On Good Friday

Little sweetheart, it's Good Friday. I think of you so much all of time, of course, but Holy Week is an occasion that helps bring focus to my faith and knowing that you will find me soon and forever. A few years ago I was invited to compose and deliver remarks for a Good Friday service at West End Collegiate in NYC. The church actually recorded the service and those remarks - very much about you - are below. With all my love my forever. 

February 14th. Again.

It's Valentines Day, little sweetheart. I sent you and your mom flowers like I do every year. I wrote this morning - I'm at a part in the book where you and I just went to Shakespeare in the Park one warm August night. I went for a run. 

A week or so ago, I thought to buy a couple of CDs of DCfC. They were, of course, one of the most important bands to us and we discovered them together. I remember all that music and had it in mp3's on my old laptop. It's been impossible for me to listen to them for years, little sweetheart, because I just start weeping, longing for you. Ben Gibbard wrote the theme song to a new show that's on Apple TV - "Shrinking" - and the first time I heard his voice I started crying. That was just three weeks ago, so I should've known.  

Anyway, I put on one of the albums, Plans, tonight. And it sure hasn't changed. I cried and cried and I've barely pulled myself together enough to write this to you, now. 

I remember that you had such a sense of your own mortality having grown up with Type 1 diabetes. And that even after your surgeries, just months before we met and fell in love, that you still thought you would pass before me. I remember you telling me once - in your famous blue Prius, en route to Andronico's on a grocery run - that you wanted me to speak at your funeral and to listen to our music and remember you. I started crying when you said that and between sobs. whimpered "but I don't want you to die before me". You reached for my hand and quieted me down until you could pull into the parking lot and hold me. 

As for what you asked - I did, of course and incredibly, manage to speak at your memorial but the second thing is still very hard, little sweetheart. And it's tricky - some of the lyrics are almost prescient. That's probably why you loved them. 

My heart is full tonight, little sweetheart. Breaking but also grateful. God, how I love you. Forever.    

Be Kind

There's a line from The Newsroom, Will is defending Maggie and he says "if what happened to her happened to you, you'd sit alone in a room and cry forever."

I think I may not be the only one who needs to remember that when finding it impossible to work, overwhelmed, and also feeling guilty about not getting enough done.

We need to remember to be kind - especially to ourselves. 

I know you'd tell me that, wouldn't you, little sweetheart? I suspect you just did - whispering the notion in my ear and making me think of it.

 

Love you forever. 

Another New Year

It’s another New Year, little sweetheart. I miss you more than ever. And I’ll endeavor to do my best, to keep trying, to be better, to honor and remember and find you here and everywhere. To listen - for I know that if I do you will find me. Isn’t that right, little sweetheart?

The Last Day of October

Little sweetheart, surely Christmas was your favorite holiday - you always spent it with your wonderful family and included me once we'd met and it was always glorious and fun. But I think a close second for you as a favorite was Halloween. 

For different reasons, of course, since they are vastly different occasions - just for a start Christmas spreading out over days if not a week and Halloween coning down to single night in October (just two weeks away from your birthday). 

What I think you liked most about Halloween was its theatricality. You weren't much of a horror film buff or anything but you loved the idea of costumes and fancy dress. And candy! Ha! You loved candy! There was something so very childlike - in the most charming way - about your continued love of the holiday. 

I'd kind of lost sight of it until we met. I wasn't much of one for parties or the parade (quite a famous and altogether fabulous one here in New York, downtown in The Village). But in 2008 I happened to be in LA. Old DC friends - they'd actually gone to ACT - had a theatre company there called The Road and they were doing two of my plays - Real Real Gone and Seven Pages Unsigned - in a twin bill. You would've been there too except that you were doing Rock n Roll at ACT and about to transfer the production to Boston's Huntington Theatre (where I would join you just before your birthday). 

You were packing up and flying to Boston just before I was finishing up in LA. My friends lived in Van Nuys so the airport in Burbank was closer and easier to travel to than LAX so that's where I departed from. It was October 31 - Halloween. When I arrived just before my fight, all the attendants were in costume and passing out candy - the atmosphere giddy and light. I couldn't wait to tell you about it and it was then that I truly wondered when on earth did I go off of Halloween? It was delightful! 

I needed you to show me. I needed you for so many things, little sweetheart. You brought such light and joy into my life. It's hard sometimes now to find it but if I think of you as you were and don't fall into despair over your absence, I do. I do find the joy that you shared with me. 

