Tag Archives: Jane

Franz

I looked at my birthday calendar this morning and I noticed that it’s been a year since my cousin Franz died. It was actually the anniversary last week but I didn’t note it then.

I’ve been better (if you want to call it that) about anniversaries lately. I’ve made it through quite a few 14th’s of the month now without getting all knotted up about Zach. The sorrow comes at odd places and times now. Odd in the sense that they are not predictable. Sunday I was in my car on the way down to Santa Clara when I just started weeping. There was no obvious trigger; I was just missing Zach.

Today Jeremy sent me a detailed itinerary of his and Ashley’s move in June. Seeing in glorious detail their plans for finding a place to live and jobs while also being concerned about places my sister Jane’s family can take Rosalie for fun brought on the waterworks again. It’s the kind of gutsy move you don’t see often. I am so full of admiration for them.

My thinking about Franz recently has mostly been about looking forward to visiting Germany this summer. I will be paying my respects to his mother – turning 100 in August! – his brother and sister, and his grave. Two men gone too soon.

Women’s March

I don’t know what it was officially called. I heard it a bunch of times but it just didn’t stick with me. It was the afternoon one. Evidently the morning one was anti-abortion. They both started and stopped in the same places. Anyway, Rose and Jane and Julian and Julian’s girlfriend Lisa went. All the demonstrations going on this weekend around the inaugural and I’ve been in SoundBox. I’ll try to do a post about that but for now I’ll just post (lightly edited) my impressions from last night.

left home at 5:15 for a 7 pm call. Daly City BART. The train was from Millbrae and packed – I was lucky to get a spot by the door. Being at the door at Civic Center, I didn’t wait around to see how many got off, but there were lines of people waiting to get on a la 5pm on a weekday. Many people coming down the stairs and many, many people in the ‘foyer’ lined up to buy tickets. Really, folks? Did you think you’d never come back?

Up the stairs to the street, lots of people coming down, many with umbrellas as it was raining lightly. Up on the sidewalk, tho’, it was jammed. Just like the BART car shoulder to shoulder but slowly moving towards downtown. I got to the edge and went up Hyde to the other side of the library. Hardly anyone was there. A crew was taking down the sound system for a stage there. I didn’t go over.

By the time I got to the front of the library, Grove was practically deserted. I guess I had seen the tail end of the parade. It had a really good vibe tho’. I did some musing on people and their hopes and dreams and their tendency to fuck them up. [By the time I was writing this last paragraph inside at S/B, people were talking to me about work and this doesn’t seem very coherent. It’s a theme I hope to expand on someday.]

7 pm time to start work

Dad’s birthday

Dad turned 87 today. Teresa hosted a party at her house. All the Bay Area Woods were there. Mary called and sang him ‘Happy Birthday ‘ over the phone. He couldn’t hear her with the handset so Paul got the speaker phone going and that was better.

After dessert of lemon meringue pie (his request) he opened the cards from his children. All contained heartfelt personal statements of love and admiration. He had trouble reading them because they were handwritten, though. Jane was sitting next to him and helped out.  He was in good humor all evening and even made a couple of jokes but sometimes the conversation moves too fast for him and he checks out. Other times he makes self deprecating remarks that recognize his limitations.

I had tea and conversation with Tom V yesterday who I haven’t seen in nearly a year. He lost his mother in the spring of 2015 and many of his reactions to the loss were familiar to me. He’s still feeling the effects. All death is traumatic, even when one is older and has lived a long life. It just makes me treasure Dad and Mom all the more. One day they’ll be no more and all we’ll have left are memories.

good things – people mostly

This past year has been one of much sadness and tears. On top of that, I’ve never been a fan of the Christmas season. The days are shorter and the ubiquitous ‘buy’ messages everywhere are cloaked in false bonhomie. Feh.

So it was with a bit of surprise the other day when I found myself thinking of all the good things that are in my life now. Jeremy, Sarah, Ashley, Rosalie, Noah, Mom & Dad. Teresa and Jane, my two sisters who live nearby and keep checking on me. Tom, Mary and Tim, my brothers and sister who live further away but I treasure them as well. Rose, my neighbor who is also my best friend. Allyson and Dave, Noah’s Mom & Dad.

