Cathy and Cayucos

I have often thought that in the spring, the rolling, green hills of Cayucos on the central coast of California look a lot like Ireland.  The sweeping landscape creates a beautiful portrait of land, sea, and sky - sometimes crystal blue with billowy white clouds and at other times shrouded in fog.
Whatever the weather, my heart always becomes lighter as I round the bend and come into the little town of dreams come true.
The luck 'o the Irish fills the town and has been a welcomed getaway for me for years.

I first began going to Cayucos in my grief over the death of my brother.
Its rugged, unspoiled, wide sandy beach provided a meditative escape from the ache of sibling-loss.  But more than the place, it has been the people -
my beloved friend, Mugs and her family
 whose hospitality and warmth have provided me shelter from the storms of life.
With the proverbial twinkle, Mugs' Irish eyes ever smiling
her sister, Cathy's effervescent joy
contagious.
Cathy and Cayucos. The stuff dreams are made of.

 But now, the clouds hang heavy over Cayucos as the dream dissolves into impending loss.
 Cancer the thief of joy.
And Mugs, courageously stands at the bedside, ever the nurse, the saint, the sage, tending to her big sister, Cathy, whose diagnosis is grave.

 Irish eyes now filled with sorrow and tears.

An even set, six sisters prepare for the uneven journey of loss and grief.
Too odd to imagine.

From a distance, I think of them.
A close-knit clan of nine
 these six sisters
and their three brothers
 all of whom I've loved from my designated spot as "like one of the family."
 I feel a deep sadness from afar as I think of the happiness and joy that cancer is stealing from their inner-circle around whose perimeter I've danced my entire life.

In solidarity, I weep for my lost sister.

With breaths and days numbered, I can only imagine the desperate love that grips them and the loyalty that has always bonded them.

Cayucos is heaven on earth.

Do I find some solace knowing Cathy has lived in heaven these past few years?  

Yes.

No. 

I am not ready for this farewell.

Too brief a stay.

I think of their angel-mother - whose own death was so peaceful at eighty,
who must now labor to bring her first-born back into her arms.

Perhaps their angel- mother will provide the promise of an eternal Irish wake in heaven -
complete with a sunset over a glistening ocean and a glass filled to the brim with central coast wine.

 Cathy's Irish eyes might once again laugh with her father who suffered his own cancerous end.
Mother, Father, Daughter
as in the beginning,
the first of nine
 a trio once more.

Leaving behind her own husband, children, and grandchildren
with her first granddaughter on the way,
Cathy will return to the baby she lost so many years ago.
It will be his turn for his mother's love.

With the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing...

But right now in Cayucos,
these Irish hearts are broken
as this song of farewell is sung.

May the road rise to meet you, Cathy.
May the wind be always at your back.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Sister, thank you.

(Dedicated to my beloved Shea family)

Amour Up Close and Personal

I recently saw the film, Amour directed by Michael Haneke. This exquisitely crafted, unsentimental, and honest look at caregiving and the end of life made me nod my head more than it made me wipe a tear. In fact, I didn't shed one.  I found myself more often thinking, "Yes, that's right. That's the way it is." I would upon occasion grimace at a scene remembering my own experience as a caregiver. The story of Amour is direct and accurate. Hearing the character Anne's cry from the shower "hurts" made me shudder recalling standing outside of my mother's door hearing her cry out "cold"  as the nurse struggled with nozzle in hand.  Watching the nurse give the character Georges, instructions on turning and sheet pulling brought me back to my brother's bedside as he lay helpless, dependent on the kindness of strangers and the love of family.
The serious and at times empty look in the  husband's eyes - whose days had become about diapers and feedings - eyes behind which conflicted, unimaginable thoughts dwell in hopeless resignation.  "Yes," I nodded. Those were my eyes. My thoughts.

The pacing of the spoon to the mouth. The slow, labored swallow. The boredom of the fixation on how many spoonfuls went down. The fumbled aim. The tight lips refusing another bite. The impatient jamming of just one more. "Yes," I nodded. I, too, pushed the spoon just that way and felt the frustration of the turned head and the terror of the anger that bubbled up within me.   Complete control and complete lack of control collide in those tiny moments bringing life into focus in a frame so small it is no wonder it was so readily captured in the film, Amour.  At the bedside, life becomes a series of close ups.

The tenderness, the humility, the dependence, the humanity, the exhaustion, the struggle - it is all there to see - raw and true through the camera's lens and in the hands of a masterful, courageous storyteller.
The bedside is its own world.  It can be a lonely place.

 Even the cruelty of indifference and the insensitivity of a callous caregiver is captured. I recalled my own vigilance and authority as I monitored the actions of hired help.  The bed must be supervised, dignity protected, and personhood preserved no matter how diminished it may appear. Caring for the dying is not a job.  It is a calling.  And not all are called to do the job.

Upon occasion, the window opens allowing mystery and mysticism to bring a renewed sense of awe when the meaning of life and the journey to death all seem sacred  and where birds lead the way to a crematorium or bring a message of comfort. Yes, that too, I experienced. Again, I nodded.  This is a film for anyone who has been there.  This is a film that will open the eyes of anyone who hasn't.
It is not a good time.
It is a good film.

 I emerged from the theatre, dry eyed, somber, and grateful.  While the bedside has brought me to my knees in anguish it has also taught me the greatest lessons in life.  We don't talk about it over dinner or polite conversation but my experience with death has made me the person I am today.  To understand me is to understand that I have pulled the dentures out of my mother's mouth to brush them and have wiped my brother's bottom and held both of their hands as they drew their last breath.  This is not a badge of honor. This is life in close up.  I am grateful to have been able to identify with this film so personally. It reminded me of where I have been. It reminded me that we are much stronger than we ever imagine ourselves to be.  It reminded me of the hospice workers who face this story every day.
It reminded me that at the end of life, compassion, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, patience, humility, and gratitude are essential compass points.

 But the one true guide is amour.

