And Old Rosie Memory

I'm the 3rd or 4th photo in the slideshow.  Rosie made this and posted it on her blog the day after the book signing...  It shows the decoupage box I made her.  Yes, TOTAL dork. But you get no apologies from me.  :)

Life Soundtrack

I'm compiling a list of songs that would be on my "Life Soundtrack." Here's what I have so far.

I Know Your So Well (Harry Connick Jr.)
And You Tell Me (a-ha)
Cherish (Madonna)
Power Of Two (Indigo Girls)
Vogue (Madonna)
Billie Jean (Michael Jackson)
True Colors (Cyndi Lauper)
Be Good Johnny (Men at Work)
Who Can It Be Now? (Men at Work)
Down Under (Men at Work)
Don't Worry, Be Happy (Bobby McFerrin)
Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (The Nylons)
West End Girls (Pet Shop Boys)
Triad (Jefferson Airplane)
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkle)
Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order)
The Voice Of Enigma (Enigma)
Sadeness / Find Love / Sadeness (Enigma)
I'm The Only One (Melissa Etheridge)
Scarecrow (Melissa Etheridge)
Come To My Window (Melissa Etheridge)
People Are People (Depeche Mode)
Keep It Precious (Melissa Etheridge)
Luck be a Lady (Frank Sinatra)
I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston)
Angel (Sarah McLachlan)
Here You Come Again (Dolly Parton)
Me and Little Andy (Dolly Parton)
Calling All Angels (k.d. lang)
Why? (Bronski Beat)
Star (Erasure)
Little Shop Of Horrors (Prologue) (LSOH Soundtrack)
Suddenly, Seymour (LSOH Soundtrack)
Kiss From A Rose (Seal)
Finally (CeCe Peniston)
Gonna Make You Sweat/Everybody Dance Now (C + C Music Factory)
Supermodel/You Better Work (RuPaul)
Don't Cry For Me, Argentina- Disco Version (Madonna)
Make Your Own Kind of Music (Mama Cass)
Love Shack (The B-52's)
Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
The Colors of My Life Barnum Soudtrack)
Where Is Love? (Oliver Soundtrack)
Consider Yourself (Oliver Soundtrack)
Here Comes The Rain Again (Eurythmics)
Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics)
Wind Beneath My Wings (Bette Midler)
Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers)
If You Leave (OMD)
Pandora's Box (OMD)
Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds)
Things Can Only Get Better (Howard Jones)
Careless Whisper (Wham!)
One Night in Bangkok (Chess Soundtrack)
Suddenly (Billy Ocean)
Forever (Kenny Loggins)
Danny's Song (Loggins and Mecina)
Open Arms Journey)
Walking On Broken Glass (Annie Lennox)
Hallelujah (k.d. lang)
Constant Craving (k.d. lang)
Careless Whisper (Wham!)

Across Cliques and Clubs and Classes

Adrienne Hurley, and old friend from high school, and I reconnected a while back after 20ish years. We pretty much stay in touch now through each other's blogs. Hers is much more oriented on political activism than mine, which focuses more on pop-culture observations and what's happening in my own life. Adrienne was always the one to stir things up in high-school, marching to the beat of her own drum, to the admiration of people across cliques and clubs and classes. She's a good person to know--- she forces thought, and respects action. There should be more people like her. Fierce and unwavering in her convictions, refusing to conform to the expected.

Anyway, I got a kick out one of her recent posts about Sarah Palin and wanted to share it here... (scroll down to the bottom of her post for the photos.)

Book Report- "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein

Working part time at a book store, I frequently come across books that I never would have found otherwise. I have shelves and shelves of them at home, waiting to be read. I recently stumbled across "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein and, after hesitating for fear it might hit too close to home, decided to give it a go. I was right. It was WAY too close to home.

The book is a memoir about a typical type-A law student who, at age 24, found her carefully planned out life in shambles due to an unexpected health crisis. After a period of misdiagnoses (far too common in women, even today) she discovers she has congestive heart failure, and must have a heart transplant.

When her transplant finally arrives and she struggles with a world that expects her to be unconditionally grateful at her good fortune and to pull herself up by the bootstraps despite the fact that she has simply traded one set of problems for another. She is misunderstood and isolated in her feelings, and struggles to portray to role of a "recovered" sick girl for the benefit of those around her. All the while, on the inside she faces the daunting and endless threat of rejection and a series of opportunistic infections and other physical side effects from the immunosuppressant drugs.

