Penny Lane

Little sweetheart, for the last few nights before I go to to sleep I've been watching a short video- well, two of them - on YouTube. They're both performances of "Penny Lane". One by Paul and his band closing a show eleven years ago and the other Elvis Costello with Paul's band performing at the White House For President Obama on a night celebrating him (with him in attendance). 

I think what I found so resonant at first was how incredibly happy, delirious, delighted the audience - a cross section of generations - was in the first video and although the second was a much smaller, select crowd and the performance more intimate, the sense of joy every bit as palpable. 

And, of course, hearing Beatles songs always brings you to mind, little sweetheart - one of the first things you did when we were first getting to know one another was bring the entirety of your box DVD set of The Anthology to rehearsal and give it to me so I could watch it. I hadn't asked and we hadn't spoken of it. We were just newly introduced. But you said you knew I liked the group, so you brought it from home for me the next day. 

And when, a couple of weeks later, you threw that lovely "cupcakes & cocktails" at your apartment, you wouldn't let anyone change the music from your Beatles playlist and you sat down on the sofa with me and stayed there all night until it was time to go home. And even then, walked me to the basement garage and gave me your GPS device so I could find my way safely back to Bernal Heights. 

It was the beginning of our story. And how well I know, as I feel your celestial presence every day, that it is a never ending one. It is, like you are, eternal. 

With all my love forever. 

That Song

It’s the last day and night of June, little sweetheart. Today has been the hottest day of the year, so far. 97f at its peak here in the late afternoon.

Tonight, I don’t know why, I thought of looking up something on YouTube. It was something that had been on TV and rather a phenomenon at the time, so much so that my mom had sent me a link to watch it. It was that clip of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. I remember it being a little extraordinary as it was one of those awful TV talent shows and as she was older and didn’t look like a model or something that everyone was rather mean and dismissive when she came out and then shocked, and hopefully ashamed of themselves, to hear how wonderfully she sang.

I remember telling you about it and although you agreed with all that you were less excited because, as you told me, you had “a relationship with that song”, yourself. I didn’t quite know what you meant, little sweetheart, but I thought I understood.

When I finally did hear you sing it, it was from a performance that had been filmed when you were only 12 years old. They played it at your memorial on a huge screen at the back of the stage. You were still a little girl but all of you, all I would come to know, was there in your eyes as you sang expressively, soaringly and beautifully.

Your memorial, of course, was held, incredibly, on my own birthday. A day we’d meant to spend rehearsing a play of mine in New York, then driving to Philadelphia that night to see Low play at the storied indie venue at The First Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street. Instead I was here at the Brava Theatre in The Mission in San Francisco about to give your eulogy.

As in all things, little sweetheart, I followed you. After they showed you singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, the tears still rolling down my cheeks, I got up with the words I’d written for you and stood at the podium in silence for a long moment before I could finally gather myself enough to begin.

When I hear that song now, I, too, have a relationship with it, little sweetheart. One that you gave me, like so many other things that I treasure, that saved and redeem me.

How I love you! Forever, my angel. Forever.

Cuckoo Song (from Moonrise Kingdom)

Little sweetheart, there was a wonderful movie a couple of years ago directed by Wes Anderson called “Moonrise Kingdom”. I remember that Sean liked his work so very much but it wasn’t until I saw this film at the time of its release in the cinema that I became so enchanted. 

One of the things that’s most moving about this film is Anderson’s use of the British composer Benjamin Britten’s work. Specially, "Friday Afternoons" - the collection that he wrote for his pupils at the Clive House School. 

One song is used twice to great effect in the film and indeed closes it. As I heard it and with you so very much on my mind, I sat in my sat there in the dark and wept. 

The tune is Britten’s, the words are from a poem by Jane Taylor and the recording he used is sung by a boy soprano in a high, pure, wistful voice. The lyrics make me long just to fly to you, as know I will someday. There are here:

In April, I open my bill
In May, I sing night and day
In June, I change my tune
In July, far, far I fly
In August, away I must.

Soon. To you forever and soon. Cuckoo.
 

