Christmas Cards

Little sweetheart, we got the loveliest holiday card in the mail today! It's from our friend, your childhood primary schoolmate, Liz. 

She's an illustrator and in the past she's sent me some lovely drawings - almost like chapters of a graphic novel - of your mutual adventures as children, always with you as the heroine, of course! She loves you! And so do I! 

Here's a picture of the card with her drawing of us and her thoughtful greeting inside. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart!   

May Day

It’s May 1st, little sweetheart. 

I remember when I was a little boy that we used to celebrate May Day in elementary school by making little baskets, cutting strips of colored construction paper and then weaving and taping them together, finishing with a little handle at the top. Then, on the walk home, gathering flowers - honestly, probably dandelions, mostly - filling the basket and then hanging it on the front doorknob of the house for our mothers. 

How I’d like to do that with you and for you, little sweetheart. I’m thinking of you on this day and every day. 

With all my love forever.
 

Mom's B'day

Little sweetheart, today is my mom’s birthday. She’d be… well, maybe she’d actually prefer if I didn’t say how old but I sure do miss her. I’m so very glad you two got to meet and spend a little time getting know one another. Like everything, I wish there had been more time but I’m glad there was some.

Last night after working and having dinner I looked for something to watch - just like you thought me to do with you, watching a story at the end of the day together with your partner; was so happy and proud to be called your own! - and I saw that one of my mom’s favorite movies was coming on. It seemed very cosmic, in a way. So, I sat down and watched it all the way through.

It was Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I think maybe I remember the movie most because, even though I often say this was one of mom’s favorite movies and it was along with Casablanca and a few others, what she liked most about it, I think, was the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, the BJ Thomas version of the Bacharach/David composition. She had the 45 and I remember how she liked singing it.

I’m so glad you two met, little sweetheart. It’s actually a little uncanny how as young girls - like very young, like 4 or 5 - you resemble one another in photographs, even decades and decades apart. I suspect you two have gotten to know one another even better now, in the forever. And I very much like thinking about that and the day when I may finally join you.

With all my love forever.

Your Favorite Holiday/Time of Year

It’s nearly Halloween, little sweetheart - which I think is possibly your favorite holiday maybe even rivaling Christmas, because of its inherent drama and fun and dressing up and things.

Your dad has told me such lovely stories about Halloween parties they had for you kids when you were little out at the beautiful sprawling home in Moss Lane, including one where you and all your little buddies were on a hayride and your dad was dressed up like Frankenstein to come popping out of some bushes when the wagon went by. But it took a wrong turn, wound up back at the house for apple bobbing and further festivities and left your dad lurking confused, waiting for a hayride that never arrived for an hour.

One of the most beautiful things about you, my little sweetheart, is how proud you always were of your parents, how very much you loved and admired and wanted to tell people so. And that you had such a treasured, happy childhood.

I think of that and all the wonderful stories you told me, often. And today, too, when I imagine how lovely it would have been to have had a little brood of our own, showering them with love and taking them trick or treating.

I think in another world and time, the one where you are now, closer than I can imagine that is possible. Everything is possible there. And with faith and listening closely to your celestial instruction, I will find you and all of it there.

With all my love forever.

Just Remembered...

Little sweetheart, remember I was telling you about your childhood friend Liz who has been in touch and sent me those wonderful drawings with stories about you from primary school? Well, I was just thinking about a story from the same era, when you were a little girl, that your mom told me.

She said one day your elementary class went on a school trip to a farm and that you were very excited to meet and see all the animals. But when you came home you were a little miffed about the pigs.

Apparently, when you fed them they rather boisterously came charging and proceeded to gobble up everything in sight with great speed. "Well", you said, with some distaste, "I can certainly see why they call them pigs!".

I love this story to the point of madness. Honestly, has there ever been anyone remotely like you? I think not! God, how I love you!

Thinking of you on this hot June night with affection and gratitude. And love forever.

Friends New and Old

Little sweetheart, while I was in the hospital, I got an email from an old friend of yours who went to primary school with you. She remembered you so fondly from childhood and wondered what you were up to, and just about the time of my accident, went looking for news of you online. She didn't know about the tragic events of 2011 and that you had passed on, my angel. But she found this page and left a comment and she found the band and wrote us at that email.