I really wish I had had the opportunity to read this book while Mom was still alive. I found myself realizing as I read it that I was just like the friends and family in the book-- well-intentioned people who inadvertently put insane amounts of pressure on the transplant recipient to "be normal" again. To be grateful for being alive and not muddy the waters with tales of shingles and annual heart biopsies and further illness.

Mom had her transplant at age 47, and as far as I was concerned was supposed to get another 20 years. I remember ONE number when we found out that she was going to have to have a heart transplant back in the winter of 1993-- that statistics showed that over 85% of heart transplants were still alive after 5 years. That's all we had at that point, since "routine" transplants had only been being done for about a decade at that point. I focused on the 85% alive, and the fact that what would happen beyond the 5 years was conveniently and definitively swept under the rug.

Mom always said that, despite the pain from the actual surgery, she woke up from the transplant feeling better than she had on months, maybe years. Did I stop paying attention then because I needed to take it that all was good? Did she feel "sick" every day--even after she was "healed"? I know there were complications that came along, but I always thought of those as occasional bumps along the way. Did I not ask because I didn't want to know the answer? My not asking, and not understanding, must have felt awful for her. Is that sort of sense of isolation what led to her depression?

In the book, Silverstein talks about facing the constant fear of "transplant artery disease" and rejection. Mom's official cause of death was listed as "chronic rejection of transplanted heart." When she started going downhill, the doctors told us that another transplant was inevitable. As the family member, my attitude was "fine, let's do it" even though I knew that the likelihood of it coming as fast as the first one (an unheard of 4 days on the list) was pretty slim. Also, I knew that mom had real misgivings of going through it all again. I wanted to beg her to fight, but I knew that she didn't have much fight left in her.

I did not like Amy Silverstein for a good part of the book. I guess I joined the ranks of her family and friends that just wanted her to be thankful and shut up about the rest. But I learned from her, and for that I appreciate her willingness to share all the ugliness that she experienced, in addition to what we are conditioned to call "the miracle of a heart-transplant." Reading this memoir provided an insight into what Mom must have been feeling during those 7 years, 10 months, and 3 days between her transplant and when she died.

I am grateful for that.

Here are a few passages that I found particularly powerful:

"The people closest to me, whose understanding would have been invaluable, could only run my ordeals through their own filters and then invent wildly far-fetched, impossibly upbeat conclusions that had no basis in my reality as a heart-transplant patient. Their creativity had more sting to it than they would ever realize, but I knew they called it up for a good cause: optimistic nonsense about my health situation made everyone feel so much better. Except for me."

" I love my family, but I can't live for them. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don't know. But Scott [her husband] gets up every morning and goes to work, and my son goes to school. And I'm at home feeling sick. Or at the hospital. I can't just be this fixture that hangs around so the people I love can check in on me every now and then while they go along with their busy lives. Call me selfish, but I need to have some meaning besides living for other people."

Everyone who knows someone who has expereicned a transplant should read this book to understand their loved one's perspective a little better. It will be scary. It will make them worry about the future. But it is honest, and it will paint a realistic picture for them of what they may need to do to be more supportive and compassionate.

Here's a link to the Reader's Group Guide for the book.

Mom

(here's another post about some of this "stuff" from last year)

9/11 Anniversary

Cartoon by Jeff Parker, Florida Today

On September 11, 2001, I left my apartment in Brooklyn at the usual time of about 8:00am to start my daily commute to work in Port Washington (Long Island). My route put me on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway directly across from the southern tip of Manhattan, with the World Trade Center prominent in my sightline, and then north, driving parallel to the NYC skyline to the Long island Expressway. Even after having done the commute to Long Island for well over a year, the City-view with the early morning sunlight ALWAYS made me take note. That particular morning was perfectly clear-- no clouds at all.

For some reason I was listening to a CD that morning instead of my usual ritual of NPR. About 45 minutes later, I arrived to a state of confusion at the office as people were trying to make sense of the jumbled news reports that there was an explosion at the World Trade Center. I had just passed by there on my way in, but clearly had just missed it. We had no television, and the portable radio was inadequate, so I called Dad to see if he was watching the Today Show and could tell me what was going on. I relayed the information from him to my co-workers that there were rumors that a small plane had crashed downtown. Then the confusion was compounded when dad said "A plane just hit the the World Trade Center." I said that we had already heard that, and he said, "No-- another plane just hit the second tower!"