Mother's Birthday

Mother would have been ninety-five yesterday. The last rose of summer,  she died on the first day of spring. The memory of  her tiny, frail, withered end looms large.  She wore out at ninety.  All that fire doused by age, pills, and dementia, Mother's passing came in time.  A full life - her story is one of survival and fierceness in the face of some of life's greatest tragedies. Her last chapter was difficult for both of us but looking back five years, I now see that it was full of grace.  Her death was relatively peaceful - a liberation for both mother and daughter.
I was lucky to have such a mother.  It is her strength that I look to now. Her ability to fight. Her optimism. Her practical nature formed out of necessity.  Mother was ready for anything and could handle everything.

My father showed up in a dream I had the other night.  He seemed so distant. A long-ago memory of a figure from my childhood, he seemed for the first time in my life, insignificant. I've lived more than thirty  years of my life without him.  Life's real challenges started after his death so it is Mother whom I look to now as the model for living.  Self reliance is something I am only now learning.

Work has always been at the center of my life.  As a child, it was my parent's work in their business that was the dinner table talk. Work and home were intertwined.  My father sitting up late at night hunched over papers, writing furiously in his large scrawl, taught me sales.  My mother, up every morning to go into the office, taught me a work ethic and never to leave my desk messy at the end of the day.

Perspective is everything.

Thank God for my work.

Right now, my work is home.  It is my salvation.  It gives me purpose and meaning.  It gives me security.

And if work is home then I know I will always have a place to live.

Mother worked all her life.  Even after there was no office to go to,  she worked at being Ga Ga.  She was in the parking lot of my children's school waiting to drive them home every single day.

To the day she died, she worked at being my Mother.  "Do  you need anything?" she would ask from her wheel chair clutching an empty purse stuffed with Kleenex. "Do you need money?" she would ask.  "There's nothing we can't handle," she would say while pointing her arthritic finger at me.

Right. That's right.

Her fierce, fighting spirit burns within me.  Yes.  There's nothing we can't handle.

Thanks, Mom.  Happy Birthday.

Pink Flamingo Summer

My lack of roots this summer has had me less balanced than the one legged stance of the pink flamingos in my flower bed. I did not put them there. Someone else did. Their presence in my yard makes me feel like a stranger in my own home.
 I left them there to help me detach.

 I am as out of control as  the croquet balls batted around by the wacky Queen in Alice in Wonderland.  She used  pink flamingo mallets as I recall.
 Everything is topsy turvy.
 We are playing by someone else's rules.
There is  no point in trying to figure it out.  

I look down the street like I've done every day for five years
but Savona Walk doesn't look the same to me.
 Maybe it's because I'm preparing to have to let it go.
Maybe it's because there is such sadness at the other end of it.

Our time on Savona has been bookended by grief.
In between there was  laughter and fun.
Life
       in paradise.

But

When it slips from your grasp -
your home
          your dream
                         your friend

you realize (again)
            nothing lasts.

And so what does it matter?
Strangers stay in your home.
You move to a one bedroom apartment and pretend it's a boat.

And  Pink Flamingos appear in your yard.

On Being Useful

Mother took a nap almost every afternoon on the couch in our living room.  Wearing a snap-front, cotton, permanent press house coat, her twisted, arthritic feet crossed at the ankle, she lay, her hand at her neck, her toes wiggling slowly in rhythm to the tugging of the  loose skin under her chin.  Toes so crippled looking and skin so dry it was hard to imagine how once they danced in heels, her little foot, kicking up, proudly showing off the "Reid legs" - catching my father's eye.

 Peering through the screen door, into the living room, I would see her there, a certainty of my life.   The backyard pool, where we all learned to swim, glimmering in the background through sliding glass doors.   It was a neighborhood where people  grew up and didn't move far. At least I didn't. For long.
I stayed close to Mother.  Two blocks to be exact. Home was a blend of  the street of my childhood - Resh and the street of my children's childhood -  Pine.

Whenever I approached the house, I was sure to find Mother  - reclining on the couch, on a lounge chair, on her bed, a paperback in her hands. The TV Guide and her Beagle by her side. Sometimes the TV blared. Especially as she got older and her hearing began to go. The radio in the kitchen blasted news of traffic jams and pileups on freeways nowhere near us  - but she never failed to report them.  Ever vigilant. Ever watchful of potential threats - invasions - the weather-  a full tank of gas and a full pantry her defense against impending doom.

She kept herself useful to the end even when, truth be known, her usefulness had run its course.  In her mind, even after dementia set in, four words never escaped her vocabulary - "do you need anything?"

A mother's usefulness is on my mind right now.

My mother remained useful because I allowed her to be.  I allowed her to continue mothering me even when I felt like I was being suffocated by her. Yet, Mother also had a way of keeping her distance.  She was not an interfering mother.  She was helpful.  Sometimes too helpful - evidenced by a few shrunken sweaters. But there was overall a bond so intense and so practical that for the most part, it worked. For both of us.

 Even at the bitter end, after four painfully difficult years of caregiving, it worked.  I was able to be there in the end. No guilt. No regrets.
Just a chapter I'd prefer not to have lived. Cutting pills, brushing dentures, trips to ER, radiation for a skin cancer overtaking her upper lip, battles over the caregivers - it was a nasty time. My lower back perpetually out from hoisting the wheel chair in and out of the trunk and jutting my hip a certain way to lift her into the car. I have seen old age up close. I know what it looks like. What it smells like.  What if feels like.  I have walked the halls of an Alzheimer's facility, shoveled food into my mother's mouth, and held her hand, silently looking into her eyes for hours on end. There were days I was at the breaking point. A crazy woman. Me.  Not her.  But her too. A crazy combination. She didn't like it any more than I did.

And when it was over - it was over.  We were both released from the bondage of those terrible days.

My father always said one of his greatest fears was that he would be a burden for his children.  He dropped dead long before he needed to worry about that.  Was Mother a burden? I would be less than honest if I said no.  Mother was a heavy load during those years. Ninety is a long life. But to the end, she thought herself useful.  And indeed she was.  Her old age taught me an important lesson.

