A Memory...

Little sweetheart, I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. I check in once a day because we’ve sometimes gotten messages for the band’s page there, so I try to be watchful for that. There is a feature there called “Memories” and it reminds you of something you may have posted or that happened on that particular day some years ago - like its anniversary, whatever the post or event might have marked.

I mention all this because, one day, the feature reminded me that that last play I wrote for you, My Before & After, had its performances with Seattle’s ACT eight years ago.

Your mom came up to Seattle to see the play and stay for the talkback - the after-show Q&A between the playwright (me), the Literary Manager and the audience. ACT had flown me out to be part of a program with one other playwright in a co-production with The Icicle Creek Theatre Festival. Each year they select two new plays and cast a company to play roles in both, then put everyone up for two weeks at an Arts Retreat in the mountains in central Washington state, work on each play, presenting them at the end over consecutive nights, before coming back to Seattle for the performance at ACT.

It was really kind of lovely. I had my own little cabin - with air conditioning and wifi! - and there would be two rehearsal periods each day, a morning one and an afternoon one, which we’d alternate each day, one play or the other. The rest of the time I was working on rewrites in my little cabin or going for long walks in the woods. But I did have one entire day off and walked into the nearest town, about 3 miles away.

And that’s what I’m remembering most today, little sweetheart. How I ached and longed for you and how good the long walk felt. How I wandered around in the little village full of sweet little shops that I’d so like to have taken you to, have had you with me, seeing it all together, and that somehow, I think you really were at my side.

All kinds of little coincidences kept happening. I’d hear a song in one of the shops, a song that I’d heard you play on your little MacBook Air when we were together in your room. I stopped by a gift shop and was browsing there and found a necklace with your name on it. Silver chain and “Summer” in silver, too, at its center. There were just two of them in stock and I bought them both so I could give one to your mom.

Finally, I was really hungry and wanted to find something simple for lunch - I was really craving just a nice tuna salad sandwich - but there was some kind of majorly German vibe to the entire town and all the places were that kind of beer and sausage cuisine. Like Octoberfest all year round. I finally settled on a place that had a kind of sea theme, unusual I thought for a small village nestled into the mountains.

Again, it brought you to mind so much, little sweetheart, for your love of tales of pirates and sea lore and I felt as if you had led me there. I sat down and looked at the menu and lo and behold, there was exactly what I’d been craving - lovely fresh tuna salad, fresh greens and some hand-cut fries. It was mid-afternoon but nice and cool and unhurried inside. Very homey with dark paneled walls and decorated with nets and other sailing paraphernalia. I kind of felt like having a beer, something locally brewed, an IPA, perhaps, and they had one that looked good. You order a mug or what they called, charmingly a “schooner”, so I got the latter and it arrived in a tall, rounded glass.

I’d set out that late morning so very sad and lonely, little sweetheart. I’d met my lead actor for breakfast before I left and over coffee he told me he thought I was the saddest person he’d ever known in his life. How I longed and ached for you!

But I think you sensed that, little sweetheart, and came alighting near me all day to help buoy my spirits and keep me going. You fortified me. I remember thinking that very thing at the time. Memories, indeed.

How I love you! Forever!
 

The Saddest Person Ever

 Little sweetheart, when I was working on the last play I wrote for you, the last play I ever worked on, really, in 2013, a little while after your tragic passing, I was in Upstate Washington State, on retreat with the company and cast before our production of of My Before & After. It was ten days in a lovely little arts colony in the mountains.

One day, I was in there little cafe having coffee with the lead actor, a lovely man named Tim. As so often happened my thoughts were of you and I burst into tears. He was very kind but he also said to me, quite worried, that he thought I was the saddest person he ever had known.

I still am. I try hard to do my work and be kind and say our quiet prayers, but often the darkness descends, my love. And I need to say that. I need to live within it and let it be part of me as you are always a part of me, the biggest part, the very best part, and just quietly ask to feel you near me. I know it’s okay to feel this bad. I know because you loved and still did love me and that we are forever.

Thank you, my little sweetheart. Always. Always.

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.

Sharing Memories

Little sweetheart, I just saw a "memory" on my Facebook page from a few years ago. It was a "status update" that read like this:

"Bemused to discover that, unlike Tony Bennett, I left not only my heart but my belt, my Oyster card and my English mobile phone in San Francisco..."

Do you remember that, little sweetheart? I'd had to come back to NYC for jury duty, then a play with Wilson. You were down in Carmel finishing your run of "The Blue Room". It was the first I'd been apart from you since January that year. Then, a few days after I posted this and your show closed, you flew out to see the closing night of my own show and from then on we were back and forth the two coasts to be with each other, with the odd trips to London, Seattle, Ireland, et al. I'm further reminded of this, my darling, because I'm called for jury duty again a week from tomorrow, so this brings up some memories. Oh, little sweetheart - what a beautiful life we had. Love you forever!

I Need My Girl

I have purposefully not listened to the new (not so new, now) record from The National because they were a band that Summer and I discovered together.