Now, it is certainly a testament to just how naive I was that my first reaction was that something was somehow malfunctioning with the airplanes and air traffic navigation systems at the NYC airports causing planes to crash. I truly believed that for a brief moment, until Dad said, "No-- this is terrorism." In unison with the rest of the civilized world, as has been proclaimed ad nauseum in the media since tht day, I/we lost our collective innocence on that day. We were suddenly living in the "after" version of our world, and we hadn't even begun to realize how deeply it had just been rocked.

The confusion became utter disorientation when I looked out the window of my office looking over Manhasset Bay and the Long Island Sound and could see two distinct billowing streams of dark smoke rising up from behind the hills off in the distance. I knew intellectually that I was seeing the smoke from the WTC. However, until that moment, I had always thought that the window of my office faced north. I tried to rationalize that the smoke must be from something else since (in my skewed geographical view of the world) my window faced north. When I managed to "get rational" again about the directions, I was shocked by the distance. All those hours and hours of sitting in my car driving back and forth to Long Island, and I was just over the hill from the City, and I was actually watching the smoke from the WTC rise into the sky in front of me-- not on television, but right before my eyes. When I thought back on that later, it was mind boggling how fixated I had become on the direction and distance to Manhattan.

Everyone has their own story of where they were and what they were doing that day, and it really seems to me that, at least among New Yorkers, we all share a deep understanding of the craziness we all experienced that day as we waited to hear news of unaccounted for friends and colleagues. The hastily crafted "Missing" flyers that appeared on lamp posts and blanketed the sides of buildings by the thousands became their own lasting reminder of the frantic desperation that so many felt. I can remember passing one of the walls and realizing that people were actually stopping and reading them in detail. I saw one face that seemed strangely familiar, although I couldn't place where I knew her. I finally realized that I had seen her sister holding up a copy of the flyer for a news camera and pleading for anyone with any information to call her.

For hours, even days, we watched the television, waiting for the talking heads to add something new from their last live report, but instead seeing more and more people with their printed flyers as hope gradually began to fade. The image of these "Missing" flyers has cemented itself in the American psyche.

This cartoon is brilliant. The message is conveys is disturbing.

Thinking About Jerry's Family

My dear friend Jerry died 16 years ago this week. I took this photo of him about 2/3 of the way up Longs Peak in Colorado, about 16 months before he died. A small group of us set off to climb the "fourteen-er." Jerry didn't make it to the summit, but two of us did. This has always been one of my favorite shots. I still think about him a lot-- I posted about him a few months ago-- you can read it here.

Hearts on It's a Small World

Mom always loved this ride (eeeesh!) so I posted this one for her.

Momofuku Ando

It's a sad day for those of us who starved our way though college because we spent all our money on been and White Mountain Orange Flavored wine coolers: Momofuku Ando, creator of ramen noodles, is dead. Here's a link to the story on National Public Radio that I heard on the way home from work last night. In darker times, the 6 for a dollar specials gave me at least the the illusion that I was eating.

If I click my heals 3 times, can I have my mommy back?

Back in late 80's, Mom and I made a date to go to a museum in Denver for a "Hollywood" exhibit. She drove up from Colorado Springs, and I drove down from college in Boulder. We had lunch and spent the day browsing the exhibits. It was such a wonderful day. The highlight was seeing the actual Scarecrow costume from "The Wizard of Oz."

God, I miss her!

A Hippie Honeymoon

When we were growing up, Mom always told us that this was a picture of she and Dad on their honeymoon... I'm still not 100% sure she was kidding, although I think there was something in there about a visit to Washington, DC too...

Either way, I always loved this picture.

I love the dance...

Can you pick me out of the troop? This is from a dance concert in which I was a featured visiting artist back in 1991-- wow, so LONG AGO! We did an amazing piece examining discrimination and prejudice in society to the music of Leonard Bernstein.

Christmas 2000

I had a request that I post this photo since it was hard to see clearly in the newsletter. It took me a little while to find the file, but here it is. This is the last Christmas we had with Mom (center)-- she died on January 26th, 2001, exactly one month after this photo was taken. It's the last photo I have of her, as far as I know.

