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

August Days

Little sweetheart, I'm returned from travels armed with writings and recordings and so many thoughts of you. 

I managed to avoid the crazy heat wave that all but engulfed New York in my absence and am running around now in the relatively mild weather getting caught up on things. Including your mom's birthday which is in less than a week! 

I usually like to bake her a birthday cake (just like I would do for your own!). She particularly likes a lemon cake. I can't get to California for the occasion, so I'm ordering one, a vanilla bean one, for her later today to arrive the day before. 

So many thoughts of you, my little sweetheart! And all my love forever.

New Year's Day 2023

The first day of 2023 is a cold clear one, little sweetheart, and I’m sitting here at my desk with a cup of coffee doing some writing, which I hope will find me making progress toward completion of one of our books by this time next year. Things seem to get a little harder each year, I find I need to rest more often, but I’ll keep going and trying to be as good as you want me to be. It helps to know that you want me to do just that. Happy New Year, little sweetheart. I’ll do my best to make it a good one, I promise. With all my love forever.

New Schedule

 Little sweetheart, all through these difficult months of the pandemic I’ve fallen into bad sleep habits. Waking far too late in the day and feeling rough.

Just now, I feel a change. I’m up earlier, at our usual time - remember, we always liked getting up around ten? I know that’s the right path and that you’re taking me there. The album is nearly done. I’m turning full attention to the book. You’re helping me through every step every day.

God, how I love you! Thank you, my little sweetheart. Forward!  

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.

Note To Self

Every time I write for you, to you, about you, little sweetheart, I feel better. I often wake so very sad. It often takes hours for me to turn the corner on the day and get things done. But whenever I sit down and talk to you by picking up a pen or banging away at this very keyboard, remembering and calling to you, I feel better.

It's such a simple thing and I can even hear you saying "silly, of course it helps you!". I just need to remember in those darker moments, little sweetheart. To let the storm pass and to find you again. Over and over. Forever. Until That Day.

With all my love.

March 18, 2020

Little sweetheart, tonight is awful anniversary of your passing. It’s always so hard but I try my best to do the things you would tell me to. I texted your parents this morning and sent an new little flowering green plant to your mom for all three of you.

Tonight I would have usually gone to Taize to light a candle and pray for you but the sanctuary is closed because of the coronavirus, I was telling you about. What they did instead was have a “virtual” service. They’re using a video conferencing app now at the church like office workers do for meetings, so I was able to watch and listen and say a prayer for you after all.

As I said, just the other night I was looking out the window and I noticed the moonrise. It was enormous and full and when I looked it up I discovered it was the night of a supermoon, not unlike the one that rose above your folks and I when we went out in the hospital parking lot after you ascended on this very night nine years ago to the very heavens.

I went up on the roof and gazed at the moon, luminous just like you, and talked with you for quiet a while.

These are difficult days, little sweetheart but my heart is filled with love for you. And I promise to do my best, waiting patiently, working diligently until you can take me home with you again and forever.

With all my love.

The Cruelest Month

It’s March, little sweetheart. TS Eliot once called April “the cruelest month” but however mournful, even he did not know my sorrow. March is mine. March is the month you were taken from me. March is the month of the bitter anniversaries if your accident, our ten day vigil praying for your recovery, your tragic passing and soul-ripping grief that has followed me to this day.

Each day this month, little sweetheart, perhaps more than usual, perhaps more than any other, I must pray and be mindful, find ways to be kind and endeavor to busy myself with the work that remembers, honors and conjure you - The Most Beautiful Spirit, the blessing and very reason of my life.

Please be near me, won’t you, little sweetheart? Please help and guide me. And take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

Christmas Morning

Good morning, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas!

I’m kinda just taking it easy today, writing a little and recording a couple of basic tracks and thinking of earlier years when I was with you or my mom or later, with your folks.

Even though today is kinda lonely, Sylvia will be here day after tomorrow and we’ll have a little Christmas of our own, then, and the following week, head out to see your folks and have a second with them, too.

Today, I’m remembering especially our first Christmas, little sweetheart, when you gave the beautiful scarf you knitted while doing the play up in Boston and the breathtaking Christmas letter you included with it - part of which is now tattooed on my right arm.

Christmas is such a good day to remember all the things you taught me about love and all that really matters.

Merry Merry Christmas, my angel. Thinking of you with love and forever.

Floor Work

Little sweetheart, I'm kinda full force going at two projects simultaneously - both, of course, always, for you!

One is the memoir and the other is the next album.

I've notebooks everywhere - some filled ready for transcription, others mid-scrawl - and little notes scribbled on random pieces of paper strewn about the apartment. Every morning I try to organize them a bit, get them in the queue of what next to address as work goes twofold forward.

