Lost and Found

Tonight, little sweetheart, as I sorted through a few things in my endless tower of piles, much of it writing. I found what I just labeled as "The Last Notebook". 

For decades, as I wrote plays - often for you! - I would write them all out in longhand but I still had to cull them from these journals as I moved to my typewriter or eventually my laptop. This was one of the old style. 

My book for you is decidedly composed only within particular and dedicated notebooks- it's only that content, not an ongoing journal with the project included, ongoing. I have a pile of them. Once it is finally completed I may take a picture. The many many notebooks in heap on the floor of this apartment that we knew together. Perhaps with me perched upon all or near it. 

But something happened tonight. 

I found the notebook I was writing contemporaneous to your passing. 

We've returned from our legendary trip to Ireland. We have Christmas. I return for the screening of our film Two from The Line and Valentines Day and our production of Blackbird. 

It's all there, all our triumphs and failures and my own - my struggles, our own together - the normal give and take of our relationship, like any other - not knowing how little time we have or, even happy and in love, that it will abruptly end and the grief that will haunt me to my own grave. 

In the end I'm writing from the hospital and finally in the hours before you pass. It's harrowing. But I needed to see it. It's true.

I have so much work to do, little sweetheart.

We have a new album coming out, our 13th, in 11 days - on June 21st the Summer Solstice. 

I'm so much older now, little sweetheart, I wonder if you would even recognize me. I hope my work, our work, preserves and conjures and honors you. 

I would be lost without Sylvia - who I know you see and love, we'll all be together someday - and your parents, who are so dear to me. Our family. 

I want and need to just keep trying. It was a moment tonight that I won't forget. I've set the notebook aside and marked some of its pages. I think it will help me. I feel like you've told me something - both about our own story, however tragic, and how I must go forward in the love. That that is exactly what you want for me. Didn't you tell me yourself that when we love someone it is forever? We don't forsake them by loving another! It's why we are here! And this love binds us all! Even my faith tells me so! 

I'm so sorry that I make and have made so many mistakes. Thank you for finding me tonight - I often see you in dreams, and I need to write of that here more often. Tonight, I've set aside this "Last Notebook" I just have to fully take it in. 

Love you forever. -M

I Believe

Oh, little sweetheart. I heard the most beautiful song at last night's Good Friday service. It made me cry and cry. It's a quite recent composition and I heard the NYC Trinity Church Choir sing it but the video below is (I think) its very first performance. The young conductor comes out at the end. I'll leave the notes about it (and the amazing words) below. 

It just is a breathtaking expression of faith! How I miss you, little sweetheart, and my mom, too. I hope you two are having a root beer float in Heaven right now and not worrying about me too much, knowing that things like this get to me. We'll all be together again and forever, soon. I believe. With all my love...

NOTES about ""Even When He is Silent"

Commissioned by the St. Olaf Festival in Trondheim, Norway (Olavsfestdagene). 

The text was found in a concentration camp after World War 2: 

I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining. 

I believe in love, even when I feel it not. 

I believe in God, even when He is silent.

On Good Friday

Here, little sweetheart, are remarks I composed and delivered for a Good Friday service a few years ago at NYC's historic West End Collegiate Church. With all my love forever.

 

On This Day (and every day)

Thinking of you, little sweetheart, on this day and every day. Some more words of, for and about you here. With all my love forever. 

On This Day and Every Day

 Thinking of you on this day and every day, my little sweetheart. With all my love forever. 

 

Something I Saw Today

Little sweetheart, I saw a lovely piece of writing today. Science-based but also faith-assuring, I think it's for us both: 

"For the rest, Science tell us that nothing ever dies but only changes. That time itself does not pass but curves around us. And that the past and the future are together at our side forever.  

14 Years Ago in Ireland, pt 8

Little sweetheart, on our last day in Ireland, after we said goodbye to our friends in Kilcrohane - already making plans to return for Johnny's birthday the following spring - we stopped by the heritage site (sort of like a national park) down the coast at Gougane Barra. There's a beautiful forest there and a lovely tiny church, where we stepped inside and I took this picture of you. We hadn't made plans to stop for more than an hour or so but you were so taken by the place, little sweetheart, we went into the little hotel nearby and got more info. You very much wanted to come back and spend the night, so we could walk the trails and get to know this lovely spot better. It became another of our plans. We had so many, didn't we, my little sweetheart? 

I believe time is something we don't really know while we're mortal. And that when I pass, I'll find you, of course, and find that we can be in any place, any moment we loved, together and for as long as we like. Is it something like that, little sweetheart? Will you tell me eveything I need to know about The Forever when I get there and run to you? 

With faith and love... your Michael

Edna Passes

Little sweetheart, I'm sure you already know because you probably just spotted her in the cafeteria and dropped your tray but Edna O'Brien passed away today. 

It was her adaptation of her own first novel, "The Country Girls " into the play Tir na nOg - a difficult work, written more like a screenplay but directed faithfully and brilliantly by our friend, Artistic Director, Chris Smith - at San Francisco's Magic Theatre that was how we met, little sweetheart. 

The unpredictable event that brought you and I together and twinned our souls. 

I know you will be the kindest person she meets in Heaven. We are our souls. And yours is the purest among them. I know you'll greet her warmly. Thinking of you...