TJ Time: the Sacred Monday Night Ritual Growing Up

Monday nights were sacred.
"Little House on the Prairie"
Pizza (Chef Boyardee crust mix and a can of sauce in a box) and a big bottle of Coke (never Pepsi)
Lights out - - TV on
Matt or I in the official position as the "giver of the foot rub" to Mom (Rose Milk lotion, always)

About 7 minutes before the end of the episode came "Tear Jerker" time, when all would be resolved and made right in the little town of Walnut Grove (or Winoka during that exciting season when they moved to the "big city").

TJ time meant Mom would cry, and bedtime was minutes away.

LHOP is as prolific to Matt and me as "I Love Lucy."

Years later, Mom and I used to get on the phone with each other when it was about to start and see who could name the episode the fastest. One or the other of us would usually be able to name it based on the name of the episode, if not the opening shots.

I still stop if I am flipping channels and come across it, and have been going through it sequentially via Netflix.

In an interesting twist of fate, we ended up meeting and becoming good friends with a real-life bit player from episode #78, "Meet Me at the Fair." Hal Hundley played the pickle judge presiding over the fierce competition including entrants Ma Ingalls and Mrs. Oleson (Ma won).

This makes Hal our six-degrees-of-separation link to Michael Landon and Half-Pint and the rest! :) I found this article about him, with a photo.

... Five, Six, Seven, Eight!

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Good, that connects with

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"A Chorus Line" was my first Broadway show back in 1983, and I became obsessed with it. After seeing it at the Shubert Theatre in NYC on a chorus trip, I saw touring companies, community theatre productions, and dinner theatre. I knew the music inside and out-- it was almost like a soundtrack to my life in the mid 1980s.

I knew I wanted to see this new revival, but I taken by surprise by the raw emotional response I had to it.

I would have been interested to see them update some of the orchestrations, and bring the setting to modern times, but the safe decision to recreate the original production ensured a solid production.

It took me back to 1983, when I was CONVINCED that my life would be spent in the theatre. It was bittersweet, because, as I have said on this blog already, my biggest regret in my life is that I lost that drive and confidence somewhere along the way.

I could go to the theatre every night, but could I take that constant reminder...?

Do it again, Mommy, do it again!

I came across this cartoon online today at http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/.

(click on the image to see it full size)

When Matthew and I were little, Mom would recite the Jabberwocky to us as a bedtime story. Actually, she was a theatre major in college, so she didn't merely recite it-- she performed it! I can still hear the inflection in her voice as she told the dramatic tale. When she finished, we would beg "Do it again, Mommy! Do it again!" How we didn't manage to get completely messed up by this, I'm not quite sure, but it is SUCH a great memory! Keep in mind, it was around 1972 or so, and Mom and Dad were still pretty much hippies-- and we know what that means... Mom was also a huge fan of Donovan (we played his greatest hits at her memorial service). Here's his musical version of Jabberwocky from the "HMS Donovan" album.

JABBERWOCKY
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Here's some great and fun information about Jabberwocky.

Ashes Among the Aspens, Please....

One of my happiest memories is a family camping trip when I was about 10 or 11 years old. The original plan was to drive the trailer ("Post's Hole," named after the couple we acquired it from) to Aspen, but we stumbled across an isolated meadow with a stream flowing through it, nestled in a mountain valley near Cottonwood Pass.

There were no other people around, giving us what seemed like the whole world to ourselves. The storybook view was made perfect by the beaver that had built its dam there and seemed to welcome our unexpected intrusion. We ended up staying there for the entire trip rather than continue on to Aspen. We hiked up into the aspen and spruce groves, played near the stream, made s'mores, sat by the fire-- all the usual camping fun.

I fell in love with aspen trees that weekend. Ever since, I have found an amazing sense of peace among the aspen groves, and when the time comes, I want to have my ashes scattered somewhere deep in the Colorado Aspens.

I found these images on a random website I came across while googling for pics of aspens... While they're not actually the place we camped, they are from the Cottonwood Pass area, and they look pretty damn close.

WORLD AIDS DAY

How many people realize that today is World AIDS day?

How many people even remember what a crisis HIV/AIDS was 10-15-20 years ago?

How many people even realize that AIDS is STILL one of the most devastating crises facing the world today?

How many people remember when nobody talked about AIDS because it didn't affect "people like them?"

How many people remember coming of age in a time where, in addition to facing stigma for his/her sexual orientation, they had to worry if their physical expression of love (or a mutual celebration of sexual attraction) came with the threat of life threatening illness and discrimination?

