Tag Archives: Zach

The Pianist

When I got divorced, I let go of many things from my married life. One of those things was having a lot of books near at hand. Moving from a house to an apartment involved a lot f downsizing and I realized that books could be had at the local library. It wasn’t the same as having them in my living room, but it was good enough.

I kept my science fiction books, my Apollo books, some baseball books and a few music books. Among my music books was a water-damaged copy of The Pianist by Wladislaw Szpilman. Some may remember this book from seeing the movie of the same name. In fact, we only got it after seeing the excellent movie.

I actually got it out before I left, but I didn’t open it until Saturday. I’m not sure why I had it in with the music books. It really has very little to do with making music. It is the story of a musician, though. A Jewish pianist, caught in Warsaw when the Germans came in 1939.

I’m including this as a Zach story because I associate this book with Zach. I don’t remember where I was when I saw the movie, or who was with me, or where we got the book, but I remember Zach telling me he had read it and at the time it surprised me. The printing is 2003 so Zach would have been a freshman or sophomore in high school. I believe he even had it in his room although I don’t remember that for sure either.

So somehow I associate it with Zach and I was thinking of him when I picked it up. He was moved enough by the story to keep it near him. Perhaps he even read it more than once. If he kept journals in those days, I haven’t seen them.

Reading it myself now, I am struck by the thought that evil is everywhere. Here in America we tend to have the belief that we are morally superior to everyone else in the world. When someone does something odious in the political world, we often brand him or her with the epithet of Hitler. I try to remember that Hitler didn’t kill all those people by himself; many people did his bidding. Szpilman’s story is told in simple, unemotional prose. The most horrific things happen. They are done by Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, even Jews.

They could be done by Americans. It could happen here.

goals

I had a session today with a ‘Life Coach’. Linda is a person I met at the Compassionate Friends meeting. She lost her 4 year old daughter 11 years ago. I had complained to her that I was often feeling directionless especially since my therapist, Dr Perry, had left the area. I’ve tried other therapists but none seem to fit as well as Dr Perry had.

Her emphasis on looking forward rather than behind seemed to me to be a good approach. Bottom line after our long talk is that I need to decide what my goals are and whether I’m willing to work to achieve them. Her role would be to help me with that work so for the time being I’m on my own.

So, what are my goals? I said I wanted to be able to spend time with my children and grandchildren – to the extent that they would have me. I mentioned playing music; I mentioned photography; I mentioned riding my bike; I mentioned travel. When it came right down to the idea of working towards those ‘goals’, I foundered. What does that mean exactly? When I have the day off and nothing scheduled, why do I (often) do none of those things?

I told her that in my non-work life, I’ve always followed the path that interested me at the moment without regard to longer-term ‘goals’. That approach led to a bad marriage but also three fine children. How should my goals have been different? How could I, at age 25, made a life goal with any reasonable expectation of it coming to pass? The idea of doing that now is a big adjustment. I told her Zach had goals, lots of them, and now they’re ashes.

I tried to get her to give me an example of what she meant by ‘working’ on my goals but she dodged. She had already told me that until I was willing to work on my goals there was nothing she could help me with. That stung a little.

I promised her I would think seriously about goals and my relationship to them and we will talk again in a couple of months. I set up a new category here so I hope to revisit this subject often.

Zach memorial fund

I checked around and I was surprised to find that I hadn’t mentioned this fund here before. I guess it was kind of passé by the time I started writing here.

In the larger sense, this all begs the question of memorials to Zach. This blog is a memorial. His Hobbes in my bedroom is a memorial. Etc.

Anyway, I happened to think of this fund the other day and today I wrote a check to it. I never saw any accounting of the donations so I hope it’s all legit. Actually, YMCA Storer Camps is legit and so are the people running it so I have no real worries.

The fund honors not only Zach but also his grandfather Clark. It provides money for kids to go to camp (‘camperships’) who otherwise couldn’t afford it. Storer, and Clark Ewing, were huge reasons why Zach was the great person he was.

So if you’re looking for a charity to send money to, consider this one.

