, telling me everything would be OK and I could still be a success.

If this sounds like a long-winded epitaph for my running life, it is. I found out a few weeks ago that I probably shouldn’t run again. I started having terrible back spasms in December and so I went to see a chiropractor. She took x-rays and showed me what I’d already been told by a Kaiser doctor: I had degenerative arthritis in my lower back. The chiropractor also said I had bone spurs, which she showed me, in my lower back and neck. We talked about how much pounding a body absorbs during running and the effect it has on one’s joints and muscles and tendons and ligaments.

“Will I have to quit running?” I asked her at that first meeting.

“No,” she said, “but you need to take a break.”

A few weeks later, though, her sub told me that running was bad, very bad. “I’m in a cycling club,” he said, “and half the members are former runners with bad knees.”

He said unequivocally that I should stop running so I can walk and exercise when I am 80. When my regular chiropractor returned from her brief business vacation, she didn’t dispute the other doctor’s assessment.

So I came home and told Verna, who is battling horrendous bone pain from her cancer and can barely move from the couch, and all she said was, “Consider yourself lucky. I’ve had to give up everything.” She said it without any rancor or ill will, just a nod toward the reality of her situation.

I drove to work and was struck by my utter stupidity. How could’ve I had said that to her? I called her up, for what was a quick conversation since we live so close to work.

“That was insensitive of me, venting about my running while you can’t even workout.”

“Yes, it was,” she said.

So I retreated back into myself and felt sad and wistful as I recalled so many wonderful memories of running and sweating and pushing my body beyond any limits I’d thought possible. I have completed four marathons, pushed my son in a baby jogger for nearly six years—rain or shine, jogged in Italy, Israel, England, Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, and bleak Caliente, CA, a steamy backwater with two restaurants, a bookstore, a few motels, and a gaping sense that the town’s glory days died decades ago. I ran the day after the 1989 earthquake in the Bay area left Golden Gate Park littered with huge strips of Eucalyptus tree bark as an eerie calm hung over everything.

And now, for the good of my body, I probably have to say goodbye to a friend who helped me become a better person, someone who became an achiever and finished college and grad school.

Yes, I can still cycle and workout, but I will miss running, for helping me to believe in myself and returning that faith unconditionally.

Pupusa Diplomacy

2010-01-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to get too warm and fuzzy, but I do think we could ease tensions in the world if we increased our intercultural understanding and truly heard people from different countries, their stories, and their perspectives.

I had an opportunity to do exactly that last Wednesday morning with several women from Latin America in the kitchen of the retirement facility where we all work. Earlier in the day, one of the women, Gilma, who is from El Salvador, told me she was making pupusas for the staff appreciation lunch (my homemade blackberry pie was cooling in the prep corner).

“We’re making them at 11:30,” Gilma said. “Come and help.”

So I joined Gilma and five other women, who are servers in the dining hall and housecleaners. Although my mother-in-law was from El Salvador and my children are one-quarter Salvadoran, I had never made pupusas before.

I watched Gilma first so I could learn to do it right. She said grab some pupusa dough, roll it in your hand, then flatten it, stuff it with some zucchini and cheese, and then flatten it again. My first pupusa did not look round like Gilma’s. Mine were oblong, which is a polite way of saying sadly misshapen.

Gilma showed me again, and the key was rolling the dough again after stuffing it with zucchini and cheese. It worked and my pupusas looked similar to everyone else’s.
We made pupusas as the cooks and servers prepared lunch for the 108 residents of Drake Terrace, located 15 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

What was great about the experience was that even though I am a department head, the women were my teachers that morning as I deferred to their culinary wisdom. Cooking together helped break down barriers and erase any divisions that might have existed between management and staff. The women got to see me, wearing my casual dress pants and shirt, as one of them or at least just another person willing to help.

I was acutely aware that making pupusas or any traditional meal carries so much meaning for everyone involved. The preparers get to beam proudly as they replicate a dish from their native countries, something they learned long ago from grandmothers or mothers in villages and towns far, far away. The helpers, of which I was one, get to acquire new skills and, specifically, feel we were contributing to our multicultural potluck, which featured pupusas, pie, carnitas, tortillas, lasagna, brownies, and cake with white frosting.

My first serious intercultural foray was about five years ago after I joined a local Arab-Jewish dialogue group. Although I am very liberal, my views on Israel were chauvinistic and defensive. I held all countries, including my own, to a rigorous standard of human rights except the Jewish State, which I excused and defended with all the fervor of a militant.

But at one meeting, I actually listened to a woman born in a Palestinian village on the West Bank talk of the time Israeli soldiers forced her 70-year old father to remove some graffiti from a building near his home. Even though her father had had nothing to do with the incident, the soldiers threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t scrub the walls. It was at that point I realized there were different narratives about the situation in the Middle East, personal stories and perspectives that I needed to hear and understand.

The Arab-Jewish dialogue group really changed me. I still support Israel, but I was able to see other views and my perspective broadened. Some of family and friends, of course, have accused me of abandoning Israel and colluding with her enemies, but all that fodder is for another blog entry in the distant future.

I guess I’ve finally learned something about being sensitive to cultural differences and perspectives in my sixth decade. My initial intercultural experience unintentionally didn’t go well. One of the classes I was taking at Columbia University in the early 1980s was Black Radicalism in the 20th Century, a 2 ½ hour seminar every Tuesday afternoon from 4-6:30. I was the only white male in the class. I was very interested in the topic.

But I was also in the middle of training for my first marathon (26.2 miles), so I often came to class with my energy ebbing after a 10, 12, or 14 mile mid-morning run. I would rest my head on the long wooden desk as class proceeded. Each session usually consisted of some contextual remark s from Professor Hollis Lynch, his deep Trinidadian voice exciting and comforting, before one student delivered a report on the book we’d all read, after which Professor Lynch helped guide the discussion.

On the last class of the semester, enroute to Professor Lynch’s spacious Upper Morningside Heights apartment for a Caribbean feast and fiesta, I struck up a conversation with another student, Henry, a nurse. We talked about the class and how much we enjoyed reading about Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Civil Rights luminaries.

Henry was just a bit surprised at how highly I thought of the course and my experiences each week. “One of the women in the class really hated you,” he said.

“Really? You’re kidding,” I responded. “How come?”

“She was really upset that you rested your head on the table. She said you never took the class seriously.”

“You’re kidding?” I repeated, and then I went on to explain about running long distances and my energy waning by the end of the day and resting comfortably before dinner. He understood and had told the woman she was mistaken. But then reality hit me with a stark slap, and I understood how easily cultural misunderstandings begin, fester, and can explode.

I would’ve rested no matter what course I was in, Black studies, Jewish studies, ship navigator’s trigonometry. Maybe that it isn’t how one should ‘behave’, but being disrespectful was never, ever on my mind. However, my female classmate saw it differently. I was not only studying her history, but we were learning about the specific and tragic experiences of African Americans, many of which she was familiar with on a personal level.

Henry and I agreed that we should have held a class within the class three or four times during the semester so people could air grievances and express feelings.

Fortunately, my pupusa making experience went smoothly. Probably the only ‘issue’ was when I looked at the steaming pile of pupusas before we began to eat. There were three kinds, zucchini and cheese, leroco (a Salvadoran cheese), and pork and beans, and they were all mixed together. Should I ask anyone to help me find a vegetarian pupusa and, possibly, risk offending anyone who labored over their preparation? I decided to grab the lighter colored ones, which were clearly not filled with the pork and beans, and plopped two onto my plate. They were delicious, and because I was unable to tell which one of us had actually made the pupusas I ate, they tasted even better.