How many people remember when finding out that a person had HIV meant that s/he would probably be dead in 18 months? A time before toxic drug cocktails starting keeping our friends alive longer at cost of devastating their bodies in other ways?

I say NOT NEARLY ENOUGH!!! And as importantly, that those times are not just memories. They are RIGHT NOW! It's not over!

But nobody talks about HIV/AIDS anymore. Teenagers -- people in general-- no longer have a sense of urgency about protecting themselves.


Many people in this country have the opportunity to take advantage of effective treatments, but most of the people in the world who are affected by HIV/AIDS do not have this luxury.

It's a huge problem, and there is no simple answer. We can't rely on big business or the government to solve these problems (many argue that it's not their job to), so please support foundations such as the William J. Clinton Foundation, which is just one of many groups doing great work to make a difference.

I stopped working in HIV/AIDS 6 years ago because I had a terrible experience at an AIDS Service organization-- I won't name them, because they have threatened to sue anyone that bad-mouths them publicly, but I WILL say that they are located about 40ish miles outside NYC in a suburb very hard hit by the HIV/AIDS crisis. Hell, I'll say they are EAST of NYC and NOT in Connecticut, so pull out a map and figure it out. They SUCKED, and senior management there should be ashamed of themselves for being so self-serving and such an embarrassment to a field that I was, up to that point, proud to work in.

This particular organization was on the far end of the spectrum from The Boulder County AIDS Project (BCAP) , where I first started volunteering in the early 1990s, and was hired on staff a few years later. It is the job that I have continued to compare all others to, and I can't say enough about how well-respected they are in the Boulder community, and among AIDS service organizations around the country. They "get it," and they make a difference.

I only stopped working in the field because I couldn't find the "right" job after leaving LIA--- oops, I almost said their name-- after leaving my last job. I landed here at the National Marfan Foundation, and felt like I have a chance to do good here, so here I am, and I am happy here. But I still support HIV/AIDS related organizations when I can. One of my favorite organizations is Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS because it links my love of theatre to my passion for HIV/AIDS education.


You can get some basic stats from Until There's a Cure-- this link is to their "vital statistics" page. You might know this organization as the group that sells silver cuff-style bracelets with a raised AIDS ribbon on the side-- you can get them in The Body Shop and other retailers. More information on the bracelets can be found here. I used to have one of the silver bracelets, but I gave it to my friend Stella several years ago. Her son Jerry was my first friend (that I knew of, of course) who contracted HIV, and his death a few years later devastated me. I credit him for my becoming interested in non-profit work, so in a way, I owe my career to him. Here's his picture, and his AIDS Memorial Quilt (from the Names Project Foundation) panel is the bottom right one in the image at the top of this post (incidentally, the one next to his, Don Holloway, was a colleague I did HIV/AIDS volunteer work with in 1989 as well). I miss Jerry every day!


So today, World AIDS Day, 2006, please take a moment to remember. Remember people who we have lost before their full potential could be revealed. Remember those who are living with HIV/AIDS every day, fighting on to keep living, showing the power of hope and determination. And remember those who still need to be educated about HIV/AIDS to protect themselves and slow the horrendous course of this pandemic. Please... PLEASE REMEMBER!

If you wish, you can go here to light a "virtual candle" commemorating the day.

Theatrical Nostalgia

I started thinking about my lifelong love of theatre and pulled out the box with all the Playbills and programs from every show I've ever seen. There may be a few more that I didn't manage to save the programs for, but these go WAY back. Yul Brynner in "The King and I" was my first. I vividly remember (at least parts) of each and everyone of these. Indulge me please:

Broadway

Doubt

Fosse

Follies

Cabaret

Avenue Q

Aida (2x)

Noises Off

RENT (2x)

42nd Street

Wicked (2x)

Jersey Boys

Chicago (2x)

A Chorus Line

The Lion King

The Music Man

The Full Monty

The Boy from Oz
Three Days of Rain

La Cage aux Folles

Man of La Mancha

Fiddler on the Roof
Beauty and the Beast

The Woman in White

Little Shop of Horrors

Urinetown: The Musical

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Monty Python's Spamalot

Thoroughly Modern Millie

The Tale of the Allergist's Wife

Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune

Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends

Off Broadway/Off Off Broadway

Forbidden Broadway: Summer Shock

Naked Boys Singing (4x)

tick, tick... BOOM! (2x)

Little Shop of Horrors

The God Committee

The Fantasticks

Altar Boyz (4x)

Sally and Tom

Zanna Don't

Circle

Trolls

London West End

Sunset Blvd.