Today, while I was going for a second cup of coffee I saw and remembered a few lyric ideas I had scrawled on the back of an unopened piece of yesterday's mail. I had several pieces like it for the same song already set out last night on the desk to my left where I put my coffee cup in the morning to remind me to work on the song today. I brought the pieces in the kitchen and my music notebook and those scraps on the desk all to the floor next to my guitar pedals and grabbed a pen spreading it all out. A dedicated spot for this work!

And I suddenly thought of something I once heard Joe Strummer say about writing lyrics - "grab whatever you can, push everyone out the way and fall to floor to get it down because it only makes sense in that moment when it comes forward. You''ll lose it if you wait. Get it down, then. Now!" 

This is so perfectly true, don't you think, little sweetheart?

It's coming. It takes time for it all but it's coming. As another writer I remember says about it - "think slow, write fast."

It will be done, little sweetheart, it will be done. I know because I know you are sending it all to me. And I'm listening, my love. I promise, I promise it get it all down - for you!

With all my love.

To Be Faithful

Little sweetheart, I sat down to watch Gandhi last night and was struck by the filmmakers preface at before the movie had even truly begun. All of it is terribly resonant as I write to, of, about and for you.

It helped me, once I'd begun composing book one of the memoirs, to write down a sentiment much like this, giving myself permission to get to as much as I can, chasing down every thought and memory and recording them but not cursing myself for not gathering up everything. Indeed, allowing for further volumes so that I can do just that and not setting about the impossible task of getting everything between the pages of just one book, so that even just setting out, we've already said that nothing ends, not even these writings - we just run out of paper, to return again immediately thereafter.

The most important part, just as in the last sentence of the image below, to be faithful in spirit.

Always, little sweetheart. May I ever be faithful to your spirit, faithful to you. With all my love.

More Thinking of Boston

Working on the book just now little sweetheart, I’m having occasion, again, to recount our time together in Boston.

It was just about this time of year, too, and everything still remains so fresh in memory. How cold and crisp it was already, even before Thanksgiving. How we stopped about in the snow on the way to the theatre where you were doing Rock n Roll. Cooking for you in the little kitchen of the sweet, cozy apartment they’d put you up in for the run. Taking day trip during your time off to JFK library and along Newburgh Street and some of our epic walks circling either bank of the Charles River.

You know, my darling girl, that even though I’ve been back to Boston probably a half dozen times since then, it is always you and our adventures that I remember when I’m there. It feels sometimes as I travel about that somehow we still are there together and then you’ll soon come around a corner and join me. There’s even a street as soon as you get off the train called Summer Street. So fitting, because I know, my little sweetheart that you are everywhere and forever.

With all my love.

Sugar Fox

Little sweetheart, as I work as diligently and as best I can every day on the book, my desk is filled with open note books, scraps of paper, post-it’s, and scribbled notes reminding me of something I need to make sure to get down.

Aside from having the most unintelligible scrawl, impossible to decipher (excepting for you, so proudly an expert and discerning and reading my handwriting, the chief translator of my words to anyone listening), I don’t anyone could piece this thing together the way I have its contents laying abut everywhere. Part of my prayer every day for you, for us, is that, if possible, let me finish all I’m meant to do before I go (and gratefully join you) because no one else could make head or tail of this, I’m afraid.

One little note here, meant for inclusion in the chart about our time in Boston when you were doing the production of Rock n Roll up there, is Jack Willis overhearing you talking on the phone and explaining to someone how to spell Serafin.

I’d heard it many times but it was his inaugural one.

“Serafin”, you would say. “S’ as in ‘sugar’; ‘F’ as in fox”.

Shaking his head after you hung up, he smiled and said, “Sugar Fox. Of course. Of course…”

Damn straight, my gorgeous girl. Sugar fox, indeed. Love you forever.

On A Night Such As This

Little sweetheart, with London so in mind from both remembrances of our travels together and the current goings on there with the band, I’m reminded just now of a wonderful photo that Joy took of us your last night in Kentish Town.

We’re at The Boston Arms up near Tufnell Park and she snapped a shot just after I arrived, sliding into the booth with you and you, a bit tipsy on gin and tonics, gave me a big kiss.

What a lovely memory. What a wonderful picture. Love you forever.

Something About England...

For some reason, little sweetheart, England has been on mind of late. Maybe it’s because you and I both had such a history there - you going to grad school at Oxford and my work in the theatre in London - before our visits there together. Indeed, the last time I was there, you were at any side.