 The lesson I learned is that usefulness, real or imagined,  is the key to combatting the inevitable decline.

Mother needed me to need her.
I believe all mothers need to be needed to one degree or another.

A mother's usefulness does not necessarily translate into washing dishes and doing laundry as it did for my mother.

Sometimes, the most useful thing a mother can do - is let go.
Circumstances dictate choices.
They certainly did in my case.
 I chose to stay close to my mother because our lives and losses made it nearly impossible not to.

But the lesson I learned is that a mother must be willing to release her children to their own destiny.
And her children must be willing to go.

Perhaps this lesson is one I was compelled to pass on to my children so not to perpetuate the legacy of a suffocating mother.  I have been forced to practice what I preach. Both of my children have chosen to venture across the country in search of their destinies.

And as I remain behind it is up to me to find new ways of being useful. That is my job. Not theirs.

Job Well Done

It was 5:30 p.m. today during my rehearsal for The Diary of Anne Frank, that my stage manager announced, "Steve Jobs died today."
My reaction startled me. "What?" I barked. Then, to my complete surprise, I started to cry. There, in the middle of my rehearsal, with kids who never knew a world before Apple, never listened to music on anything but an iPod, who take smart phones for granted - I cried.

"Steve Jobs changed the world," I choked. "How many of you have iPhones? An Apple computer? An iPod?" They all raised their phones and iPods in the air. "Steve Jobs' creative genius made as much difference as Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. Steve Jobs revolutionized how we communicate. Kids, we have all been witnesses to history."

I cried some more. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm just so moved that this man has touched us all with his creativity."

My students then immediately swarmed me with a group hug. And then, we said a prayer. "May he rest in peace," I said.

What in the world happened to me?

I mourn Steve Jobs. I mourn our lost future. But more than anything, I am grateful.
I was late to come to Apple - but Gillian was such a huge fan, she converted me into an Apple person. I am writing this blog on my MacBook. I love my Apple. Love it. Apple changed my life. Maybe that's why I feel Steve Jobs' death as if he was someone I knew personally. He impacted my life in a very personal way.

As I stood with my students in the middle of my rehearsal, Steve Jobs' death at fifty-six somehow made me face my own mortality. There in the midst of youth, I paused to consider that a life of such impact had come to an end. I felt sad for all of us. What more might he have invented had he lived? On the other hand, one could argue that he did more than his share with is short life.

I had never heard his speech to the Stanford University graduates. But hearing his prophetic and profound words, made me realize once again that we must live our lives every day as if it was our last.

I am in awe that I have lived in the same time as Steve Jobs. And I am sorry that his time has come to an end. "Your time is limited, so don't get caught living someone else's life, " he said to the Stanford Graduates of 2005.

Those are words I will try to live by.

March Madness

The rain had stopped and the palm trees swayed against the bright, four o'clock day- light savings March sky. The combination of sky, palm tree, and depression weighed heavily on me. The brightness of the afternoon sky cast a shadow of sadness across everything. I watched the palm trees bend in the wind and thought," I hate palm trees." There is something so removed about them - I felt mocked by their dance. Towering above me against that bright sky, the gloom engulfed me.
I didn't know why. Lack of sleep? Exhaustion? Migraine medication hang over? Lent?

This month, four years ago, I waited for my mother to be cremated on a day much like this one. On that day, I wanted a cave not an expansive sky.
She died on the first day of spring.
Five years before, my friend Ellen's fifteen-year-old son, Ian, was hit by a car. He died on St. Patrick's Day. Corned Beef and Cabbage has never tasted the same.

This year, a tsunami hit Japan leaving a landscape of loss. One story I read about in the paper, told of two parents who returned to the flattened remains of the school where over one hundred children were swept away as they followed earthquake preparedness procedures, standing on the athletic field for forty-five minutes until the giant wall of water washed over them. The parents returned to search for the bodies of their two children. When they found them, they wrapped them in blankets and put them into the back of their car.

The playwright, Lanford Wilson died this month. I never knew him. But I knew his work. I read his plays, performed in The Rimers of Eldridge in college, and directed The Fifth of July. Wilson founded Circle Rep and mined the depths of human relationship through a style of writing that is often compared to Chekhov's. He is now silenced and what remains is a body of work that will likely be rediscovered, re-appreciated, and revived. Because he's dead. I wish I'd met him.

Last night when I returned home, my son's car was parked out front of our house. My heart leaped when I saw it. This month, just before Mardi Gras, he moved out. This time, the emptiness of the house felt more permanent.
I dashed inside, called out, but got no response. I fixed dinner, and in the back of my mind, waited for him to come through the front door. He never did. He drove off after having dinner at a local restaurant without stopping in to say hello.
I was caught off guard by this - my gloom heavier than it had been in the afternoon as I'd cursed the palm trees. I felt discarded and a little like a fool. I'd waited for him. Anticipated seeing him. My heart was ready for him. But he didn't come.

When I realized what had happened, I flew into a fury - the depression erupting like Vesuvius into rage. I fired off a text message ending with a half dozen question marks. Why??????? Why would you not stop in?????? Why????? I sobbed my eyes out alternating between hurt and anger. The lyrics from a song in the show I am currently directing taunted me. "Like an arc on uncharted seas, our lives will be tossed. And the deeper is your love for them, the crueler is the cost. The hardest part of love, is the letting go."

Don't need so much. Don't want so much. Don't cling so much. Don't love so much. Let go.
But the tears kept coming.
Do not discard me. I am your mother, I thought. You are my son. You are my son. You are my son. I cannot bear to be hurt by you.
And then I thought of my mother, who lost two of her sons.
And I though of my friend Ellen, who lost her only son.
And I thought of those parents in Japan, wrapping their children in blankets and loading them into the backseat of their car like cargo.

I cannot bear the grief.

The text message came back - it had been a thoughtless misstep. "I'm sorry" he wrote, "I'm really sorry" - the urgency of his regret palpable even through the cell phone. I knew he was.

Our emotions get all jumbled up sometimes. None of this is connected and yet it is all connected.

