Please Happy

My Mom would have 59-years-old today. That sounds old!
I haven’t done anything yet today in her honor. This morning, my dentist recommended two gold (yes, gold) crowns for ground-down molars. Stress, he said, will eventually cause me to wear down all my teeth. Gold Mouth Whaley coming your way. I’ve spent the rest of the day in Lightroom and Final Cut Pro and Adobe Audition, listening, cropping, cutting, overlapping. Drank a lot of seltzer. Ate some yogurt. I’ll run in her honor as the sun sets and look out over this crazy city I now call home. Breathe in and out because I can. I always do that in her honor.

Also, I wanted to post this, from the final book in the Ender series. Jake and I only have a few more chapters left.

Excerpt (conversation between brothers) from Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card:

“But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There’s fruition, Grego. There’s the happiness we’ve already had. The happiness of each moment.The end of our lives, even if there’s no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn’t erase the beginning.”

“But it won’t have amounted to anything,” said Grego. “If your children die, then
it was all a waste.”

“No,” said Olhado quietly. “You say that because you have no children, Greguinho. But none of it is wasted. The child you hold in your arms for only a day before he dies, that is not wasted, because that one day is enough of a purpose in itself. Entropy has been thrown back for an hour, a day, a week, a month. Just because we might all die here on this little world does not undo the lives before the deaths.”

Grego shook his head. “Yes it does, Olhado. Death undoes everything.”

Olhado shrugged. “Then why do you bother doing everything, Grego? Because someday you will die. Why should anyone ever have children? Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or
blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That’s the truth– what is, what was, what will be– not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe.”

In memory of Shannon Elizabeth Whaley. 1983 – 2012.

Shannon and her brother Christopher singing together.

For the past month, I’ve been having vivid dreams that leave me exhausted. Nightmares often.
And in a lot of them, Flip makes an appearance. Sometimes he’s playing with his brother, DovR, snuggling or wrestling. Sometimes he’s just there in the background. And in the most recent one he was in pain. He was dying, just as he did in real life when he was 14-months-old. He died of an incurable disease that affects kittens and really old cats.
We miss him so much.

I met Ed Meghreblian through Jake’s aunt. He’s the kind of guy who you’d want spinning you on the dance floor. The kind of guy whose stories never go\et old or boring, no matter how many times you hear about the underserved kids he coached in South L.A. And, most importantly for me, he’s the kind of guy who is still in love with his wife, after more than 60 years. Ed and Dorothy are total role models for me and Jake.

Ed Meghreblian passed away last week. But, not before a former student saw a short vid I had made for aol’s Patch and got in touch with Ed to tell him how much he had meant to her. He meant a lot to a lot of people. And I am so thankful to have met him.

From the L.A. Times:

Meghreblian, Edward Michael
December 25, 1923 – August 11, 2011
Enthralling storyteller of life experiences, from shared boyhood with brother Robert in Menands, New York, WWII veteran, career in the Department of Parks and Recreation and initiation of L.A. Municipal Games, service in Human Relations.
Devoted UCLA Bruins basketball fan, natural athlete, everyone-clear-the-floor dancer. Tasteful and dapper, with stylish integrity, yet guileless.
With innate ability to connect easily with anyone, his yearning was to help people fulfill their potential. Mentor and surrogate father of youth from all economic backgrounds and ethnicities, he nurtured innumerable relationships that lasted decades.
Woodworking artisan, a plan always in the works.
A unique relationship with the English language inspired the coining of countless new words and phrases.
Son of Armenian immigrant parents, family was the source of his deepest pride. Devoted and protective, he and Dorothy were married 60 years. He considered their daughter Caren, son-in-law Harry, and grandson Max among his most precious gifts.

Sheryl Glatt, 50, of Simi Valley, California, was gracious enough to let me photograph and record her during her extended hospital stay at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, CA. Glatt underwent 15 surgeries in the hopes of restoring feeling to her left foot. She suffers from advanced diabetes, neuropathy and kidney failure. When she heals from her surgeries, she will once again be at the top of the list for a kidney and a pancreas transplant. I produced this as part of my work at the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting. Reporter John Gonzales wrote the accompanying story as well as several other articles for the Kidney Transplant Recipients Forced Back on Dialysis project.

I would prefer conversations about peace, candlelit vigils and deep breaths to partying, chanting and beach balls.