Tonight - Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased

Little sweetheart, I knew March 8th would be a hard day for me. It always is. I often feel it coming from weeks away. And it was, it was hard. But a couple of things happened, too, that I know you meant for me to take to heart and comfort, with faith. I’ll begin here…

Last week I stumbled across a really inventive video, a cover of The Waterboys’s “The Whole of the Moon”. Mike Scott himself had posted it with his blessing. It had one guy in his studio, a reel to reel tape running to playback, and it appeared as if he was playing all the instruments - bass, guitar, piano, drums, synth - and singing seamlessly. It was impossible to tell how he’d filmed it. It just looked like a band playing live but every member was him. Aside from it being really clever visually, the cover was amazing faithful and reminded me how much I loved the original.

The night before last, I looked up The Waterboys’s video performance from 1985. The song is the second track on their album “This Is The Sea”. I remember first discovering that and them in 1988 when I heard another track from the album - “Trumpets” - on a mixtape someone let me borrow. It was my last year in DC and I went into Kemp Mill Records at Dupont Circle (remember record stores, little sweetheart?) and asked after it. The mixtape wasn’t mine and it didn’t even have any track notes. I’m pretty sure I just sang it to the guy and he recognized it. They weren’t super famous at that time, at all, and even now “Trumpets”, is a pretty deep track. Their next album, “Fisherman’s Blues”, came out that year, and that was their breakthrough in the US. For about decade you could find that album on every CD jukebox in an bar - particularly any Irish one -  in New York.

I saw Mike Scott both solo - most memorably at Merkin Concert Hall near Lincoln Center - and with The Waterboys, three nights in a row at The Garage in North London, over the years. I put “Trumpets” on that first Christmas mixtape CD-R I made for you after you were in the play in Boston, remember, little sweetheart?

Anyway, “The Whole of the Moon” has been the song stuck in my head for the last week, little sweetheart. The lyrics, especially, so resonant and making me think of you and how you brought such enormous love and light into my life. There was nothing before you.

I got out my copy of “This Is The Sea” and I watched the original video of “The Whole of The Moon” performance - so transcendent, rising and rising, with the lyrics, the lovely moment when Max Edie begins singing the descant, her childlike voice floating above Mike Scott’s lead vocal (it reminded me of singing with you) - over and over Sunday night, crying and crying with longing for you. Then, just before bed, the first thing happened.

I’d been so worried about something all day, a friend in trouble. I’d been praying for them, adding it to the prayers I say each day for you. I got word just before bed that everything was alright. It made me grateful and it made me know you were near.

I felt so fragile when I awoke to the day. I wrote all morning and into the afternoon, little sweetheart, and then went for a walk. I was so full of sadness, little sweetheart, I had to sit on a bench and just cry and breathe.

Tonight after dinner, I listened and watched “The Whole of The Moon” again and again and finally thought I should turn on something else in the hours before going to bed, in the hours before the actual hour of the terrible events that tore you from me ten years ago (how could it be?) were upon me, upon us.

When this lockdown began almost a year ago, little sweetheart, I bought a subscription to The Criterion Channel. I told your mom about it. It’s kind of wonderful. There are so many films - from art house to classic old Hollywood to premieres, there. I thought I should choose something that wasn’t too heavy and one of the films in my queue was a Preston Sturges comedy from 1942, “The Palm Beach Story”. Film Forum had a retrospective of his films about 15 years ago, little sweetheart, and I remembered liking the ones I saw, quite a lot.

Claudette Colbert starred in this one. A few years ago I saw a photo of her from another film. She was dressed in a harlequin costume and looked uncannily like you. I actually bought a big poster size print of it - a black and white production still - and gave it to your mom at Christmas. She had it framed beautifully and now it hangs in your room at their house.

In the months after your unfathomable loss, your mom discovered the films of Mary Pickford. She also bears any uncanny resemblance to you, little sweetheart. Your mom told me that she’d mentioned it to you once - how not only Mary Pickford but some of the other actresses of the Silent Era seemed to bear a resemblance - and that you said, shrugging, wryly, “they all look like me, mom”.

I watched several of these Mary Pickford films with your mom, little sweetheart, and it was kind of magical how she even seemed to move like you. And that’s what happened last night.

There must’ve been a hundred times through this film where I could swear I was watching you, my love. Her voice, it’s true, is a bit different. She’s kind of doing that “Mid Atlantic” accent - somewhere between British and Standard American - that was so much of its time. But even that reminds me of you, reminds me of one of your characters from your breathtaking performance in “The Blue Room”.