Happy Halloween, little sweetheart!

About May 23

Little sweetheart, my mom died on this day 14 years ago. I've been thinking about it, of course - how you helped me and how cruel it was to lose you, too, just 10 months later. 

My little sweetheart, I don't post here enough - I'm working on our book and our music, but I'm tortured by the idea that I have not kept up this blog, too. I resolve to do better. In all things. 

Below are my notes about my mom. Love you forever. 

MAY 23rd, 2010:
14 years ago I was in London when I got the news, by email in the middle of the night, that my Mom had died.

I'd been up late, excited about starting rehearsals in the morning at The Finborough Theatre. Wilson Milam was directing my play "Seven Pages Unsigned" to help kickoff the theatre's 30th anniversary series - The Vibrant Festival. I'd only just arrived in London the day before. We - Wilson, I and the play - were featured in TimeOut and I sent the link to my mom. It was one of the last emails I ever sent to her.

I was still sending rewrites to Wilson and the actors that night because that was very much Wilson & me, changes right up to curtain - I had his new notes and had been writing all day. Summer was marked for the play, too - she'd read in Seattle and NYC, where we hoped to stage productions but she couldn't make this trip. It was still her part, wherever it finally went up and she knew that. No full production was going up without her - bottom line, understood. But this was a great development opportunity for Wilson and I to work on the play. And all three of us loved The Finbourough. Summer was keen to hear how it all went. And we had plans in NYC as soon as I got back in June - recording sessions for the new BPX record in Brooklyn.
 

Wilson and I cast a mostly RADA-centric cast, several of whom had been in my play DC at RADA two seasons before.

I was staying at my lifelong friends Binky St Joy and Kris's flat in Kentish Town. They were up in Wales for a few days but coming back for Vibrant. I'd see them in a day or two. I was alone in the flat and remember emailing and I think even texting Wilson (on my bottom-of-the-line free with a cell-plan VodaFone- Summer got one, too, from Orange, when we were last in London together, a few months before -we had to remember to pack and charge them the moment we got to England!) as we chatted about the play before I finally went to bed. There was a documentary about "Exile on Main Street" on Channel 4 and he was watching it, too, a huge Stones fan.
I finally went to bed and tried to sleep for a few hours, over-excited about the first day of rehearsal in the morning. I put Radio 4 on my MacBook and tried to get some rest. I slept fitfully, waking at some point and decided to check email.

My brother had written me in all caps: EMERGENCY! YOU MUST COME HOME NOW! Puzzled, I wrote back that it was after 2am, I was in London and what was up? Was Mom okay? "NO! COME HOME!" was the answer.

I couldn't call out on the landline because I didn't know how, so I woke Joy and Kris in Wales, dialing out on my UK cell to ask, saying I thought my mom was in hospital or perhaps, unthinkably, dead. I guess Joy told me how to dial out to the US. I don't remember but she must have. I don't remember talking to my brother but I must have. I do remember calling Summer and getting her voicemail. It was still early evening in SF and I didn't hear back for half an hour - she'd been at the theatre.

I think I've said the rest before - I told her the news and she immediately burst into tears and then told me to get on Skype. I did and there was my little sweetheart, the love of my life - thank god she and Mom got to know one another! "I want to see you drink an entire glass of water", she said, eventually. "And try to sleep. My mom is here with me and we will get you on a flight home. Sleep and I will watch you, I will watch you while you sleep", she said, my laptop remaining open.

Summer and Linda got me a flight and even booked a car to take me to Heathrow in the morning, a few hours away. At the airport, I texted Wilson - they'd stage the play without me - and wrote my mom's eulogy. Summer flew herself to Detroit. She and Linda had got me to JFK and I'd fly again the next morning- Summer wrote me, while I was in flight - to Detroit Metro to meet her.
She had brought my suit, hanging in her closet in SF. She slept that night in the airport, making friends with everyone working the overnight shift. When I saw her, I ran to her. I always did but this time remains especially burned into memory. I saw her before she saw me. I gathered her in my arms.

She'd brought a purple dress and my suit and we took them to the only drying cleaning place in town for a press. Later that day after my brother arrived and we talked, it was clear that he had no idea what to do. Summer was on it. My mom had a cottage on Lake Leeanne. She had hoped I would bring Summer out to see it and we thought that we would but, we ran out of time. I drove her out to see it. Summer loved the cottage. I imagined how much my Mom would've loved to see her there and pictured her any minute coming out of the house with a tray - "how about some root beer floats?" When we drove back, I saw an ice cream stand and took Summer for that very thing. That was the first day.