On This Day

Little sweetheart, today is my birthday. My favorite birthday ever was spent with you, of course. We had a few days away from everyone and everything and retreated to the beautiful house in Davis to spend it together. You had tickets for us to see DCfC in Sacramento and on the day itself you made some ridiculously complicated and absolutely delicious chocolate cupcakes for us. Here you are providing the final touch, drizzling white chocolate sauce over each of them - and they're all HUGE, like each cakes in their own right! I think about how happy I was that day, that weekend, those years, and my heart surges with love. 

On my birthday I always also remember now the words I wrote and said for you on that day three years later. A recording of it is here. 

Thank you, my angel. Love you forever.

For You, Little Sweetheart, Forever

Words for, of and about you, my little sweetheart. Forever. Love you forever. 

The Choral Text Passage

Thirteen

Thirteen years, my little sweetheart. Thinking of you - the other half of my soul - on this day and every day. And knowing in my heart that we will be together again and forever in the blink of an eye. With all my love forever.

 

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

Eire, pt 9

One last picture from Ireland, little sweetheart. On one of our hikes we found a stone circle and stepped inside it. Thought to be magical and sacred, it seems a perfect place to remember - knowing that you (and we) are forever and that we will find one another again. 

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….
 

April 25 - pt 2

Little sweetheart, today, of course, is my birthday. 

I’ve already mentioned one of things that distinguishes it and posted something but I’d also like to remember how you gave me the best birthday of my life when you took a few days off and decamped with my to the lovely house in Davis. 

You surprised me with tickets to see one of our favorite bands - DCfC - in Sacramento over the long weekend and made the most exquisite, and exquisitely complicated, giant chocolate cupcakes to celebrate. We had the loveliest time alone together in beautiful Davis, which will always be sacred and so very special to me. 

I’m so very grateful for you, my little sweetheart. With all my love forever. 

The Great Vigil - Holy Saturday

Little sweetheart, today is Holy Saturday and, tonight, the Great Vigil of Easter.

After Good Friday service, when again, everyone leaves the sanctuary in silence in the early afternoon, the church is closed until this evening service. Sometimes, very dramatically, it doesn’t begin until after 11pm, so that the second half begins at midnight and is Sunday morning. Some begin even later, just before Sunday dawn.

Again, the sanctuary is in near darkness, illuminated this time by a fire, the Easter Fire, and a single candle, the Paschal candle, that is kindled from it. Eventually, parishioners each holding their own candle, light them from the Paschal one and when the service reaches its second half, lights fully illumine the sanctuary and bells peal. It’s really rather wonderful, little sweetheart.

Tonight, again, I watched the Grace Church service, which is held a bit earlier, closer to 8pm. Now that I think of it, it’s not unlike Advent which also observes a kind of waiting for the light to return, darkness to light. And this is why this whole week is so resonant to me, I think, little sweetheart.

In my grief and longing for you, it helps remind me that you are closer than I can imagine and just to have faith and listen for your guiding presence. I will be with you again, soon and forever.

With all my love.  

Good Friday (remarks)

Little sweetheart, today is Good Friday. It has a special resonance to me for a variety of reasons but perhaps especially because for three years in a row I was asked to write and deliver remarks as part of West End’s service. The last of these was actually recorded, so it could be posted on the church’s website. It’s very much about you, of course, and I’m posting it here, below. With all my love forever. 

Saw a Cardinal!

I’ll admit, little sweetheart, that I begin to get more than a bit impatient for the weather to turn nicer once we get to April. A kind of frosty air more identified with February than the first days of spring often seems to keep us in its grip periodically all the way to May 1st! And it was still a bit on the chilly side today as I went for a long walk, taking a day off running because my knee is acting up. If you weren’t in the sun and the wind kicked up, it wasn’t very springlike. 

But as I was walking through the leafy courtyard that adjoins four tall apartment buildings around W68th Street between West End and Amsterdam - a little space I affectionately call “The Quad” -   I saw a cardinal alight before me! 

He was a really small little guy. It’s too soon for babies, I think he was just petite- ha! And he kept flying back and forth between trees and branches and singing. Cardinals are incredibly songful, I’ve discovered. 

Of course the thing I like most is that legend has it that when one sees a cardinal, it signals the spirit of a beloved calling to and visiting us from the other side. I always stay and watch, linger and listen, and say a little prayer. My thoughts, my heart, filled with you. Thank you, my love.

Holy Days - April 4th

Little sweetheart, it's April 4th. As the month turns from March to April, I always have this day in mind somehow, intuiting its approach. 

April 4 was the day my return flight to NYC was scheduled after you and I had gotten the "Blackbird" production together. Closing was meant to be a few days prior, so that you and I could decamp to Davis and have a lovely weekend together before I flew back east. Already, we knew you would be following just a few weeks later. My birthday was the 25th and we had tickets to see Low at that really special church venue in Philadelphia. We thought we might either take the train down or even rent a car and drive, because you were going to be here also for the workshop of my play My Before and After. We'd arranged to have the day off so we could make the trip. 

Instead, tragically, none of that came to be. I did fly on April 4th, heartbroken, ruined, alone. 

This day haunts me, little sweetheart, so I must do everything I can to be mindful, to listen quietly for your presence and to heed your call, your guidance. And simply to have faith - faith that you are closer than I can even imagine and that I need to keep my heart open, do our work and know that you will one day soon call me home. 

With all my love forever.