All last night, this wonderful and wonderfully funny film, lightened my heart, little sweetheart and brought you into the room with me, just as you would want to sit with me each night and as you always said “watch a story at the end of the day with my partner.”

Dozens of times I literally said aloud, “oh my god, it’s you, little sweetheart”. Amazingly, even one of the last scenes, as Rudy Vallee sings at her window, chooses a song using the same phrase I would say to you as we fell asleep.  

This day, this night that so shakes me with grief and longing, little sweetheart, I could feel you with me, protecting me, reminding me, giving me signs of your eternal presence, as best you could, to strengthen my faith, to know I will return to you.

You will find and keep me. Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased.

With all my love forever.

With A Heart Full of Longing And Love

Little sweetheart, I’m doing one thing after another tonight that brings you near.

Just finished mixing one of the songs for the new album, your voice soaring above all. Then found a YouTube video of a forum at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard about the West Wing and burst into tears as they played the theme song, my first thought of your enduring goodness.

As I was thinking about that and how I’d like to express it maybe as the caption to the big photo of you inside the CD, someone said something that suddenly made me think about the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.

Little sweetheart, that was one of my mom’s favorite songs and everything came to me in that moment- all the loss and my love for you.  

“Every place I go, I’ll think of you
Every song I sing, I’ll sing for you
When I come back, I’ll wear your wedding ring”.

The song is written by John Denver, but the version my mom loved was the one by Peter, Paul and Mary, and afternoon that last line that Mary Traverse sings, they repeat, almost plaintively shouting in the background, “I’ll wear your ring!”

Oh my little sweetheart, I’m weeping as I write this. I miss you so! Please please please help and guide and take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. Love forever.

Voices... and Your Own

I was listening Carol’s show this morning on WFMU, little sweetheart, and I heard something that kind of stopped me in my tracks. It was a song by a group I didn’t know, The Clogs. but the guest vocalist on it was Matt Berringer from The National. His voice is so embedded in my memories of you that it takes me to you instantly.

I remember discovering The National together, little sweetheart, getting that “Dark Was The Night” compilation at Easy Street Records when we were up in Seattle together for the reading of 7 Pages, then you sending me an mp3 of that song from Boxer with the line about “I waited for 29 years to find you”. You were 29 at the time and it seemed so very much about you and I finding one another, you saving my life, filling it with light and love.

I remember tears pouring down my cheeks when you spoke of your certainty that you would pass away before I and that you wanted me to speak at your funeral and to listen to our songs and remember you. It’s so very hard to hear those voices and songs that meant so much to us, little sweetheart, that music that came to be our own. It still cuts me to the core. But I do love you forever and with all my heart.

Please be with me today, little sweetheart. Let me know that you are near and strengthen my faith to know that I will be with you again, soon and forever. With all my love.

December 8

Today is the 39th anniversary of John Lennon’s death, little sweetheart.

Although you were only one year old at the time, I think of you, of course, because you loved The Beatles and one of our first connections was you very sweetly, very thoughtfully bringing your DVD set of The Beatles Anthology to rehearsal to let me borrow. We hadn’t even spoken of it, you just knew that we both liked them so you grabbed them and brought them to work with you.

Tonight I walked up to The Dakota. There weren’t too many people around but crossing Central Park West into the park you could hear that folks were gathered there at Strawberry Fields singing along to Beatles songs. There’s often a guitar player or two there and people talking pictures but there was what sounded to be an entire band with full drums playing and a crowd circling them 10 deep singing along.

I climbed up on a park bench to get a better look. Everybody had their phones out and were taking photos or filming. And I did too. I took a little clip when everyone was singing the bridge of “A Day in The Life” - the sort of wordless bit leading into the last verse - and then the song that followed, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.

It was a very New York kind of moment and you were, as ever, so very much in my thoughts. With all my love forever.

The Music Matters

Something reminded me today, little sweetheart, of the Pogues's song "Dirty Old Town". And it took me instantly to you.