Summer was with me for the entire week as we planned my mom's funeral. I could not have done a thing without her. Her love was/is like the fucking sun. She saved me. My mom, more than anyone saw and knew that.

10 months later, Summer herself unbelievably, tragically passed.

I wasn't over my mom's death, honestly, when the second tragedy wiped out everything.
I once nearly drowned in the Atlantic. The first wave knocked me down but subsequent ones hit me with more force, making it impossible to see the surface and drawing me out to sea, toward my death. When I emerged, no one on the shore noticed, as if it hadn't happened.
I dunno. I guess your parents are meant to proceed you in death.

I don't think I was quite done mourning - I'm sorry, Mom - but losing Summer... what can I say? It was, it is, too much.

I miss my mom. I miss my little sweetheart. Love you both forever. Grief is the price we pay for love, yes?

Thank god for you both. And I know I will see you again - Faith! - soon and forever.

With love & faith....

March 30 - The Great Vigil

Saturday night of Holy Week concludes with another service I never knew of until a little over a decade ago, little sweetheart, called The Great Vigil.

After Tenebrae and Good Friday, the sanctuary of the church is left in darkness. On Holy Saturday, sometime between dusk that night and dawn on Easter Sunday, the tradition was to light a bonfire, an Easter Fire, outside the church, from which a single candle, the Pashcal Candle is lit and then brought into the sanctuary to light the rest of the candles in the church.  

It’s observed a bit differently from church to church but both the one I first saw at St Thomas and the subsequent ones at Trinity have been in two parts - starting very solemn still in semi-darkness for the first hour around 11pm and then literally brightening as the Paschal candle is brought in, the lights returned - and at Trinity - everyone ringing bells. It signifies Resurrection and the arrival of Easter (when before sunrise) sometime just after midnight.

Somehow, little sweetheart, going through the darkest parts of Holy Week seem to be the most resonant to me. I think it may be a place for my grief to be grounded, a quietness found and a resolve to keep the faith that you are forever and we will be together again, that you will, as always, find me.

With all my love, your Michael.

Holy Week - Good Friday

Little sweetheart, today is another of the days of Holy week that I always observe - Good Friday - and when I was active in that lovely church I told you about, West Side Collegiate, I was invited three years in a row to prepare remarks, reflections for the Good Friday service. The last year I participated, the service was recorded and later uploaded to YouTube. 

My faith is very grounded in the love we shared and my belief that I will be with you again, soon and forever. So, naturally, I speak of you in this address. I'm posting here below. 

Love you forever.

March 28 - Tenebrae

Another one of the Holy Week services that I find really resonant, little sweetheart, is something called Tenebrae. I’d never attended one or even knew about it until the first one I went to at St. Thomas, in 2012, I think. It’s usually held on either Holy Wednesday or Holy Thursday and is a service of readings and choral pieces.

Not unlike Taize, it’s a candlelight service and as it goes on, one of the candles in the candle stand on the altar is extinguished at the conclusion of each reading until the last, when the church is left in darkness and a very theatrical moment occurs, The Strepitus - which is Latin for “great noise”. The choir bang their hymnals on the railings, the organ plays loud and discordantly, all in a kind of protest at the darkening of the light. Then, one of the ministers or priests comes forward with one last candle, still burning, that had been hidden. And all depart in silence.

West End observed Tenebrae and I went each year. Since the pandemic, like with most of these services now, little sweetheart, I watch the one from Trinity online, as I did tonight. Thinking of you, as always, and saying our prayer.
 

February 14 - Ash Wednesday

Little sweetheart, even before your tragic passing, I could come to think more deeply about faith. I’m sure I’ve told how moved I was going to the sort of High Episcopal services, especially Evensong, at St Paul’s in London and later at St Thomas here in New York. 

I really began to embrace them ever more in the months and years after. I think it was just what I needed but even so, no one ever approached me there and I felt I was more of a solemn, mournful observer than a participant. 

Eventually I discovered a lovely little church - one of the oldest in the city - about 30 blocks north of here: West End Collegiate. I first began attending their Wednesday night Taize service - an hour-long program of prayer and meditation and almost chant-like hymns held in their sanctuary, lit almost entirely be candlelight. Later, I began to go to some of the other services as well. I found it a good way to quiet my mind and to also to think of and speak quietly to you. 