I still feel flat - still feel depressed. Likely a result of the adrenaline surge that I've endured the past few weeks working to get this show up. I'm glad I go to New York next week to see my daughter. I need to see her. I need a change of pace. I need some solitude. I need the anonymity of the city. I need to mother.

I need it to be April.

I've Got a lot of Livin' to Do

There's music to play,
Places to go, people to see!
Everything for you and me!
Oh, Life's a ball
if only you know it
And it's all just waiting for you
You're alive,
So come on and show it
We got a lot of livin'
Such a lot of livin'
Got a lot of livin' to do!

From Bye Bye Birdie

Last night, I sat in Disney Hall, and watched and listened to Michael Feinstein perform songs from The Great American Songbook. When he sang this song, I found myself moved and energized. An unlikely source of inspiration - and yet the lyrics hit me right in the gut.
I like it when clarity strikes. But when it comes whirling at you from the likes of a charismatic, piano playing crooner, it's simply thrilling. Michael Feinstein's enthusiasm is contagious. I might just as well have been at a tent revival meeting as Disney Hall.

As I sat in Michael Fenstein's audience, I was grateful that I knew the lyrics to most of the songs he sang. I knew the composers. I shared his passion for the music and appreciated his style. He brings together many of the elements of my life.

It seemed that growing up, I lived straddling generations - my parents were of the generation that lived through the depression and WWII. I came of age in the 70's. They were living the quintessential American Dream. They came from humble roots in Kentucky and Ohio and built their lives, their business, and their family on optimism and hard work. The songs that now are billed as The Great American Songbook provided the score for my parent's lives. And mine. While my friends listened to rock and roll, I listened to Frank Sinatra and musical theatre. The contrast between the music of my generation and my parent's separated me from my peers. I was older than my years because of the music I listened to. I was never completely sure in what world I belonged.

I belonged in the audience last night at Disney Hall. It brings me comfort to know that Michael Feinstein straddles those worlds. Somehow, I understand myself better watching him perform. I grew up around piano bars. My parents danced to those romantic melodies and said things like "They're playing our song."
My father had me singing Begin the Beguine, Summertime, and How are Things in Glocca Mora before I ever even heard of the Rolling Stones.

Maybe one of the reasons, A lot of Livin' to Do struck me last night is because it straddles those worlds too. Birdie was the first "rock and roll" Broadway musical. Tame as it may be, the very story line confronts the clash of generations through music. That song, coming out of Michael Feinstein brought it all home to me.

I'm finally old enough to be singing those songs.

Thirty years have passed since grief first came to reside in my heart. I was twenty-two. As I approach my fifty-second birthday, I've decided to adopt "A lot of Livin' to Do" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie, as my theme song for the next thirty (or for however many years I have left.)

"Life's a ball if only you know it...."

If only you know it....
A good reminder to "show up" to your life.

I am keenly aware of the passage of time. Every day I look in the mirror and see my hair graying more and more. My upper arms are starting to remind me of my mother's.

There are things I want to do. Places to go. People to see.
Just like the lyrics say.

You're alive so come on and show it. We've got a lot of livin' to do.

Musical Notes

I pull the red scrap book from the shelf in the garage. The silver fish that have made it their home scatter. I open the yellowed pages. There, tucked into programs, flyers, rehearsal schedules, dried flowers, and telegrams are the little cards that come in floral bouquets scrawled with pre-show messages in familiar handwriting.

I turn the pages. There - written in large, bold handwriting, are instructions from my father turned drama coach: Amy! Discipline!!! (underlined three times) and the schedule of our practices for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, thirty-five years ago.

Amy Darling We love you reads one in my mother's hand.
With you on every word and note tonight reads another.

But the one I seek is deeper into the pages.

To Amy who will make them forget Bernhardt, Duse, and Modjeska - Love, Bob. I was eleven.

Clever.

Yesterday would have been my brother's 70th birthday. I was prompted to dig in my garage to find some remembrance of him from my early days on the stage because I was imagining the card he would have written this month to his eldest granddaughter, Hannah who stars in her first musical as Anna in The King & I. I remembered that card and hoped it could somehow be re-cycled. It is, however, glued tight onto the page.
But it won't stop me from re-cycling the message.

My brother was always in my audience. And he will be in Hannah's. I will look up to the stage and see her through his eyes just as he watched me when I was her age.

As I turned the pages of my tattered scrapbook, memories of my family came flooding back to me. My brother's wit and keen insight. My father's direction. My mother's support. We may not have been the Barrymores but the theatre pulsed through our veins.

I need only open my scrap books for evidence of why I became a drama teacher.

Greater, still, to find evidence of a happy life.

Ode to Ambra

Her name is musical
Her laugh is melodic
Her life is song

From beneath the stage
she emerges
this goddess of the night
holding a cup of coffee
poured from her thermos - a constant companion
clip board in hand
pins, labels, and tags
and she, herself, the cushion
next to me
in the darkness
with eyes to see
what needs fixing.

With big, broad strokes
she writes the words of the wardrobe world
hem
spats
vest
fedora
belt
sash
cravat

OK she will say
and return to her labor
buttons, elastic, velcro, and lace
cut from the same cloth as her mother
generations of generosity
the hum of her sewing machine late into the night

Schlepping loads of costumes
Hauling mounds of laundry
Serving
always
Serving
without complaint
this good woman of the theatre
whose hands have
pulled
tugged
tagged
tied
till the job is done
ready for tomorrow's run.

Patient saint of the pit
this leading lady
has no understudy.

For Ambra
the show must go on.

Labor

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.

I am thinking about how long they go on
without
their men.

The old women
who once wore heels.
Glamorous
with cocktails and the occasional cigarette
who remember
for more years
than they can remember
what it was like
back then.

And their men
who escaped
the frailty
of old age
who live on
youthful and vigorous
as the day they dropped.
I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
And the love affair that lasts well beyond till death do you part.

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
How their minds go.
And their looks.
And their heels.
And their control.