I remember it being one of my favorite moments in Tir n nOg, at the end of the act, when we all came forward and sang it together. And I remembered you texting me a few months later when you were out and saying that it just come up on the jukebox in the bar you were in, that it made you think of me, think of us.

And it made me think in the way that I have so very often and increasingly since the accident that nearly took my life, that it is music writ large that is the primary moving force in our lives. In mine.  The instantly resonant power of music - hearing something that strikes you to the core and composing our own, too - that is such a gift in this life.

Just as you are. You - the greatest gift of all. With all my love...

REM

I found myself watching a short documentary about REM last night, little sweetheart. And although that band wasn't strictly one of ours together, still, it makes me think of you.

The documentary is about one of their lesser known albums but one that I quite like - it's more of a promo, really, I guess - for New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I remember I was in Ireland when it came out and actually bought it just after I got back to London before flying home to New York. Kris and I listened to tracks on Irish radio as we drove along the dark, narrow, country lanes between Bantry and Kilcrohane, which I would visit for last time with you on our trip there together in 2010. Later the album was in heavy rotation at my old band's rehearsal studio in Brooklyn and on the jukebox at McCoy's.

One of the reasons I associate it now with you is that the 8th track - "Be Mine", with it's repeated chorus of you and me, you and me, you and me - played in the background of that little restaurant we used to go to in the Inner Sunset and where we sat one night having something to eat just before you took me to SFO.

Every time I had to leave your side, I would began weeping, often hours before departure.

Later, after your impossible and tragic passing, after I had come back to New York in the short weeks before returning for your memorial (held, ever incredibly, on my own birthday), I spent several days upstate with Sean and Megan and their two little girls, broken, inconsolable. Sean gave me a couple of CD-Rs and I took them with me when I flew back out. The REM one and another I'd only just gotten with you were the two I found myself playing endlessly in the rental car all that week.

The one Sean gave me was a double-disc of live shows recorded in Dublin - Live at Olympia. The other, ours, was the new Radiohead album - The King of Limbs - which had come out just weeks before the tragic events (and which you had excitedly asked me to download as you were driving home from San Jose as I was making dinner for your arrival. We had just begun listening to it together. Those two records were my soundtrack all that week and beyond, filled with sorrow and longing for you, dumbstruck and without compass... the unimaginable hole in my life.

It aches to hear these songs, little sweetheart, our songs. But you told me, didn't you, my love, to listen and remember?

How I love you! How I miss you. How I long, with faith, to find that you are only just around an invisible corner - alive and forever. And that we will be together again, eternal.

With all my love, forever. Forever.

(sweet) Surrender

I wonder, little sweetheart, if this is something I’ve already told you, but the day I was finally released from the hospital last May, when Sylvia and your Mom helped me into a cab and then settled themselves into the front and back seats, too, and we pulled away from the curb there, I rolled down the window, relived and grateful to be alive and finally going home.

As we turned right heading toward Columbus, we passed The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and as I breathed in the warm, fresh spring air, the first I’d had in my lungs in nearly a month, I could hear the sweetest choir of birdsong serenading me and I began to cry.

Later, as we drove southbound for home and Columbus turned into Ninth Avenue past W59th Street, I heard a song come on the radio from the front seat. The driver had it tuned to a popular rock station. It was an old anthem by Cheap Trick, “Surrender”. The guitars and the ending chorus chanting “we’re all alright” had me singing along and Sylvia, who was sitting next to me, took my hand, smiling, and said “don’t get too excited”, still worried about my heart after it had stopped beating for ten minutes during my pulmonary embolism just five days before.

I never had a particular attachment to that song before but now whenever I hear it my mind returns to that moment, as it did today in physical therapy. I was finishing the last of my exercises, wrapping up a two hour session and interrupted it briefly to go into the office and tell the chief therapist, Todd Bryson (you would so like him, little sweetheart), the story. I mentioned all I’ve just said to you here, little sweetheart, and added that there I was, hobbled, in a sling, both legs attached to  hoses, wound vacs, a cane across my lap. And he said “and look at you now”, very kindly encouraging my progress.

It’s been quite an ordeal, little sweetheart. And I’m grateful to your parents and to dear dear Sylvia - my goodness, there’s no one quite like her, so lovely and generous and fierce and good. You two are of the same stripe, little sweetheart. I know you know that and, indeed, knew it well before me. I suspect you brought her and I toward each other.