National Tours

Cats

Evita

Falsettos

RENT (2x)

Dreamgirls

The King and I

Angels in America

Les Miserables (x3)

Phantom of the Opera

Little Shop of Horrors

Brighton Beach Memoirs
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Community/Regional

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
Merrily We Roll Along
La Cage aux Folles
Trafford Tanzi
Sweeny Todd
The Nerd
Snoopy
Mail

Grease

The Wiz

Cabaret

Hello Dolly

Brigadoon

42nd Street

The Mikado

My Fair Lady
A Chorus Line
Guys and Dolls

The Music Man
West Side Story

Sound of Music

My One and Only

Hans Christian Andersen

Once Upon a Mattress (2x)

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Snow White in the BlackForrest
The Teahouse of the August Moon

Young Dracula: The Singing Bat

Seeing DoubleBook of James
And the World Goes Round

Fifty Million Frenchmen

A Christmas Carol

Torch Song Trilogy

The Wizard of Oz
Steel Magnolias

The Foreigner

Godspell (2x)

Good News

Mackerel

Anything Goes

Finian's Rainbow
The Gay Deceivers

Give Our Regards to Broadway

Return to the Forbidden Planet

Broadway: From Cohan to Cats

Dicken's A Christmas Carol

10 Percent in Maple Grove

The Rocky Horror Show

7 Brides for 7 Brothers

A Chorus Line (2x)
The Pajama Game
Oklahoma (2x)

South Pacific
Stay Carl Stay
Snoopy
Annie

Nunsense
Oliver (2x)

Baker Street

The Crucible

The Miracle Worker

Bubbling Brown Sugar

You're a Good Man Charlie Brown (2x)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Old Theatre Friend Makes Good

Putzing around on Playbill.com and I came a cross a bio for an actor I did "West Side Story" with in 1991. James Ludwig played Tony, and charmed the pants off the audience, not to mention all the Shark and Jet Girls. Hell, he charmed the pants off 3/4 of the Jets and Sharks too, since most of the gang were more interested in comparing beauty tips than preparing for the rumble. Alas for the "boys," he loved the ladies and ended up dating our Rosalia--- Our Maria was neurotic over that turn of events. Guess she was a slave to "the method" and had a hard time playing star-crossed love when she knew "Tony" had eyes for another.

Seems he's making a successful go if it. So happy for him, although experiencing twinges of envy-- knowing what I know now, I would definitely have disciplined myself more in my teens, learned the value of humility and how to overcome insecurity, channeled my passion better and GONE FOR IT!

As the holidays approach, I am finding myself trying to explain to people over and over again why I downplay the season so much. I'm NOT a scrooge. I just have a hard time this time of year, as so many who have lost someone close to them do. Here's a story I wrote a few years after Mom died-- Can it REALLY have been almost 6 years?!?!?!

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Mom’s memorial service was easily the most beautiful I had ever been to. We didn’t want it to be a maudlin affair. We created displays celebrating her life, read her favorite childhood story, and played “hippie” music (Donovan), a move that was lost on many of the more traditional thinking relatives. Matthew, Dad, and I had each chosen a song to be played. I chose Sarah Maclaughlin’s “Angel.” Mom believed that if you open your hearts, you will hear your angel’s words of encouragement that they whisper to you when you most need it. Right there at the memorial service, a guardian angel started to speak to me, slowly at first, but nevertheless openly.


It started with a sparkle, just barely caught out of the corner of my eye. When I looked to see what it was I had to bob back and forth a bit to find it again. About 15 feet away, on the floor, there was a distinctive pinkish sparkle. Fixing my eyes on the spot so as not to lose it, I walked over to see what it was. My heart was already beating in my chest as I bent over and picked up a single piece of heart shaped mylar confetti. I was overcome with the most exhilarating sense of warmth—I felt it in my chest, in the very center of my being, emanating outward from my heart. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the sparkling heart was Mom’s way of telling me that she was there with me, and that I would never be alone. I taped the heart onto a small card that we had had printed for the service with a quote from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us strength forever.” I couldn’t possibly have known that that was just the beginning…