Work is going ok, too. I got through SoundBox with only a couple of glitches and the show got great reviews. There is a great group of Local 16 people that I get to work with at Davies Symphony Hall. All are competent and congenial. I hate to name names because I would leave someone out but Hal and Gus are my long-time compatriots in the Sound Department and extra special to me. JJ, the unquestioned head of Davies stagehands, always willing to share his knowledge. In management, Michele stands out among many fine people.

Of course, many of these people were in my life before Zach was killed but the experience of losing him has made that which is left more precious.  Merry Christmas!

‘Thank you for your service.’

Veteran’s Day. I’ve been out on Facebook already this morning and seen this phrase, or variations of it, quite a few times. So I’ve got something to say about that and being that this is my blog, darn it, I’m going to say it.

Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day are when this sentiment gets thrown around the most, but we see many other examples throughout the year of this. I think it was one or two Sundays ago that I noticed the NFL football games had some kind of ‘Thank you for your service’ theme. For the most part I just let it slide but today I’m going to rant about it.

What bugs me is that the implication of this phrase is that it is referring to the military performing some kind of ‘service’ that is worthy of this kind of adulation. We’ve been set up to think that this is a superior kind of service to our country. Yes, men and women in the military have sacrificed their lives and limbs in war. But we have to recognize that there are other forms of service that are just as valid. Is Jeremy performing less of a service to our country by being a firefighter and never having been in the military? Is Ashley or Jane performing less of a service to our country by teaching our children and never having been in the military? Is Teresa performing less of a service to our country by being a nurse and never having been in the military? No.

And there are many people who do time in the military who are never near the front lines and whose lives are never in any more danger than any other American. My uncle Pat was in the Army during World War II and he drove a supply truck behind the lines. My brother Tim served in the Army during the first Gulf War. He went to Iraq and was a guard at a prison compound. As far as I know, he never fired a shot in anger nor was he ever shot at by enemy troops. Tim, if I got this wrong, please tell me.

The point is that while the military is an organization designed to kill people for the state, the part that actually does the killing is relatively small. And nowadays we have soldiers sitting in air conditioned room playing video games (running drones) for their service – killing people for the state.

So I think we should talk about what service we really want to value in our country. I remember reading about the ancient Greek city states in school. Athens, where democracy reigned supreme, and warlike Sparta, where everyone was a soldier. My takeaway from that was that ultimately Sparta failed because democracy was good and war was bad. Now here in America we have a kind of democracy but we are also very war like. It pains me that we don’t value forms of service to our country that don’t involve killing people or blowing things up.

Jeremy, Ashley, Jane, Teresa, thank you for your service!

Jane’s visit

My sister Jane had been saying for some weeks that she wanted to visit Zach at my house before we all took his ashes away. I called her yesterday morning to remind her that time was getting short and she was able to stop by later in the day.

Earlier, I had offered up several options for her visit, thinking that she would want private time but in the event she and I just talked. We didn’t talk a lot about Zach per se, as one might at a wake, but more about our reactions to his death and the arc of our griefs. She cried a little but I was strangely calm. I was able to talk about how I had cried so much in the early days and then as time passed I cried less but then I felt that not crying was to somehow invalidate the grief. I’ve learned that grief has no time line nor is there any formula for it. When I’ve cried recently it has been triggered by some random thing not directly related to Zach. I told her about the Bereavement Support Group I have been going to and said that it was open to her as well if she wanted.

We talked about souls and what they might be really. What is the difference between a living person and his earthly remains, be it a body or a box full of ashes or a headstone somewhere? My contention is that the things that Zach touched and were part of his life – his clothes, his books, his computer, his phone, etc. – are just as much Zach as his ashes. His ‘soul’ is his memory within those who are still living and all of those things contribute to his memory.

Jane saw a picture I had of our beloved Uncle Bob who died in 1999. She commented that there really were very few family members who had died in her adult lifetime and she didn’t know how to react. We’ve had Aunts & Uncles die in the last 10 years ago but they were in other states and we weren’t close. None of us kids went to the funerals. Our grandparents have been dead for more than 20 years and they all lived far away. I remember thinking something similar years ago: that I’ve lived a charmed life and no one really close to me has died. It’s not really true; I’ve lost colleagues, some to age, some to suicide, some to AIDS, but no one I was really close to personally. I’ve been to some funerals now.

Here’s the picture of Uncle Bob with Teresa:

Teresa and Uncle Bob

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