As in all things. I’m so grateful for you. Surrender, indeed. We’re all alright. And we will truly be so again in The Forever. Isn’t that right? 

With all my love forever.

Carrying the Torch

Little sweetheart, I was thinking of something the other day, a very dark time in those first months after your tragic passing.

There was an old Todd Rundgren song from his double-album Something/Anything. I’d known the record well for years and used to listen to it a lot once winter when I was living in basement in DC. It had been in heavy rotation then.

One track, a very mournful, sad tune filled with longing and regret came to mind here one day, in a new far darker light. A track called Torch Song. It builds and builds to a climax of grief expressed in the words “somewhere in the back of mind it’s there/and every day it finds me and reminds me.”

I sat here at my desk that day, little sweetheart, playing it over and over and just weeping, wailing, keening, shaking with grief. Some might say I was nearly torturing myself but it’s so hard to unwrap everything.

Sometimes the pain, I think, is hard to let go of because there’s a feeling that even inside the pain itself there is something of your essence, of your presence and I would rather die than to ever let go of that, let go of you.

I think you try to teach and comfort me and guide me, though. To know that you are near and that the pain is not you, the memory is, but maybe not the ache exactly. Please help me to know, little sweetheart. And to do good in all things as you would have me. I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. Forever. 


White Courtesy Telephone

Little sweetheart, I had a wonderful visit from you in a dream this morning just before I woke up. You were here with me in New York but it's also like we were in a different time, maybe 50 years ago. We were, I think, in the lobby of a hotel. It was big but comfy, almost like the living room of your parents house. We were very much at home, just lounging around, making plans for the day, when you were called to the telephone at the front desk - one of those things where they page you, ya know, "Miss Summer Serafin, call for you at the front desk, please."

I actually already knew what it was. Your parents were here too, in the same hotel, I think, and they had a surprise for you. Either your mom alone or maybe both your mom and your dad had met someone and told them about you and made a special appointment for you on your visit here. You were going to meet Oscar Hammerstein. I don't remember if Richard Rodgers was also going to be there but they wanted you to come by their studios and sing. There was a list of 30 of their songs and they wanted to work through each one with you. It was just with them. Old Oscar was going to play the piano himself. You just had to call the number and let them know you were coming by.

Your dad was on the phone with the news and the number for you to call. I knew about it already and was so excited for you.

Isn't that a wonderful and altogether unusual dream, little sweetheart? Being together in the 60's as we are in the early 2000's, everything around us a bit different but we as we are?

You were so very typically yourself taking the call too, excited but immediately focused, ready to go to work.

It's such a comfort and a blessing when you visit me like this, little sweetheart. I'm so grateful. I wonder what other messages are packed inside this vision. Lead me to them, won't you, my little sweetheart? As in all things. I love you with all my heart and soul.

Closer

Little sweetheart, in the weeks I've been home from the hospital I've only gradually begun to settle in and actually see and remember and lay hands on things as they are.

Part of that is due to some of the endless clutter of this place being shifted a little - by dear dear Sylvia, the earthly angel who has done so much to help me - to clear a path as I, very hobbled at first, in a sling with each leg connected by hoses to a small machine, tried to shuffle about in here.

And partly I think I'm just awakening a bit from the fog of trauma and struggle and can actually take things in, resume, however altered.

A little while ago within these pages, little sweetheart, I mentioned that there were some things I had been thinking and writing about before the incident that I meant both for posting here and for continuing work on our memoir.

Often, as you know, my beloved, I write little things down on scraps of paper. Some are reminders or the shorthand scribble of an idea to develop and expand upon and others are almost mantras - something instantly resonant, seemingly transmitted from the ether and eternity to me in a celestial whisper that I hurriedly scrawl into remembrance and tape to the wall.

It's one of the former kind, a sort of note-to-self for further expounding, that I found while looking for something else on my desk this morning, little sweetheart.

It says "'Where Does the Time Go" awakens me from my nap".

Reading it takes me instantly to the moment I wrote it, pre-incident.

In the late afternoon of an April day before all this, I had laid down to close my eyes for a few minutes, with WFMU on softly in the background. And as I stirred, I heard that song, that wistful lyric and haunting melody, first known to me when you sang it angelically in your room in Boston the weekend I came up while you were working there on your birthday.