We've been in touch a bit since then and she shared some her memories - beautiful, funny, intensely moving - of you and your shared childhood at The Waldorf School. She remembered your wonderful parents, too, of course, and when I mentioned all this to them, they remembered her too.

Her name is Liz Mihalov and after writing me some incredibly beautiful accounts of your times together she drew some more - a kind of series of Summer cartoons, in a way - and sent them to me in the mail. The originals, no less. It was very very kind.

I scanned them all so that I could share them with your folks and also so Liz herself would have copies and she said it was okay for me to post one or two of then here.

So, here's one of my favorites now.

I'm so filled with love for you, my little sweetheart, and so very grateful for the kindness of new and old friends. With all my love forever.

Illness Epiphanies

It’s April here, little sweetheart, but winter won’t loosen its grip and I’ve been terribly ill for the last several days. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been posting a bit lighter here but I have been writing to you elsewhere as I’ve been making sure to do a little work on the memoir each day. While I’ve been doing that I had occasion to read a few of your early emails to me and in one of them you describe yourself as being “grumpy as a badger”. That’s how I am right now about being sick and the prolonged winter, as well!

But in addition to being rather grumpy and impatient with being sick, little sweetheart, there’s something about it that makes one a bit contemplative. You can’t do much else but rest and force liquids, so you wind up thinking and half-dreaming, as well. I love writing to you, my little sweetheart, because the more I do, the more I think of and remember all the there things I want to tell you, It keeps things present for me, you know? And that’s something else I want to tell you.

When I was a little boy I was very sick for quite a long time one year. I missed almost half the school year with double-pneumonia. Did I ever tell you this? I’m sure I must have. I was quarantined and left alone at home for several months every day. I think in some way it may have shaped me a little. None of it is as dire or life-threatening as all the things you went through, little sweetheart, with your diabetes all through childhood and the surgeries and recovery years later, just a year before we met, but I feel as though I understood in a deeper way when you told me stories of your struggles and the long hours you had to spend in bed not able to do much of anything but just exhausted and trying as hard as you could to get well.

You’re simply the most courageous person I’ve ever known, little sweetheart. My miracle girl. Remember? I haven’t told you that in a while. You are my miracle. It bears repeating. And I think there’s something to this - the way you “found” me, as you like to say. There’s something of solitude inside each of us that called out to one another. That understood and sought one another. And that is a miracle, too, in its own right.

Please keep finding me, my little sweetheart. Please find me in thoughts and dreams and signs and help and guide me. And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

Fathers Day (2017)

Thinking of my dad today, little sweetheart, who has now been gone longer than I had him and also thinking of you (always) because you wanted to raise a child with me and make me a daddy myself. I'll never know that now but maybe things will be different when I may finally fly to you. Whatever it may be like in The Forever, as long as I am with you again and always, I know I'll finally feel that I'm where I belong again. With all my love, my darling girl.

All Of Them

Little sweetheart, your mom gets a catalog from this company called The Victorian Trading Co. They have such lovely things - vintage prints and pretty dishware and homeware and lamps... all kinds of things. I got on their mailing list too after getting a thing or two for your mom, myself. There are so often times when I see a print - all of Waterhouse's work comes to mind - that looks uncannily like you. Indeed, I devoted most of a Tumblr page to that very thing for years.

I remember your mom telling you after seeing a particular photograph of Mary Pickford that she thought she bore a striking resemblance and that you replied with a shrug, "I look like all of them" (Silent Film actresses of that era). I also remember your great friend and ACT mentor Craig Slaight saying that as a child, your mom dressed you in beautiful Victorian dresses and that you looked so magical (and also that you were so terribly serious and seemed to look around at your classmates wondering what all these children were doing here).

I save each Victorian Trading Company catalog that comes in the mail. I have a stack of them here near my desk. Invariably, the cover image - usually a vintage illustration or painting -  looks remarkable like you. But I'm also on their email list. This morning they sent me something and it featured contemporary models in vintage style and modern dress clothing they have on sale. One image, again, looked so like you - a redhead (darkish red) with big brimmed hat like those you often sport perched on her head. She's turned slightly away but her features shockingly resemble yours. I saved it. It's below.