Make out checks to: YMCA Storer Camps. Send to Z. Clark/Clark E. Campership Fund, c/o Director Becky Spencer, YMCA Storer Camps, 6941 Stony Lake Road, Jackson, MI 49201

deaths of children

I spend my Internet time on FaceBook, like everyone else. Just kidding. After I spent about three months last year avoiding it entirely, I came around to its usefulness. I had to prune mercilessly, though. Many people who I liked in person ended up being ‘unfollowed’ after too many food pictures, cat videos and/or political rants. Ashley and her pictures and posts of Rosalie were the most important factor in resuming. Thank you, Ashley! So I have ended up checking it almost every day but the family-to-post ratio is much higher and I can usually get through new posts in fifteen minutes.

That was all later in the year, though. The first three months after Zach’s death it was invaluable. I took great comfort in the many comments of support at the time.

I like to play guitar, so a guitar site is important. I’ve spent time on TalkBass (oddly, not about guitar at all, but bass) and recently on JazzGuitar, but my favorite is still TDPRI, the Telecaster forum. The Telecaster is a type of guitar, for those who don’t know, but the best discussions take place in the catch-all sub forum called The Bad Dog Cafe.

My other regular stop, especially now during the baseball season, is McCovey Chronicles, where Grant Brisbee is the best baseball writer of his generation. I believe Jeremy, who reads a much more varied diet of baseball writing, will agree with me. The crowd of regular commenters are mostly far younger than me and I have fun watching them tease each other and talk about things I don’t understand. When I started hanging around McCovey Chronicles in 2009, there was a commenter named Alex_Lewis who had a certain style and fostered a good repartee with other regulars.

One day there was a post by another regular that went in a completely different direction. Gallo del Cielo was another username that I had also become familiar with. It turned out – follow the link for the details – that he was Alex Lewis’ father and that Alex had died the night before in a sudden, tragic and senseless accident. Alex was 27.

Gallo still posts regularly on MCC with an inimitable style. Tonight he quietly noted that this day, June 5, was the date, and the day of the week even, that Alex had died 5 years ago. While I hadn’t forgotten Alex’s death, the details had receded in my memory. Surely not for Gallo.

Zach was not a contributor to MCC, nor was he a regular reader but occasionally I would send him a link to a particularly funny or trenchant post. He was of course a Giants fan. We had many good conversations started by MCC.

I mention TDPRI in this context because I have posted there a fair amount, sometimes referring to Zach’s death. In those conversations I have now ‘met’ three other men who have lost children as I have. Tomorrow night I will be going to my monthly meeting of The Compassionate Friends, which is devoted to parents who have had children die before them. We’re in an exclusive group, me and Gallo and Toto’s Dad and the others. One that all of us, I’m sure, would give anything to not be members of.

As a coda, I offer this tribute to Alex by Grant Brisbee: In Memory of Alex Lewis. The comments that follow it are filled with further tributes to the kind of man he was. They remind me of some of the things that were said about Zach that Friday in Baton Rouge and that Sunday in Jackson and that Saturday in San Francisco. Oh, my Z.

return to Eagle Creek Falls

It wasn’t as transcendent as I’d hope it would be. I left Pacifica last night around 7 so I missed the bulk of the traffic. Still, it was a nearly 4 hour slog to the Lake. I had reserved a room at a funky motel just south of the Y.

I wanted to get up for the dawn so I didn’t take a sleeping pill. I finally got to sleep sometime after midnight. The second time I woke up it was almost 4:30 so I went ahead and got up, slugged down a caffeine pill and ate a Clif bar. I was almost out of gas, so I took care of that first, then headed out to Eagle Creek Falls.

As I drove out Highway 89 from the Y, past Camp Richardson, I remembered last July, going through that same stretch of road and seeing the sun lighting up the peaks above me. This time the sky was light but the sun was still below the peaks’ horizon.

At the falls, there were no hooligans, just 4 or 5 photographers with their cameras preset on tripods, waiting for dawn. As I expected, the creek was a mighty torrent. I went to the spot where I had been unable to get all of Zach’s tiny rocks to go over the edge. The water was churning and deep. There was no way to see below the surface. I feel sure that the water has scoured every bit of Zach over the edge and towards the lake.