And how the daughters
are there when the morphine drip
starts
and the breath slows
and the hand grows cold
and the head falls to the side.

How the daughters
usher them out
hold the memory
preserve the dignity
honor the legacy
remember the love affair
tell the story.

Daddy

On this hot August night
as I walked along the moonlit canals of Naples
I remembered
for the first time today
that Monday morning in August
twenty-nine years ago
when I walked down the hallway of my home in Anaheim
to hushed voices
announcing
the end of my childhood.
8-17-1981.

Visible in the World

Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

My blogging has taken a hiatus lately, bowing to the powers of the muse. All of my creative energies of late have been channeled into my playwriting. This past week, I spent hours in solitude as I descended into memory and surrendered to the all consuming story that has been my artistic companion for over fifteen years.

How many ways are there to tell a story? If the past two weeks are any indication, I have found no fewer than six.

Six attempts at an opening of a story I want to get right.

A story that has moved from scrawling, raw journal entries, to memoir, to the form I know best. Drama.

Why it has taken me so long to get here is either a question for my therapist - or an admission that, as the poet, David Whyte says, is rooted in a writer's most terrifying question "what if I am not equal to the job?"

What if I can't do it? Then who would I be for having spent fifteen years wrestling with the story that has come to define me? At least in my own mind. This interior world, the carving out of who I am, is so closely connected to the process of writing this story that I stand now on the precipice of my very being. David Whyte describes this as making ourselves visible in the world.

For anyone who knows me, the notion that I am only now making myself visible in the world might come as a surprise. But that is what this feels like. It is a process of getting to the essence of who I am.

That I lived the story I am forging into art is fact. Indisputable.
Why I have had the need to transform it into anything, is mystery.

Over the past few weeks, I've come to ask myself if I haven't in some way been hiding behind this story. That by never finishing it, I have been able to hold on to something certain. In some ways, my grieving has been something to cling to maybe as security, and maybe as shield against the terrifying unknown. Maybe.

Or it could be as simple as this.
David Whyte, says in his poem, Coleman's Bed

Stay in this place until the current of the story is strong enough to float you out.

I've been in this place for over fifteen years. An alchemy of ideas deep within the realm of my imagination -

I come again, my brother, to find you.
I seek again to know you
I rise to the task of telling you.
My brother
My muse
whose life was silenced in a purple haze
like a siren call
urging me on
pushing me forward
to sing you

Maybe now the current really is strong enough.
Or maybe, I am.
But I want to get it right.

Because, brother, I love you.

Flashback

There they were - like old friends. There I was, sitting on the bed just like I'd done twenty years ago, watching a story unfold on television that eerily paralleled our own on Thirtysomething. Only this time, I knew the ending.

There were Michael and Elliot, struggling entrepreneurial partners in an advertising business facing the hard, cold realities of having to make payroll, pay the mortgage, make the lease on their office space, and generate sales in an unfriendly business climate. There they were, hitting up the bank for a loan. There they were, swallowing hard, stricken looks on their faces, as they announced lay offs to their employees. There they were, ashamed, swallowing their pride, facing financial failure as they desperately looked for a way out that included potential deals with a competitor.

I wanted to reach out to them through the television and tell them, "I know this feels like the end of the world." It did to us too.
They looked so young. They were. So were we. In en effort to buoy our spirits, friends would remind us of that - "You're young. You will rebound from this."

We did. Absolutely we did. "So," I thought, "will Michael and Elliot. They just don't know it yet."

But it still felt like the end of the world.

Money hell is one of the worst because we live in a world of dollars and cents. There is little mercy when you can't pay the mortgage. I stopped answering the phone. The mail made my stomach churn and my palms sweat. I let it pile up. Unopened.

There are few life boats for financial disasters. When the ship begins to sink, it's every man for himself. Predators await with promises of rescue. We bought a car that ended up costing us three times its value because of the high interest payments offered to high credit risk people like us.

There is the occasional helping hand to take the pressure off. A payment here. A debt forgiven there. An anonymous envelope with a hundred dollar bill in it to buy Christmas presents for the children. And we were blessed to have the solid support of family and friends, just like Michael and Elliott. We were young together and while our ship foundered early in our married lives, because of the loving community around us, our marriage did not. In spite of our circumstances, our children thrived. That was my one and only prayer. It was answered.

On the upside, I learned new skills. Like before it was sheik to bag one's own groceries, I bagged mine at the warehouse store, Food 4 Less. I learned to stretch a buck - buying cantaloupe because it is high in vitamins and could be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. School supplies were purchased every year with the proceeds from summer yard sales. And pennies were rolled and kept in a coffee can, sent with the children on "hot lunch" day to buy their hot dog and chile. Much to their chagrin I've since been told. Many a gift came from Pic 'n Save.

But you know what? I'm glad my kids bought their hot lunch with rolled pennies. Because a "penny saved is a penny earned." In our case, it put food in their mouths. They may need to remember that lesson one day.

Yes, the business tanked. We barely held on to the house by our finger nails. It wasn't pretty. It was the ugliest thing I've ever been through.

I'm like somebody who lived through the depression. I don't believe in stock. In fact, stock is a joke as far as I'm concerned. We've been on the losing end of stock four times. My cousin is a stock broker and he encourages me to invest - in the latest down turn, so- called "blue chip" stocks plummeted and so he thought I should "buy low." The problem is, I've never had the good fortune of "selling high." From my shares in our privately held family yellow page business to the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and the OC Register, there hasn't exactly been much to show for those promised "stock options."

I'm like the elderly grandmother who believes in one thing and one thing only when it comes to money. Cold hard cash. And with the banks as unstable as they've been, I'm doing some serious thinking about my mattress!

It's Season Two of Thirtysomething. Michael and Elliott have a long road ahead. They'll lose their business and go to work for their competitor just like we did. Michael's wife, Hope, will have another baby and they will struggle to pay the bills and to make their way.

The series will end long before our happy ending.

But I could write that script.

A Process Observed

I've been thinking a lot about my brother lately. What he loved. His relationships. His occupation. His hobby. His choices. Why he did and did not do certain things. What motivated him. What he might have thought about. His secrets. His regrets. His pain. His fears.