In that moment, I caught you gratefully in my arms.

In this one, immortalized by the handwritten note to self, I instantly felt the closeness I did in that moment - knowing that there's more than we can imagine, more than mere coincidence, if only we quiet ourselves and let in the extra sensory, the feelings and thoughts and messages, the sounds and sights (and even the olfactory ones - I more than once have suddenly been aware of your scent filling the air when no one else is around, haven't I, little sweetheart?!) that are there to bolster our faith and let us know, let me know, my beloved is ever with me.

Please help me, my little sweetheart, to find my way again, to find my way anew, as I work to overcome all that's befallen. Please help me with gratitude and love to honor you and know the true way. You're closer than I could ever imagine. Please don't go too far away.

With all my love forever. 

Woken

Little sweetheart, I've been listening to a new show on WFMU. It's on late at night, the overnight 3-6 Wednesday into Thursday, so I'm usually not awake when it's on and only listen back later on the station's archive. It's Olivia's show and very interesting not only for tracks she selects - a mixture of drone and experimental and pop and spoken word - but for the live sound collages she's mixes live on air. I started listening a few weeks ago.

Anyway, today I was really tired and sad and lay down for a nap. I had an earlier show of hers on and a song woke me. It was Fairport Convention's version of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes".

Little sweetheart, I remember you singing a bit of it when you & I were together in your room in Boston and it always makes me think of you. But honestly I'd never really heard it in its entirety - like heard the words. It made me cry and long for you. And also made me feel that you were near.

Please help and guide me, little sweetheart. And take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. There are so many things only you know and can help me with. I know you try as best you can to reach me. And I feel that hearing this today was another one of them.

Quietly napping, you woke me so that with no else to distract me I might know what you wanted to say and keep it safely in my heart.

I love you, my gorgeous angel. Forever.

Across the morning sky,
All the birds are leaving,
Ah, how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire,
We'll still be dreaming.
I do not count the time
Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sad deserted shore,
Your fickle friends are leaving,
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go,
But I will still be here,
I have no thought of leaving.
I do not count the time
Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
And I'm not alone,
While my love is near me,
And I know, it will be so, till it's time to go,
So come the storms of winter,
And then the birds in spring again.
I do not fear the time
Who knows how my love grows?
Who knows where the time goes?

Gypsy

After your tragic passing, little sweetheart, your best friend, Danya, and I spent several days together, first going up to Calistoga (where each of us had been with you) and then back to Danya's loft in Oakland. One night, she cleared everything away from a wall and began painting your name on it while Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy" played in the background. I think of you whenever I hear that song and I was out just now and heard it while at D'Agostino's. I remembered both that I had this video and that Danya's B'day is tomorrow. I never hear from her anymore. Grief does strange things to people. But I know she will be thinking of you, as I always am myself. With love forever...

A Song I Heard Today

Little sweetheart, on Fridays I often listen to a show on WFMU that plays a lot of bands featuring female vocalists (like you!). And today the DJ, Sheila, played a wonderful song by a band called Elizabeth City State (Elizabeth is a town in NJ) that made me think so much of you it made me cry. Its lyrics mirror exactly how I feel about you - the only one who ever saw and understand me, how I hurt I was, and came into my life and loved me like no one could but you.



It's late-February here but it's warm today and I have the windows open. Sometimes when the breeze is coming in on a warm day like this I can feel, can sense you in the air.



Please be near me, my little sweetheart. Please let me know you are with me, Summer, my darling girl. Help be all you want of me. And take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. Love you forever. Forever!

She's an Angel

Little sweetheart, I'm down the shore in previews for a new play. We had our first two on Thursday, another last night and one more this afternoon before opening later this evening. There have been little receptions at the theatre post-show the last two nights. Yesterday, I met a very nice couple and they turned out to be called Linda and Mike - just like your parents! (your mom just let me know that she is coming two weeks from now all the way from NorCal).

