Life and Death

We know days are rife with meaning. Some more than others. We remember birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, national events, some with an intensity that binds us together collectively. Kind of like in high school or college when groups of us couldn't wait to deconstruct the latest TV or movie, and being part of the discussion made you feel included in something bigger and cooler than yourself.

And certain days just transport you back to a moment in time, or moments in time, that have lingered above us for years and years and years.

April 20 is one such day. It is filled with enough personal, social and cultural history, life, death, and celebration, well, to fill several lifetimes and generations.

It is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titantic as it plowed into an iceberg. But it is also the centennial of Boston's heralded Fenway Park, which has more personal significance to me than the tragedy of a luxury ocean liner.

Fenway Park's inauguration conjures up memories of my first baseball game in 1967 on the last day of the regular season. I was eight, and my father scored two tickets from our family friend, David Schechner, whom we've always referred to as uncle, to the little bandbox in Boston that houses still our beloved baseball team. The white Boston Red Sox pennant, with red and blue lettering, my father bought me that day as the Sox clinched the American League pennant, hangs in my garage 45 years later.

April 20, 2012 is my mother and stepfather's 15th wedding anniversary. I remember meeting my stepfather Fred's family for the first time that day many years ago outside a synagogue in Windsor. Fred had been a widower for a few years before he met my mother at a dance club in Hartford, CT. My only regret from their wedding day is that I shared with Verna moments before the ceremony why April 20th was historically significant. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889.

"I wish you hadn't told me that," Verna said. "It almost ruins the day for me."

"But we triumph over Hitler if April 20th becomes a day when we celebrate life," I said.

Verna wasn't buying it. She was quite happy for my mother and Fred but she always associated their wedding date with an ignominious day in history.

April 20th is also the official anniversary date of death for a dear, dear friend's husband, who collapsed in front of her and her two-year old daughter while my friend was 7 months pregnant. She triumphed over death as she held her family together following Erik's sudden demise and after she met and married another wonderful man, Evan, and twice added to her family with a son and a stepson. But this woman, whom Maya adores and lovingly calls Auntie La-La (her name is Hyla), lives now with the constant fear that her two daughters may have inherited the rare genetic condition that caused Erik's premature death.

April 20th is also National Pot Day, something I didn't know about until fairly recently. And it appears National Weed Day got its start right here in Northern California. Its roots go back to San Rafael High School, which is about 3 miles from where I live, in the 1970s, and the "holiday" may have been popularized in the early 1990s by some--surprise--Deadheads, followers of the Grateful Dead.

I'll be honest: I have no plans to honor 4-20 at 4:20 by lighting up a joint now or at anytime. But the marijuana celebration on April 20th just adds another layer to an already meaningful day.

And April 20th could very well be the last day that Stan W., a long-time resident at the retirement community where I work, remains on earth. A true renaissance man, who has been an actor, dancer, musician, lawyer, and true intellectual, Stan has had two strokes in the past 20 days. He is resting somewhat peacefully on hospice at a local Kaiser, surrounded by family and friends and lots and lots of the music he adored.

A proud Jew, Stan regularly performed in a local Irish Ceili band, drummed on North African instruments weekly at a local pub, and led a rhythm class at our community at which residents banged and banged on Stan's homemade instruments: plastic containers filled with beans or chair legs. Or he shared instruments he'd acquired--maracas, drumsticks, other shakers--while samples from his vast collection played on a boom box and Stan narrated a folkloric history of musical genres from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

I thought about Stan a lot today when his daughter told me his death was imminent, on a Northern California spring day when the temperatures neared 80 and the sky was cloudless and as you peered outside the colors seemed more vibrant. But death still hung and hangs in the air.

Monuments are built; monuments are destroyed. Life is fleeting. Stan, a man who loved to debate politics and art and history and music, a man who rehabilitated himself from the depths of a near paralyzing stroke a few years ago to become fit enough, as he slowly lifted himself out of his motorized cart, to lead exercise classes (strength training and Tai Chi), is about to die and leave us a legacy of someone who dared to speak up and out for what he believed in, who dared to have a vision of a better world and community and then put it into action.

Just a couple of months ago, he took a casual conversation he and I shared about possibly starting a chorus at Drake Terrace and forcibly recruited the right people and launched a weekly sing-a-long that attracts 20-30 residents. Last week he called our executive director, and in a garbled voice laid out his vision for a dedication party later this year when our back patio fountain sprays to life regularly for the first time in a few years.

April 20th is just one of those meaningful days that sticks with me and is filled with memories of sublime joy and gut-wrenching sadness. Life certainly goes on and on. Bless us all.

Mahalo!

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.

I Can See Clearly Now

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

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

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.

Waves

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.

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

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

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

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Thank you.

I Am Missing You

"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

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.

A High Degree of Visibility

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

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

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

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?

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.

Cosmic Stars

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.