In other words, my brother has at last become a character to me.

This is a good thing.

I've been writing about my brother since 1994. First, in my journal as I recorded the unfolding real-life drama that resulted in his death-bed, our vigil, and the aftermath of grief turned depression that engulfed me for several years after.
The raw, emotional entries are contained in various styles of journals. Some with lines. Some without. Some with inspirational quotes on the cover, others plain black. Some bound. Some spiral. I was not consistent in my choice of journal like some people are. It has made for an uneven mishmash on my bookshelf.

Yes, on my bookshelf.

I've kept them all. I've not counted how many there are. And I've not burned them.

I have re-read some of them occasionally wincing along the way. They are a chronicle, a real-time record of my experience during a time of despair and descent into a health care system when AIDS was still relatively young.

In case of a fire, I would grab my journals before other precious keepsakes, they are that important to me.

As the years went on, my writing transformed itself into a collection of poems and essays. Some good. Some bad. What began in my wild scrawl in the journal as a synthesis of my experience ended up typed on a page with titles.

A first step in distancing myself. A first step toward transforming the pain into art. A first step toward clarity and meaning.

This went on for years. In workshops. On the beach. In my bed. At my desk. The typed pages tucked into a sunflower folder. Depending on my circumstances or emotional state, the folder would either sit on top of the desk - a priority. Or be stuck in a drawer for up to a year at a time. When we moved, the folder and journals lived in file boxes in the garage. I published a few individual pieces. My musician friend even wrote music for a few of the poems for a dramatic reading during Lent.

Over the past two years, I began to weave the individual pieces into a narrative - a memoir of sorts. I spent most of last summer on this project at my desk. I turned the memoir over to my writing teacher, Cecilia Woloch, who made comments on it and returned the manuscript to me

Fifteen years, and I was finally able to edit the most important story of my life. Phrases, lines, images, metaphors that I'd clung to were with one stroke of the key deleted.

Distance was serving my art.

My writing was no longer therapy. It had become craft. New questions began to emerge. What story am I telling? Whose story is it? How do I tell the story? What genre? Memoir? Opera? Oratorio?

Years have passed. The AIDS journey has changed. My story is now a period piece. A new distance.

I've spent my entire career in the theatre as an actress, director, and teacher. Two weeks ago, I sat down with my memoir and a stack of journals and I began writing it all over again.
This time as a play.

Only something incredible has happened. The characters have had the impulse to sing.

My brother is once again, my muse.

Only this time, our collaboration is on a musical.

C.S. Lewis published "A Grief Observed" a year after the death of his wife.

Mine has taken over fifteen years and I'm starting over.

Or am I?

Maybe these characters are singing because I have at last found my voice.

Do No Harm?

The fall from grace. Drama is full of these stories going back to the Greeks. The tragic hero, of noble birth in the classic form of tragedy or of high ranking in the more modern treatment, experiences a down fall or reversal of fortune as a result of some flaw in his character. Pride, hubris, denial, power, and greed seem to be recurring themes in tragic stories from Oedipus Rex to Richard Nixon leading to an awakening or insight.

Only yesterday did I come face to face with this dramatic story line yet again when I ran across a news article published in February of 2009. My heart caught in my throat when I read Prominent Laguna Beach Aids Doctor Admits to Under Dosing Patients. Faces up to Fifty years in Prison.

The cost to medicare and other agencies was estimated to be over $600,000 but the cost to human life, incalculable.

A chill ran through me. Is it possible that this is the same doctor who had taken on nearly mythic proportions in the story of my family? Could it possibly be the same doctor, who held my brother's hand so tenderly and who skillfully maneuvered the labyrinth of health care options for us in 1994? The doctor who seemed to know how to work the system so well, that my brother, who had no insurance at the time of his diagnoses, received what we thought to be adequate and appropriate treatment? According to a 2009 article in the OC Weekly, it was indeed this Dr. Kooshian.

The doctor to whom I'd written a tearful and heartfelt letter of thanks for rescuing us at the lowest point in our lives?
My memory flooded with scenes from that time - Dr. Kooshian - in his office - in his tennis togs - aggressively advising us on how to take my brother in to ER at midnight at UCI in order to have a shunt inserted for his hydrocephalus. Advice, by the way, we did not follow as it seemed an extreme measure in a hopeless situation.

This Dr. Kooshian, was found to be defrauding the system and worse, playing with the lives of his patients by consistently administering lower doses or in some cases, vitamins instead of the anti-viral medication they desperately needed and trusted they were getting?

The violation of his hippocratic oath to "Do No Harm " is shocking. Scoundrel. Monster. Liar. I feel on the one hand outraged by the revelation that the man in whom I placed the life of my brother turned out to be a crook. On the other, I am fascinated by the duplicity. The potential for a person to be a real life Jekyll and Hyde.

My direct experience of Dr. Kooshian was that he was tender, caring, and generous. How could he have been driven to such deceit? To say I am saddened is an understatement. Kooshian wouldn't know me or remember me because my brother's death was mercifully quick and I am quite sure Kooshian did not contribute to it in any way. Whether he bilked the system in my brother's name, I have no way of knowing.

I only know that today there is a hole in a tiny corner of my heart where once I held Dr. Kooshian.

Analysis of Normal

So here's the deal. I've listened to the score of Next to Normal twice while driving in my car.
The question I keep asking myself, the question I asked myself as I sat crammed into my seat at the Booth Theatre in New York buried in coats, scarves and gloves, and the question I asked at the Algonquin over a post-theatre drink, is "how do I feel about this story?"

My struggle is highly personal on both an artistic and experiential level.

Artistically I appreciate the way the story points of Next to Normal are revealed in pieces like a puzzle. I marvel and cringe at its through -sung style. A powerful, startling, piercing lyric here, a cheap rhyme there.