As the moment of dawn approached, I watched the bright spot across the lake carefully. I had gotten a picture last year of the moment of first light. Today I did the same but the way the sun seemed to leap up from the mountain peaks seemed different. From the moment of the first edge showing to the full fiery ball in the sky seemed only seconds.

After a few minutes there, I headed across the road and up the trail. The falls up there where the bridge is has a post calling is ‘Eagle Falls’. I don’t know what that makes the falls below the road. Anyway, it was above the falls, at a spot labeled ‘Vista’ that I was most interested in. Ashley and Jeremy had brought saplings last year and planted them up there and I wanted to see if they survived.

Sadly, they did not. Or if they did, they are in a completely different spot. I took a lot of pictures of the area and will ask them if they remember exactly where they planted the saplings.

At first it made me sad that there were no special trees for Zach but after a while I remembered what I had said many times last spring. The whole of Lake Tahoe is where we will remember Zach’s final resting place. It was incredibly beautiful again this morning. Here’s the top of the falls a bit later in the morning.

Shannon Taylor speaks

Look what I started. I present here the sworn statement of Shannon Taylor, aged 25 years. Ms Taylor was the passenger in the Nissan pickup truck that killed Zach.

Driving up Lee Drive white truck on right side of truck would not stop from merging in the lane truck is extremely close. Bikers on side of road and crossed the street and was hit. The white truck speed extremly fast on side.

We were first at the red light in front. We went pass as the light turned green white truck speeding in right lane and pass the merge. This was very scary to have a person doing this even pass merge. We see some people one side and the person crosses

Zach and Sarah

I’ve made much of the special relationship between Zach and Jeremy. His relationship with Sarah was no less special. It was strained in recent years because of their divergent opinions on what kind of relationship they each should have with their mother but the deep love never went away.

Even at an early age, Sarah showed that she had a talent for leadership. I remember noting once that when she got Jeremy to try cutting her hair it was Jeremy who had to shoulder the blame. He was, after all, older and should have known better. He might have been 5 and she was 3.

With Zach it was more of a traditional older/younger relationship. Sarah was brimming with ideas and Zach was happy to be included in the fun. Sometimes it was with one or more of Sarah’s friends but most often it was just the two of them doing drawings, writing plays, or goofing around with the cassette recorder.

Here are a few fun pix from the archives:

In 2014, Zach made what was to be his last trip to California. I don’t remember for sure, but I think both he and Sarah stayed at my apartment for a couple of days. One morning they sat at the breakfast table for a couple of hours and just talked quietly. I stayed out of the way but I did take this one picture.

quotes

Zach did a lot of reading. When he read something that he thought was worthwhile, he made a note of the quote. A year ago I could have told you where his quote files were but now I’d have to look around a bit.

I do have a sheet of paper on my wall with some quotes on it. I don’t remember how it came to be printed. Was it in his effects or did I find it in a file and print it here? It doesn’t have his name on it but I know it came from him. In front of the paper, tacked on the wall, are two photos, taken on the same day. Here is one:

To see the other one you’ll have to go here.

Anyway, here are the quotes. Only one is attributed.

A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
— Goethe

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television and let its pandering idiocy liquify our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery – it recharges by running . . . A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

diaries

At the risk of incurring Sarah’s wrath, I’m going to confess I saw some of her diaries yesterday. Honestly, I didn’t look at them except to determine what they were. I was transferring some of her things stored at my apartment from old boxes into a nicer plastic tub.

The reason this is blog-worthy is that it struck me that all of my kids are writers and that makes me happy. On my front page I make reference to Zach’s prodigious writing being an inspiration. Now I realize that Sarah has written a lot as well. I haven’t seen anything of Jeremy’s writing but I know he’s done a lot.

Last year Mom brought out – I don’t remember why – a diary that my grandfather had written in 1915 of a train trip he took from Denver to southern California. Very little philosophizing, just the gritty details of travel. Great stuff!

It’s an arguable point as to whether pencil or pen on paper has more value than these electronic squiggles. I’m the first to agree that handling the actual paper that my grandfather held had value more than the words themselves. Paper can be free form in a way that is more difficult in e-writing.

It’s all valuable. I treasure those glimpses of my ancestors as I hope my descendants will enjoy a look into my mind, whether it’s this blog or some moldy spiral notebooks. Write on!

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