The pandemic sort of ended the tenure of the clergy and parishioners I had gotten to know in the four or five years I attended West End but it instilled in me some practices and observations that I continue to embrace. Holy Week is one of them. And the period leading up to it - Lent - begins today with Ash Wednesday. 

My thoughts, as ever, of you and my heart longs for you. Any occasion, honestly, little sweetheart, that brings me closer to you and undistracted by the mundane struggles of life is a blessing. I hope to keep near you in these weeks ahead and will write more of them. 

With all my love forever… your Michael

Bad Dreams Considered

All dreams of you are good, in a way, little sweetheart, even the more difficult ones, because they signal your presence. Some are truly transcendent - you and I are together and all is well - others more disquieting. 

What I remember upon waking this morning was simply speaking of you, telling someone that your loss was more than I could bear and that I would never recover. While that is certainly true, in way I also welcome the all-too-familiar feeling of grief because it actually brings your spirit near. It tells me that you are hovering to remind me, refocus me, get me back on track. 

I'll take all of it, my little sweetheart, even the painful parts, knowing that you come with them. As long as you draw near, there's always comfort in that. 

With all my love forever.

April 25th

There’s never a day I’m not thinking of you, little sweetheart, but some of them are even more keen than others and today is one of them. Of all our years together this day will always hold both great joy and great sadness. 

One year one this date we had a wonderful weekend in Davis together, you took me to see DCfC in Sacramento and made epic cupcakes for us. And just two years later on the same date I was speaking at your memorial. 

I remember being in the car with you once and you telling me that you thought that we had ten years before your health would fail again - you were so hyper-aware of your own mortality - and that you wanted me, after you passed, to listen to our music and think of you and also that you wanted me to speak at your service. I remember how the tears began burning my eyes when you said that and how I cried and told you I wanted to die before you. 

The words I did write and speak for you that day, that awful day, I returned to, recording this tribute for our album Sometimes in Dreams. 

I can’t say much more just now, little sweetheart, except that I love you with all my heart and soul and pray that we will be together sometime again soon and forever. With all of my love…

The Great Vigil

Little sweetheart, it’s Holy Saturday. The services are really quite special and I’ve only ever actually been to just one - the one at St Thomas years ago. West End didn’t have a Holy Saturday service. I’m not sure why. I think it’s almost exclusively Episcopalian. I may be wrong. 

It’s a midnight service and takes the form of what is called The Great Vigil. It’s the hours after Good Friday leading through the long night into Easter morning and the resurrection. At St Thomas there was quite a literal split between the two. The service begins mournfully and somber, much like the Holy Thursday and Friday services, around 11pm, and at midnight, full light returned in what was almost like the Easter Sunday service itself. 

Trinity Church’s service is a bit different and I think I might actually prefer it. It really is like Matins - early morning pre-dawn prayers -  beginning in darkness and progressing into the light, quite literally as a special candle, the Paschal Candle is lit from a bowl of fire. Liturgy is read, baptisms are performed and the entire service has a kind of ancient early church feel to it, evoking the four primal elements - fire, air, water, and earth - of the cosmos. It’s intensely moving, little sweetheart, for a variety of reasons, I think. 

When I was going to West End, I often found myself very moved by baptisms. I think so much of you when I see children now, little sweetheart, both because of your inherent goodness and because of your desire to raise a child with me. Easter Sunday is wonderful, too, with its bright colors and triumphant music, its flowers (I always make a flower donation in your name) and its declaration of faith, that death is not our end. But this journey through the night from darkness into light is one that resonates so deeply with me, little sweetheart, as I make my own long journey through the rest of my life as best I can until I may finally be reunited with you. 

How I love you! Forever!   

Also - Good Friday...

Today is also Good Friday, little sweetheart. 

At noon there are often services around the world and three or four that I have been to here in New York. The first one I ever attended was at St Thomas. I’ll watch the Trinity Church one today. And for many years, I attended the one at West End, including three consecutive years when I was one of the speakers. 

The Good Friday service is known for its prolonged silences, its meditative component, between the seven pieces of liturgy that are spoken over the course of a service that lasts between one and three hours. The liturgy consists of what are referred to as Christ’s Last Seven Words, although to be more precise, they are Christ’s last seven utterances, what he was heard to say while on the cross. 