I will admit, the operatic style is not my favorite. I think it takes immensely nuanced compositional skills, married to just the right lyric, and just the perfect execution by the singer to convey the exactness of an emotional moment. The phrasing, the melody, the harmonic discord, the orchestration, come together through the singer whose vocal quality, timbre and expressiveness control the moment. And let's not forget the director's role in birthing the moment. One moment, influenced by dozens of artistic choices coming together to make it happen just so. A tall order. I think Les Miserables succeeded at this as did Weber's Evita. I find the short coming in through-sung musicals to rest largely in the artificiality of recitative as opposed to the actual songs.

Another problem with this genre of musical is the inability to tightly sustain the dramatic through- line. In a straight play or musical play, every word, every line, every lyric needs to have a purpose to advance the story. A well written play shouldn't have a wasted word. One verse too many in a through- sung show stalls the momentum, especially if the lyric is forced or manipulative, which I feel at times is the case with Next to Normal.

This is where Stephen Sondheim, in my opinion, is unparalleled. The master. And the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods, whose recording I've listened to hundreds of times, achieves near perfection. Though not through-sung, the songs are the primary story-telling device and its psychological complexity every bit as layered as the subject tackled in Next to Normal.

Without a doubt, Next to Normal, if not an artistic triumph, is an artistically challenging, albeit uneven piece with flickers of genius. The prescription pill patter song is clever, capturing the mind boggling confusion of pyscho-pharmacology. A perfect match of form and content. And the song "Who's crazy" points up the whole issue of the identified patient and the dysfunction of a family system.

But, after listening to the score twice, I think the first few verses of the opening number of the show are flat out misleading. While in the theatre, I didn't know where we were headed, listening to the CD has caused me to bristle at the lyrics of the central character, Diana who sings, "My son's a little shit, my husband's boring and my daughter, though a genius, is a freak." Without revealing here the surprise elements of the story, these lyrics feel like something from a stupid TV sitcom. These lyrics set up a largely unfulfilled expectation about the family whose lives we are about to enter.

The show made me appreciate the musical, Rent, more than I had in the past. In its opening number, the composer and lyricist, Jonathan Larson, sets the story of Rent in motion with a seires of sung voice mail messages introducing characters that lead to the central character, Rodger's poignant and revealing song One Song, Glory. In it, we see Rodger's urgent need to leave a mark "before I die, glory." We are not misled. We know this character's trajectory.

From an experiential level, I think Next to Normal captures the inherent problem with diagnosis of mental illness, the continuum of mental health, the triggers, the coping mechanisms, the difficulty in treatment protocol and the danger of labeling disorders.

I've lived some of that. My husband, after the show, dazedly said, "I've lived parts of that story." I don't think he found it to be entertaining. The character of the husband - undaunted, blindly optimistic and hopeful hit the mark and caused some squirming in our seats. In my case, thanks to a gifted and insightful therapist, I was rescued from mis-diagnosis and mood stabilizers and restored to a balanced, feeling, and functioning human being after a deep depression brought on by tragic circumstances largely out of my control.

But where my life experience and the show really become reflections of each other is in the whole subject of grief and in the revelation of what can happen when grief goes unprocessed and pain is anesthetized.

(Spoiler alert)

I was a daughter born two years after the death of a three-year old brother whom I never knew but whose life and death loomed like a great unspoken ghost. Details hazy. Never revealed by my mother. Pieces of the story coming to me throughout my life. A phone call. Tonsillectomy. Anesthesia. Hemorrhaging. Mother throwing herself on the casket at the funeral. Sedatives. Jamie's sweater in the back seat of the Buick. A baby girl born. Joy restored to the family.

Unlike Gabe, the dead son in Next to Normal, my brother Jamie was never demon. He was only angel. The demon-grief was exorcised with my labor and birth. And my mother, though understandably possessive and over protective of me, did go on.

It is in this very intersection of death, loss and re-birth that Next to Normal misses the mark for me. While a very dramatic story point, the fact that the daughter was so invisible to her mother - in essence she is the lost child - born after the death of her 18 month old brother - simply runs counter to my personal experience and to what as a grief counselor I have observed. While there is no replacing the life of a dead child, I have witnessed the resilience of the human spirit in the face of the most tragic circumstances. It does not ring true to me that Diana would have experienced a psychotic break so deep that she would have been unable to even hold her new- born daughter after her birth.

But somebody did their homework on this very question because eventually, Diana asks, "what happens if the medicine wasn't really in control? What happens if the cut, the burn the break was never in my brain or in my blood but in my soul?"

After sixteen torturous years, this revelation, followed by Diana's decision to allow herself to feel her grief without the medication combined with her husband's fear and denial of the grief, is completely on target and authentic.

There are many songs and moments in Next to Normal that are heart wrenching. Painful truths and aching questions - "If you never grieve me you'll never leave me alone" and "Some hurts never heal and some ghosts are never gone. But we go on."
One brilliantly ambivalent and stunningly nuanced moment comes when Diane drops a bomb on her husband that begins in a barely audible and cracked voice, "So anyway...I'm leaving."
It is at once unthinkable, seemingly heartless and in her case, completely right. The choice serves the story.

Next to Normal is a courageous musical. It has stayed with me. It has forced me as a writer to examine how the creators, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey chose to tell this story. Ultimately, I believe it succeeds because, as Arthur Miller said, "The theatre makes us more human." What could make us more human, than to look squarely into the human psyche and to admit that "You don't have to be happy at all to be happy you're alive."

This ambivalent, less than idealistic statement certainly reframes the notion of what it means to live happily ever after.

An Irreverent Memory

I remember the astonished look on the mortician's face.
"I am not used to people finding this sort of thing funny," he scolded.
Funny?
Why not?
I believe it was the line, "Now for the merchandise," that set us off.
Whatever it was, the irreverent humor that overtook us was in fact entirely appropriate.
Had he been there, Bob would have led the way with his sardonic humor.
My two nephews and I, making decisions about urns and holy cards, guest books and obituaries.
For Bob.

We were exhausted. We'd been keeping vigil for nearly 48 hours.
And for the first time in months, we laughed.
Got the giggles.
And it felt good.
If you have ever been through it, you know just how absurdly tacky the "merchandise" can be.