Our gateway was late - the Dark Is The Night double-cd the Dessner brothers actually produced. We bought it along with several DCFC albums at Easy Street Records in Seattle on our first trip up there. I’d been out in SF with her but had to return to NYC for jury duty in July. Summer was in Carmel in rehearsals for David Hare’s “The Blue Room” at Pacific Rep. She emailed me “Slow Show”.

With its refrain: "You know I dreamed about you/For twenty-nine years before I saw you/You know I dreamed about you/I missed you for, for twenty-nine years”

Summer was 29 that summer. It was crazy appropriate.

Soon “Boxer” became our favorite record. Summer called me from Outside Lands - the annual music fest in SF - to say first off “why aren’t you here with me!” (I was in aforementioned NYC jury duty hell) and that she had gotten all the way to the front of the stage and said to Matt B “I hope Ada is treating you well” (a reference to a song we loved and she worried was about having his heart broken). He asked her to repeat what she said and then, understanding, chuckled lightly and said “yeah, it’s okay, I wrote that with her, she’s my wife…”.

We were so excited when “High Violet” came out. I got us tickets for both Radio City and Prospect Park. It was the record of our year, our last year. Summer always thought she would die young. She warned me of it constantly. I would dissolve in tears at the thought. She would simply say, “remember me, listen to our music and remember me”.

There were a thousand reasons why we could have lost each other but the one that took her from me was impossible. It has been equally impossible to listen to our music. It’s almost three years now and it is impossible. But I saw this tonight. With a title - I NEED MY GIRL - that could only destroy me. I had to listen.

Summer, my love, my little sweetheart, you are with me always, my gorgeous girl. Always find me. None of this - we - are not over. All my love forever…m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMhMcXppqcc

Emotional morning after a moody sad night. Walked into town. About an hour's journey on foot. Crossed the road at one point because I could see what I thought was a big dog in the yard ahead. Got closer and discovered it was was a grazing deer. Saw a butterfly near the centre line. Rescued it to a log near the shoulder. Crossed the bridge into town. Looked around. Found, incredibly, a necklace that said "Summer". I mean you expect to see ones that read "Jane" or "Cathy" but... why was that there when I looked? Bought it. Wandered through the faux Bavarian village. Clock stores and bookstores and Christmas ornament stores and jewelry stores and salt water taffy. Finally about time to eat. Bratwurst everywhere but what I really wanted was just a tuna sandwich and a beer. No chance.  Last place I looked, equally Germanic -called Gustavs for fucksake - had just that. Albacore tuna salad on rye, 22 oz locally brewed IPA on tap. Potato salad and a fresh pickle on the side. Perfect. How did that happen? Downloaded the Marshall Crenshaw song I heard the other day in the grocery store with Summer's dad that made me cry. Decided to go back across the street and get another necklace for Summer's mom. Walking there, as I approach, hear one of Summer's favourite songs, MGMT's "Time to Pretend" coming out of speakers nearby.  Meant to be. Get the second necklace and walk back to the festival site listening to the Crenshaw and the first disc of "OF LOVE & LOSS". Quick shower and into evening rehearsal. The cast working so hard and having fun. Our terrific director. Our devoted stage manager. The lovely festival staff. So grateful to be here. Know so very well that my girl, my love, my Summer was with me all day - helping me, showing me, encouraging me. Making sure I know she's keeping as close as she can, letting me know she just wants me to use the time I have left here well, just letting me know I'll be with her again very soon, just have to finish up my work here the way I'm supposed to and how she'd want. Thank you sweetheart. Love you forever.

Travels...

Heading West tomorrow. First to NoCal and then on to Seattle. Can't go into SFO anymore. Can't even fly Virgin. Gotta go JetBlue. Miss my girl too painfully much otherwise. The memories- waiting downstairs at the kiss and ride for her Blue Prius to pull around the corner, waving through the windshield. Running toward her, my bags in tow. Dropping them as she jumped out of the car, invariably dressed in dark, tight little yoga pants, a cute little tshirt (maybe her anchor one), her pretty long red hair up held in place by tiny clips or maybe just a pencil, no make up, big blue eyes filled with love and shy surprise, the guileless smile that could knock a man down, leaping into my arms and kissing and kissing and kissing me. And then asking if I would drive... Love you forever. 

Travel?

All of my/our friends who can bring themselves to talk to me, either push a book into my hands ( some good ones, to be honest - Rob Sheffield's "Love is a Mix Tape", Patti Smith's "Just Friends" and everything ever written by Joan Didion) or urge me to travel. Travel? Where? Anywhere Summer & I went would prove too painful, I think. And anywhere I had never been would prove so horribly lonesome because I would only wish she were there. Still, somehow, I find myself going to Seattle for a workshop reading of a new play of mine at ACT in March. Summer & I had some unforgettable times together in Seattle but inexplicably I think it's going to be okay. Maybe because her parents are coming up for it, too. Still, always, of course, so hard finding my way...