I'm meeting with Evan Yionoulis in an hour or two to see an installation piece at The Park Avenue Armory. It's meant to be about loss and mourning. Evan's at Yale and working with us on our performance art installation adaptation of Of Love and Loss.

Everywhere I turn you are on my mind. I long for your presence and guidance. Every day I hope to better honor and tell others of you. Every day I hope to wake to you taking me home with you on your angelic wings and teaching me everything I need to know about The Forever. Please be with me today, little sweetheart. And take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love...

In That Moment

Little sweetheart, I want to tell you a little about my great grandma. I was thinking of her last night. Her name was Pearl. She was my mom's dad's mom. The mother of my namesake, Louis or "Louie" who I've often told you would be a real kindred spirit of yours and love you almost as much as I.

Pearl was a very spirited and independent woman. Her story is kind of amazing and I think you'd really love her, too. She was married to a man before she married her second husband. And that's what I want to tell you about.

She was married when she was 19 to a man named Hiriam. He was older, in his 40's. They found each other and fell deeply in love. They both kind of left behind the lives they'd known before just to be with each other. She had my grandfather with him - Louie's first name is actually Hiriam. Louis is his middle name. He started going by Lou or Louie as a kid and it stuck but he was named for Hiriam.

Tragically, not long after my grandpa was born Hiriam died suddenly. And terribly, cruelly his family took him away. They wouldn't even let Pearl go to the funeral. In her grief she was so alone, my little sweetheart. She'd run away to be with him and when he died she was alone with a baby and nowhere to go and only 19. It was a very moralist era and Pearl had to find a way to go on and take care of little Hiriam Louis. She had to find and marry someone else and she did. She found another man who was kind, a little odd as I remember, but kind to her and that was what mattered. He came to the marriage with two kids of his own. Pearl raised them all as a family and took care of them. Incredibly, I can't remember his first name. He was still alive when I was a little boy. He died when I was about 7, I think. But Pearl lived until I was a teenager.

She was a tough old cookie. Like I said, I think you'd really like her. My grandpa ran a hotel on Lake Eire when I was a kid and the whole family would go down there during the season - like June through August, like Memorial Day to Labor Day (which is today and maybe why I'm thinking of it) - and kind of man the ship. Louie was an amazing baker and would run the kitchen and cafeteria. My mom and grandma would pitch in. Even I "worked" in the salad room (like away from all the knives or anything where a little boy might get hurt). And Pearl was always at Reception. She was kind of like the concierge.

She got around really well and was in terrific health living on her own until she fell one winter on some icy steps clearing her back porch and broke a kneecap. I remember her funeral. It was the first one I ever went to. I wasn't there when she passed away but I remember hearing about it. In her last hours she called out to Hiriam, to her first husband, to her true love. She never forgot him.

And I've never forgotten that story. It was my mom who told it to me. Little sweetheart, I think in that moment Pearl saw Hiriam, saw her true love and that he took her with him and they were together again and forever. I think it was one of those moments where we, only mortal, have a half-glimpse witness of the eternal and see or maybe more in this case hear how close The Forever is as someone is called from this realm into the next.

I love the idea that Pearl's true love appeared to her and took her home with him in those moments. And, little sweetheart, so desperately sad and lonely for you today, I pray that you will come for me in the same way, as soon as Heaven will allow. I believe and pray for exactly that. Please help strengthen my faith, help me be kind and good and take me to you soon, won't you my love? Until that day! Until that day...

Just thinking...

Little sweetheart, I'm thinking right now of a story your mom told me - that when you were a little girl your class went on a field trip to a farm and you were very excited to see all the animals but were a bit upset when they fed the pigs to see how they swarmed and ate everything in sight and in a hurry. "Well," you were reported to have said quite sternly, "I can see why they call them pigs!" Is there anyone sweeter than you in the entire history of the world, my darling? I think not. Love you forever.