Getting the giggles at such a seemingly inappropriate time is one of the great capacities we have as human beings to relieve tension.
We meant no disrespect. To Bob. To the mortician.
But it is true, that morticians do seem to look the part.
You know.
Cadaverous.
Long faced.
Milky white skin.
It didn't help.
It was, in truth, one of those purely human moments when the expectation of solemnity gave way to the honest release of emotion.
The three of us, like naughty children, found a way to get through the unthinkable. The unimaginable. The unbearable.
There was nothing funny about what we'd just come through.
But, I guess it's true what they say.
Laughter is the best medicine.

Ghosts and Guardians

I drive down Laguna Canyon Road in my Mother's Buick to see Gershwinn Alone at the Laguna Playhouse.

Memories stir.
A familiar drive.

A drive that took me as a child in the early 70's with my parents in a Cadillac to Vacation Village for summer beach -front vacations, dinners with the Kavanaghs at Cordon Bleu with its aviary, and Easter brunches with Bob at the latest and greatest new find.

A drive that took me for company Christmas parties at Ben Browns on Aliso Creek and hangovers at breakfast at The Beach House.

A drive that took me in the late 70's in my Camero past the Greeter at The Pottery Shack to Bob and Lenny's leather shop,
Un Bel Di.

A drive that took me in the 80's as a young mother in my Ford Mini-Van to the Laguna Art Museum with Gillian, for walks with a stroller along Ciff Drive, lunches of "Havachips" and salsa at Laguna village, and the occassional margarita at Las Brisas with out of town guests.

A drive that took me with Steve in our Volvo to The Sorrento Grill for birthdays and The Surf and Sand for anniversaries.

A drive that took me to Bob and Lenny's condominium at Blue Lagoon for New Year's Eve parties.

A drive that took me in the early 90's to doctor appointments with Bob as we searched for answers to his weight loss and headaches.
A drive that took me to the Jolly Roger for lunch where Bob felt queasy
and afterward I watched him shuffle to the B of A Versateller machine where I made my own diagnosis.
A drive that took me to South County Medical Center with Bob for the HIV Test.
A drive that took mother and me to Bob's condo on the night of his diagnosis.
A drive that took me to his condo the morning he sounded so breathless and weak.
A drive that took us both back to Mom's the day we went to see the AIDS doctor.
A drive that would be Bob's last on the Canyon Road. April 1994.
A drive that took me back to Bob's condo to empty it out. June 1994.
A drive I stopped taking for a long time.

I drive down Laguna Canyon Road in my mother's Buick to see Gershwinn Alone at the Laguna Playhouse.
2010.
Ghosts and Guardians.
Laguna still haunts me.

Self Reliance

I have been told that I am my father's daughter. As the holidays descend, a familiar feeling washes over me. It is a hollow ache deep within the core of me. A distant yearning.

I am young. I am in my bedroom on Resh Place in Anaheim. It is night. The wall of windows along the west side of my room creates a reflective prism of dancing images on my ceiling from the swimming pool light. The sounds of laughter echo down the hallway - grown ups at play - around a bar that is the center piece of my home. Laughter, loud and strong and fun. I see my father behind the bar. A grin on his face, relishing in what must have been a sense of a life fulfilled. A self-made man from impoverished conditions in Kentucky, he made his way to California selling for RL Polk and Company City Directories, ultimately establishing his own business and an affluent suburban life on a cul de sac in Anaheim. It was in this safe, comfortable and secure world that I grew up. The script of my life included two oft repeated lines usually spoken with intensity - one by my father - "Always go for the top" and the other by my mother, "You are Lee Luskey's daughter."

The subtext of my life was success. It was that you could accomplish anything you set your mind to doing. The example was my father, who, now that I look back through my own adult lens, was indeed extraordinary. I grew up on the receiving end of his accomplished life. By the time I was born, the chapters of struggle, hardship and sacrifice had already been written. I entered the story of my father's life in its final third. I lived in the midst of the results of his labor and missed out on what got him there. One could say, I lived my childhood in a bubble.

The bubble burst after the sudden death of my father at sixty-four. I was twenty-two. It took our family less than eight years to unravel the business he had built. My brother's fifty-three year-old- life came to a tragic end only thirteen years after my father's. The story of my adult life has been the reconstruction of a life out of the collapse of our family business and the deaths of my father and brother. It has been about the deconstruction of a family myth, a sifting through the ashes of memory, the analysis of personality characteristics, character flaws, and the sorting through the psychological ramifications of failure and the driving forces behind success.

For nearly half my life, I have been in recovery.

The other night, I had a dream from which I awoke feeling a warmth and comfort I had not felt for a long time. My father and my brother were both in the dream but the details were foggy. It was a visitation of sorts and the messages were clear. The first had to do with my daughter - who is ready to embark on the great adventure of her life in New York City. The message came from my brother who loved New York - and who loved his little niece - my brother who wore a pink dress shirt the day he first laid eyes on her and who lavished her with clothing from New York's Bloomingdale's baby department -
the message was that he would look after her.

The other message was the oft repeated line from which my life trajectory was propelled. "You are Lee Luskey's daughter." It is time again for risk. The fears, the failures, the sting of shaken confidence and timidity born out of insecurity are hard won lessons providing me with wisdom and seasoning.

My father was a self-made man whose grinning, positive demeanor celebrated the possibilities of life. It was not a life without sorrow, pain, or tragedy. It was a life built in spite of those things.

My children are grown. My son is ready to graduate from college and my daughter is ready to begin her career. My husband has provided us with all the opportunities through his own toil and hard work. A dream-maker in his own right - self made and fulfilled. He is my daughter's example of success. But, like Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, I moved from my father's house to my husband's. My life, dependent on their accomplishments.

As this decade comes to a close, along with my fiftieth year, I realize that this is my life and it's up to me to make it what I will.
The distant yearning is not for my father or for a past life. It is a yearning for my self.
It is time for me to write the next chapter.