Perhaps because I’m in the midst of writing about some of that just now as I work on the first book, it’s coming to mind more and more.

I know much has changed there and it’s still almost unimaginable for me to think of going without you, but it’s all very much on my mind, somehow.

I’ll listen ever more closely, little sweetheart. Perhaps you’ll tell me why. With all my love forever.

To Be True

On my desk, little sweetheart, is an index card folded down at the base and turned vertical, so that two words I wrote there always stand at attention to remind me. It reads: Be True.

Surrounded by your things and hundreds of pictures of you, I feel comforted and protected by your love. It helps remind me that you are near. Nearer than I can imagine. And this little mantra helps too. It helps to remind me that whatever may befall me, if I just quiet myself and listen for you - my True One - and keep to path you’ve laid out for me, to stay and be true, I will find my way, every time, back to you, where I belong and long to be.

In my every thought. My every prayer. May I do just that.

With all my love forever.

My Gorgeous Girl

A blessed, wonderful dream where you and I were together once more last night, little sweetheart. Writing all I can remember this morning.

And then come across an envelope with some spare head shots of yours. Even with pictures of you surrounding me always, it took my breath away.

I remember during our trip to Ireland, when we'd already been together for nearly 3 years, watching you get something out of the trunk of the rental car, while Kris and I sat at a table in the pub waiting for lunch to arrive. You'd just ducked back out, after ordering, to get a sweater or something. I gazed out the window at you, oblivious to whatever he was saying and just blurted out, "she's so beautiful!"

Feeling a bit like that just now. Love you forever.

A Reminder

I found a note-to-self, a reminder to write about the psychic reading I had six years ago today, little sweetheart. 

It was a cold rainy day when I took the train out there. Very contemplative weather. 

There's much to say about it and I will later. But just now because it's so very much in mind I want to remember and tell you the messages that they brought me as I sat there listening quietly. 

They told me that you wanted me to know you were okay and that it didn’t hurt and that you were only terribly worried about me and just wanted me to know it was okay and how important it was to do my work, our work. And that I should know it all was only just like being on a stage where people enter and exit and that you have to wait for your cue when it’s your own turn, my turn to leave the stage, and that just like always you would be there when I did, waiting for me, as if only in a dressing room backstage, where I would join you just like always, like we had been doing all along through so many lifetimes, to do it all again together. Forever.

Forever.

An Anniversary of sorts...

Little sweetheart, as I'm working on our book, I have several notebooks going all at the same time. I'll switch from one to another as detail memories and events from different periods, working ahead in long hand as I periodically transfer long passages to type, editing and rewriting as I go.

Often little notes scrawled on index cards or postcards will fall out of one of the notebooks - some scrap of info or an idea I had wanted to get down in a hurry and save so it would inspire a passage when I got back to it later.

Yesterday, I found one of these. A pink post it that says "First Reh Jan 29th". That was to remind me of something I've already written about but that I set aside for today because today is January 29th. The note is to remind me that rehearsals for Tir na nOg began on this day in 2008.

You and I had first met, little sweetheart, about two months earlier, at the first reading of the play and then when I came back to San Francisco for a workshop of my own play, Seven Pages Unsigned, you were there in the audience. I was so surprised and delighted to see you!

Now, on this day, eleven years ago, we sat next to each other (something that I believe you yourself arranged by re-arranging the name tags around the table) and began the journey that would seal our souls together as one forever.

It's a mix of snow and rain, wintry and gray and cold outside today, little sweetheart. And as I type this and try to work myself up to attempting a run along the Hudson before the temps truly drop into something Arctic, I try to quiet myself and listen for your eternal and celestial presence.

Please be as near to me, at my very elbow, as you were eleven years ago this morning. I need you more than ever. And always. With all my love...

Solemn Vow

Little sweetheart, packed and dressed and nervously waiting to head out, I'm thinking of all we've been through. All of it. Not only but also just this year with me nearly dying and all it's taken to recover and keep recovering, all I've wanted to do and been trying to continue.

I'm so glad we were able to complete the album. The record with Sylvia is almost done, too, it'll come out in February. I made such progress on our memoir, our first book of three, in the first couple of months of the year.

The events of April and the ensuing medical issues have made it hard to get back with as much momentum as I had hoped. And we needed to work hard after all that to make sure Til Morning came out in time.

But I promise you, little sweetheart, it is very much at the forefront of my thoughts, as are you always and forever. And the first book, Summerlove, will indeed by published this coming year. It is my solemn vow, my little sweetheart.

I love you with all my heart and soul. As I often say, whether in prayer or as I did so many times when you were only getting up to get something in the next room - don't go too far away.

With all my love forever. Forever.