Grow Your Heart

Little Sweetheart, here’s another one of those notes-to-self I was telling you about. This is mostly the kind of one that is a sorta instruction to myself but I think it also might serve as a topic for me to write to you about at greater length. It’s sort of both.

It’s hard sometimes, indeed, often, for me not to simply fall into despair. I miss you so. It all seems so desperately unfair. And things of far far less import and people, too, seem to disappoint. I get so very discouraged and not infrequently that feeling turns to anger.

What I wrote, not without humor, not with a wry self-awareness of my failings was this:

“Try not to Deep Water Horizon the endless well of your resentment.”

I can fall into that well so very easily, my little sweetheart. But what I need to do in these situations, need to do more often, is try to find gratitude within me.

You told me more than once that the thing you wanted to do most for me was to help grow my injured heart.

It’s such an extraordinary thing to tell another person, even a lover. So extraordinarily generous. So full of love. So, incredibly like you.

Please help to remember that today, little sweetheart. Please help me to remember your heartstopping kindness, the breathless gift of your great love, and help me find my gratitude. For you. And to listen quietly. For you. And all you still have to teach and tell me. With all my love forever.

We Must Be Kind

Little sweetheart, I was watching a documentary the other night on Netflix. It's about the 60's and an entire segment of it was about JFK. There was an enormous amount of footage I had never seen before and one sequence has stayed with me now for days. It's news reports from the streets on New York as people listen to car and portable radios, gathered around on the sidewalk trying to hear news after word has come out the President has been wounded in Dallas.

There's a very kind, shy and altogether lovely older woman there among them who the reporter approaches. She's listening with such quiet care and worry, my little sweetheart, and the reporter asks her what she thinks. She says something very quietly, terribly concerned and then, full of love, unguardedly, unexpectedly, exclaims "we have the same birthday!" And then smiling through her fears, "I'm just crazy about him."

Moments later in the film, after they've shown the famous sequence when Cronkite confirms the President's passing, they cut back to the street scene where the same news is coming over the car radio. That same crowd is gathered around and that nice old lady is close by too. At that moment as the news can be heard, there is a collective gasp, and the poor lady reels backward, literally jumping, as though she's been struck. She shrinks back into the thick of the crowd on the sidewalk, surrounded yet all alone, so very alone, and weeps.

My little sweetheart, people are good. People are so very lovely and kind and excited in wonderful guileless ways about things that touch their lives. And we are all so terribly terribly fragile. You taught me so much, my darling. And this is one of those things. We must be kind. In every way we can, with every chance we get, we must be kind to one another. We're all hurting. And we simply must be kind. And when we do show kindness, our hearts are one - mine flies to you, feels your touch and I know I will be with you forever because in that instant I am.

That nice lady, so very hurt, broken with sorrow, inconsolable -my heart goes out to her too in this moment captured before we were even born. I think it's meant to. Maybe she's even passing you by as I write this. Maybe wherever we go we feel it when someone, even someone we've never known, thinks of and feels for us. May it be so. May I love the way you taught me to, the way you taught and grew my heart. May we love one another. Love has no limits. It is boundless. May I act in love. I know it redounds to and reaches you.

Give that lovely woman a hug for me, little sweetheart. Tell her that your sweetheart, Michael, was just telling you about her. That he's so sorry. And that it's a little bit late - or maybe not because what is time? I know you know now. Maybe it's all going on all the time - but that he sends all the comfort and understanding and love in the world to her and all through you. Because you taught me, didn't you, little sweetheart? You showed me love. Until that day. Until that day! With love forever...

Self-Evident Truths

I'm been ensconced in jury duty all week, little sweetheart. I was telling you a little while ago how it was bringing up such strong memories because the last time I was called, I had to come all the way back from NorCal and your side to be here and serve. I think, fingers crossed, now into Day Three, we may be excused by afternoon’s end.

One of the things that you have to do, of course, is write down your occupation and then, if asked questions in voir dire, elaborate. I haven’t gotten that far yet but it has made me wonder how I might answer. What kind of a writer am I, they might ask. Without delving into more-information-than-needed territory, how can I truly answer that? And I mean truly. Because nothing is true without you. Nothing is true in my life unless you are at its center, unless it - whatever endeavor set out upon - is led by your shining spirit.

I might say that I once wrote primarily for the theatre, but why even begin with that? I think it best, if asked, to say that I’ve been a writer and composer all my adult life and that five years ago I lost the love of my life, my partner and soulmate. That she, that you, passed away after a tragic accident and that ever since, I’ve been writing and composing works of music and narrative of, for and about you, released and published with proceeds marked for the memorial fund in your name at the University of Minnesota’s Medical Foundation. That the works are meant to be performed in quiet, beautiful, sometimes sacred spaces. That, formerly a writer of primarily theatre works, this was now my vocation and calling - to dedicate my life and work to her, to you, my late-girlfriend, Summer, the incandescent, generous, miracle who filled my life with light and love and the faith that she is safely in the care of The Divine, where I will one day join her, soon and forever.

I guess that’s a bit of a mouthful. I suppose one of the attorneys might cry out “objection!” or the judge gavel me out of order, but it’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, my little sweetheart. Perhaps even, I hope, a quite self-evident one. You are my light and life. Any other description of who I “am” is - to use the legal term - irrelevant.

At my best, and may I always strive to be just that, my devotion is to you. In all things. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Love you forever.