When I think back to when Mom had her heart transplant on March 23, 1993, I remember that I wasn’t scared. Sure, I was anxious, but somehow I just knew that everything was going to be ok. It was a different feeling when I was sitting with her at the hospital nearly eight years later on the evening of January 25, 2001. She had been put back on the waiting list for another transplant, but this time I knew that she didn’t have the same fighting spirit she had had almost eight years earlier. Yet that night, she was awake and almost energetic, greeting visitors and joking around just enough to almost give us hope. Even so, I felt the need to stay with her that night. I sat by her bed, holding her hand, not knowing what to say. I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me, and how I could still feel the warmth and love of being cradled into her arms when I was 12 years old and was chased home by bullies, or about emerging from my turbulent teens and realizing that she was my best friend, or the first time I shared with her the pain of having my heart broken. More than anything I wanted her to be proud of me, and I wanted her to tell me that night that I had not failed her. But I knew she didn’t feel like talking-- she had been so uncomfortable those last few days-- and it gave me the perfect excuse not to go there. So we just sat there, holding hands and pretending to watch TV until she fell asleep around 2:30 am.


Feeling very alone and frightened, I pulled the chair over next to the bed and sat there, listening to the sounds of the monitors and her labored breathing and praying for another miracle—and for an unspeakable tragedy. There is a horrific guilt in knowing that someone else has to die so my Mom wouldn’t be taken away from me. Yet, I was thinking about it. I was thinking about the snowstorm that had been forecast, and wondering if the roads would be bad-- and trying not to think about it-- all at the same. Of course, Mom was also aware of what had to happen. How could she NOT be? She had struggled for a year before being able to write a letter to her donor family after her transplant. She said then that the only words she could come up were “thank you” yet she felt those two little words were so insufficient. She grappled with trying to understand how to justify her second chance at life, a chance that went hand in hand with another family’s loss, and the thought of going through that guilt again was too much for her to bear. Yet she had put up a noble front and agreed, at least on the outside, to give it a go. All of these things clouded my dreams as I slept by her bedside that last night.


When I woke up a few hours later, I immediately noticed that her heart rate was down. The nurse had already called the doctor. It was about 6:30 am on the 26th. Dad and Matthew were supposed to be there at 7:30, so I just sat there holding her hand. Over the background noise of the oxygen tubes and heart monitor, she whispered to me "I think I'm dieing." I didn’t know what to say, so I told her to just hang on a little while-- Dad and Matthew were on their way.


They arrived with a cautious yet upbeat energy that people have when they don’t want others to know how really scared they are. They were smiling and seemed to still be carrying with them that hope from her energy the night before. I motioned to the heart monitor and told them that the doctor was on his way. We all sat around the bed and held her hands and rubbed her feet-- she always loved that.


I have often heard of stories describing near-death expereinces, but I never expected to witness anything like what happened next.


In a brief moment where she seemed to become lucid, Mom opened her eyes and looked toward the foot of the bed and very distinctly and clearly said, "Mother, quit ranting!" Grandma B. had died about 15 months earlier, and Mom had been noticably depressed ever since. At that particular moment in the hospital room, Grandma was there--at least to my Mother. Dad, Matthew and I all looked at each other in amazement, seeking confirmation about what we were witnessing. Then as suddenly as it had perked up, she faded, and her heartbeat gradually grew slower and slower. It was an odd thing, feeling the hope fade into an understanding that it was time to let her go.


I had never seen anyone die before, and I don’t know what I was expecting. I remember hearing the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor turn into a steady tone and looking up to see the flat line as the blip moved across the screen (it seemed like SUCH a cliche!), but she was still struggling to catch her breath. It was as if her lungs didn’t yet realize that it was time to let go and were trying to encourage her heart to keep going. At that point she looked up at me, and for the briefest of moments, our eyes locked. We all told her we loved her, and with one last breath, she was quiet. She was 54 years old.


When we told some family members about Mom's calling out just before she died, most assumed it meant that Grandma was there to welcome her. I don't believe it. I know Grandma. She was incredibly loving, but stubborn, and I know that she knew that Mom was too young--that I (we) still needed her. That we weren't ready to let her go. I know in my soul that Grandma was there telling her to go back, to stay with us, to fight. But Mom had made up her mind, and was ready. "Quit ranting" was intended to tell Grandma in no uncertain terms that she had made up her mind. In a way, it made it bearable knowing that Mom was making the choice to go and be with HER mom. I can understand that, even if I couldn't quite accept that she was leaving me.