The night before that I was sitting in the lobby during the first reception. I'd found a seat sort of off to the side and was just relaxing. I was pretty beat, animated conversation going on all around me. They'd tuned into some internet radio stream in the booth and were playing it on speakers in both the lobby and theatre. It was some sort of Light 70's Rock kind of thing - James Taylor and Jackson Brown. I was expecting to hear Boz Scaggs any minute. But suddenly I recognized something else. A song I'd sung for you once. A song I'd told you I would want at our wedding if we could someday have one. A song that is very much yours and brings me to tears.

I quickly got up and slipped past everyone in the crowded lobby and found my way into the now empty theatre where I could hear better. It was Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey". It was right at the quiet part where he begins talking and before it builds to climax. I lay there on the floor of the stage and sang along with the chorus which repeats "She's an angel!" over and over and over again. And I cried for you, my little sweetheart. Just like always. I cried with love and gratitude. I cried with longing to be with you again and forever.

You're an angel now, my little sweetheart. An angel of the first degree. How I long to fly to you. Love you forever. Until that day! Until that day...

In My Life...

I’m waiting, like everyone, more than a little impatiently, little sweetheart, for spring to come. It’s still bitter and blustery, even as the sun tries shyly to poke his head around the clouds and cheer things up a bit. It’s Monday and although she’s at a conference this week and we’re not meeting, it is usually my day to see the woman who’s been counseling me since your passing. She’s all the way over on the Upper East Side and there’s no good way of getting there better than walking. It’s a nice walk, especially in clear weather. I walk up past Columbus Circle to Lincoln Center before heading east through the park, past Sheep Meadow, down the steps to Bethesda Fountain, turning at the Boathouse toward the Lagoon and back up to the street on the other side just before reaching the playground there at 5^th Avenue in the East 70’s. That last stretch is a little curve, my sweetheart, a kind of pedestrian intersection of two divergent paths with park benches around the periphery – the perfect spot for buskers, for street musicians, to set up camp. There haven’t been many braving the harsher elements these past few brutal months, but I find myself thinking today of a pair of them I came across on my weekly trek once last spring. Most of the year there had been a young guy there paying muted trumpet over a backing track of classical accompaniment on a boombox. He’d solo over the top of it. You could hear him from a good distance and, even muted, needed to steer not too close as you passed up toward the street rounding the corner. I got used to the routine. But this day, I think it might’ve been in June, I heard instead, guitars and singing. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest, at first. As I got closer I recognized the song. It was a couple - a kind of young hippie-ish looking guy and girl, him on guitar, her on fiddle – singing The Beatles’s In My Life. The harmonies were sweet and spot on but what really impressed me as I drifted past was how they tackled the bridge – him earnestly downstroking through the chords in rhythm, her navigating every tricky turn of the harpsichord solo. On violin! I looked back from the corner, stopping to hear them finish the song – their angelic voices together, their earnest, unspoiled faces, him beaming, she the picture of concentration – and I turned and walked back.  I put a fiver in the open guitar case and said “that was fucking great.” I think that startled them at first. But then I saw their look of surprise turn to gratitude and friendliness. “Thank you”, he said as she nodded a bit shyly at his side. And ya know what, sweetheart? I never would have been able too see any of this if it weren’t for you bringing such a gift of love to my life. You grew my heart, my darling. You taught me what love is. What love can do. What love can truly be. True Love. And in these moments, my little sweetheart, I so strongly feel you with me. In my life, indeed…  

A lot to talk about...

Little sweetheart, Lesley Gore passed away today. Remember how I sent you her song "What Am I Gonna Do With You" and then you put it on a playlist on your iPod for us to listen to in the car with her song "You Don't Own Me" right after, ever cheeky, and we'd cry and sing? Well, Ms. Gore will be just about arrived up there now, my darling. Bet you two will have a lot to talk about. Tell me everything we I get there and come collect me soon, won't you? We'll listen to that mixtape on the way...

Hear an angel...

Oh, sweetheart... I'm at D'Agostino's getting a few things to make Xmas cookies before practice tomorrow and one of our favorite songs just came on- The Cure's "Friday, I'm in Love". I remember walking through Trader Joe's together and watching you break into one of your gorgeous, earth-shattering smiles, pointing to the speaker as you heard it come on there, taking my hand. Here I stand in the baking aisle in tears. Never be ashamed to cry for you. My love. My little sweetheart. My very best friend.  Love you forever...