Often, these services have seven parishioners choose one of these passages both to read and to compose a mediation upon its theme. That’s what I did those three years in a row at West End, little sweetheart. I always spoke of you, of course. And the final year, the service was recorded. 

That’s what’s here below, little sweetheart. My meditation on “The Seventh Word”, very much to do with you - my love for you, my grief, my faith that you are forever and that I will be with you again soon. 

How I love you! Forever! 

Holy Maundy Thursday

I think Maundy Thursday is perhaps the most resonant of all the days of Holy Week for me, little sweetheart, because of the Tenebrae service, which I only first knew of a few years ago. 

Not unlike Taize, the sanctuary is lit almost exclusively by candlelight and then, as each subsequent reading or hymn is offered, one of the candles is extinguished until just one is left, a hidden candle, leaving the sanctuary in darkness. The choir bang their hymnals and the organ sounds discordantly until the sole hidden candle is revealed and brought forward in procession and all leave in silence. 

It’s incredibly dramatic and moving and so rich in symbolism and resonance, little sweetheart, as concerns loss and grief and ultimately, faith. I haven’t been able to attend a in-person Tenebrae in several years now but tonight I’ll watch one broadcast online from Trinity Church downtown and my thoughts will be of you. 

With all my love.  
 

Holy Week: April 2-9

Holy Week begins this Sunday, little sweetheart, with Palm Sunday and then the very solemn days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. 

Since the pandemic I haven’t had an in-person service to attend. You probably remember that lovely little church over on West End where I went for years every Wednesday to Taize service (which largely inspired our album Electric Hymnal) and often attended Sunday services too, not infrequently reading the lesson. Sadly, West End had both a change of leadership and closed its doors over the course of Covid. 

Having a regular practice of sitting in silence and prayer and song and worship really helped me, little sweetheart, to hold you near. I find others ways, of course, but Holy Week is a very good time for me to be especially observant and I’ll probably share little thoughts with your here throughout. 

Love you forever.

Remembering Forever

Little sweetheart, this is the very difficult day each year and I try to think of it not as the day I lost you but as the day you ascended, transcending this earthly plane for the forever one. And that I will meet you there one day, where we will be together at last again and as I will come to see and know we have been forever. 

On that night as we left the hospital, little sweetheart, there was the most amazing celestial event in the sky - a super moon, the Perigee-Syzygy. I wrote this song for you about it, found on our album Sometimes in Dreams. 

How I love you! Forever!

And At That Hour, Above (Perigee-Syzygy) 

 

 

March Eight

I’ve been girding for this day for a week or more, little sweetheart, and just trying to take it as easy as possible. It’s impossible to believe that it’s been 12 years, it’s also impossible to believe it ever happened. I feel as if I can still reach out and touch our life together, that it’s only just out of my grasp, as are you. I also know that you’re closer than I can imagine. It’s gets harder, not easier over time, somehow. I still feel so fragile around these days, maybe all days. And I know I need to be very quiet and calm today. Sleep, lay down in the middle of the afternoon, if that’s what I’m called to. How I miss and love you, little sweetheart. Forever. In my prayers, in my heart. We’ll be together again, I know….
 

The Night Before

It’s the anniversary of our last wonderful night together, little sweetheart. We had pizza (!) and fell asleep entwined waking up that way so sweetly, too, the next morning. And it was a lovely, wonderful day until it became the Worst Thing Ever. I was already planning to take things very easy tomorrow, hyper aware of this dark anniversary but I was sitting here on the sofa and the moon was so full and bright, it drew me to the window and your attention. How well I know you are forever and always, but even if I begin to gird myself, sure that I will fall into despair and grief, you come for me, just as you did from the first, saving me with your incandescent love. Thank you, my little sweetheart. I see you. I love you. Forever.
 

Lent

Today is the first day of Lent, little sweetheart. As I’ve said before, I really didn’t know much about these days of religious observance until after your tragic passing - when I truly needed both to examine my own beliefs and to find some sense of ritual in contemplation, meditation and prayer. Also, your passing was in those very months of Lent and Eastertide. Because the pandemic made in-person worship all but impossible, I don’t really have a church just now, but the days themselves can provide guidance. As do you, always. Please be near me, little sweetheart, and help me be as good as you want me to be. Help me find you. With all my love forever…