We didn't stay. Dad and Matthew said their goodbyes and left, while I stayed behind for one last moment. I kissed Mom on the forhead and promised her that we would all take care of each other, even though we are spread out across the country. The doctor arrived as we were about to leave. I wouldn't look at him, because, if I had, all the anger I felt at all the doctors over the years-- all the arrogant fools that had missed her heart problems for so long and failed to diagnose the heart attacks that were slowly leading to her heart failure-- would have flooded out at him. I walked past him and out the door into the snow that had just started falling.


Shortly after we returned home, we received a phone call from a very pleasant woman who expressed her sympathy and wondered if we had ever discussed tissue donation as a family. We all looked at each other and smiled. Less than an hour after Mom had died, we were gently reminded that there was a chance for her to “pay forward” some of the miracle our family had received. We must have been the easiest “consent” call she had ever made! It was such a gift to us to be able to break through the numbness and make this important decision. We heard later that 17 people benefited from her tissue, including bone, cartelidge, skin and eyes.

Trying to get back into a routine after Mom died was indescribable. People didn’t seem to understand that my entire world had changed. I managed to get up, remind myself to keep breathing, and forced myself to try to keep going, numbly moving through an unknowing world. I tried to reach out, but couldn’t do it. I was scared of how I was feeling, but felt powerless to change it.


After a few weeks of struggling to adjust to the new world in which I found myself, that angel from the memorial service began speaking to me again. One afternoon, I was walking alone through a shopping mall and I inadvertently kicked something. It rattled off to the side of the walkway, but I followed it to see what it was. When I picked it up, that warm pulsating feeling in my heart started again. It was a small piece of red heart-shaped plastic set in a plastic ring. I put it in my pocket and smiled all the way home. It wasn’t until a later trip to the mall that I discovered that it was the top of a Harry Potter “magic potion” vial from a children’s toy display.


Two days later, I noticed something sticking out from under a pile of leaves on the sidewalk next to my car. I picked it up, and found it to be a child’s bracelet strung on a small piece of elastic. The beads were alternating purple “diamonds” (Mom’s favorite color) and white hearts with little smiley faces on them. At this point, I knew that the hearts were not just a passing phase.


They continued to appear over the next few weeks: a heart sticker on the ground near the entrance to the subway; another piece of heart-shaped confetti on the floor of a diner I go to in Chelsea; a small plastic heart-shaped charm with a purple “peace” sign in the middle; a paisley bedspread that I have used for years without ever noticing the distinctly identifiable hearts worked into the pattern.



Once, as I was walking home at night, someone inside a house I was passing by turned on a light which cast a heart-shaped shadow of the ornate ironwork fence onto the sidewalk in front of me. Soon after, I found a handful of heart-shaped candies in the middle of a street—in the exact spot where Dad and I had been run down by a car the week before yet miraculously walked away relatively unharmed.

They have continued steadily in the past [almost] six years: yet another piece of mylar heart-shaped confetti; a silver heart locket; a heart shaped cardboard gift tag; a deflated heart balloon partially buried in the sand on Fire Island; a few more heart-shaped stickers; a stuffed plush heart toy; a coffee stir-stick with a heart topper; a penny with a heart cut out of the center; children’s sunglasses with heart shaped rims; a heart magnet. I keep them all in a special place and pull them out when I need to be reminded that I am never alone. In this day and age with pop-culture so prevalent, hearts are everywhere, but MY hearts are different. They’re not the items on gift shop shelves, or pictures. Each and every one of them is oddly out of place, as if left intentionally for me to find, each one a miracle, and they appear when I least expect them.

I have opened myself to the magic of these miracles and celebrate them when they happen. They also serve as a reminder that because of the generosity of a grieving family back in March of 1993, Mom was given a new heart, and our family was given an extra 7 years, 10 months, and 3 days with her. Donating her tissue when she left to become my guardian angel was the easiest and most important decision I have ever made, and I will continue to tell the world about the miracle of organ and tissue donation so others can know the joys of sharing life.

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Please visit the website for the United Network for Organ Sharing to find out more information about organ and tissue donation, sign your driver's license indicating your wish to become a donor, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, TALK TO YOUR FAMILY ABOUT YOUR WISHES.