THERE'S ONE ROULADE SHE CAN'T SING

When my ex-wife told me she would be back in Iowa headlining a concert, there was no question in my mind that I'd attend.  The date of the concert was on a weekend I was scheduled to work, but I could have easily signed up for PTO.  But as the date approached, I never got around to doing that, or booking a motel, or buying tickets for the event.

I didn't go, is what I'm saying.

Sue Ellen was--presumably still is--a wonderful singer, and of all the things I miss about our time together, hearing her perform is high on the list.  And yet, such was the nature of our relationship, even that was a point of contention.  I thought she had the potential to turn pro, and pushed her to get more gigs and record.  But she was ambivalent about performing, for reasons that I dismissed because...because...

Because I was an asshole?

Well, yeah.  On the other hand, it wasn't just me, because she...Look, if I told you everything that went down between us, what we did to each other, you would most assuredly think much less of the both of us.  Bu that's not the only thing in the mix.  There were abundant good times, too, and even some of the shitty things we did ultimately gave us the tools to navigate the rest of our lives more successfully.

I haven't even been in the same room as her since the hearing at which my lawyer advised against eye contact, and as everything about this sentence tells you, it didn't end well.  But we eventually reconnected over the phone--her safely in Maryland, me far away in Iowa--and we became friends all over again.  We talked almost daily for awhile, and she was the person who encouraged me to start this very site.

We're good now, as good as can be, considering.  But to actually see her again, even from a seat in the audience, in the town we once called home...there are about a hundred thousand ways I can see that scenario playing out, emotion-wise, and even the best possible outcome could only be described as melancholy.

Maybe we'll see each other again, some distant day in the future.  Until then, the past is still in the past, and it probably needs to stay there.

WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, SO MUCH YOUNGER THAN TODAY

I've told people the stories, of the well-liquored crowd gathering in the Vegas streets as midnight approached, of the Elvis impersonator at the wedding chapel whose singing made my soon-to-be wife wince, of the taxi ride back to the hotel as fireworks lit up the sky.

These are the stories of my wedding night, twenty years ago today.

Thing is, though, they seem to exist mostly as stories, not as actual, tangible memories.  Whenever I tell anybody about that night, or the brief years of married life that followed, it's like I'm reciting lines, an actor late in the run of the play, no longer capable of feeling the meaning behind the words.

Part of that is simply time.  This happened a long time ago, and a lot has happened since.  Memories fade, details disappear, all to make way for newer memories.  The human brain only has so much storage capacity.

Sure, but I can remember the late afternoon light falling through the windows in the mental ward of the University Hospital in Iowa City, and the Phil Collins video on the TV, and the juice boxes that accompanied meals.  I can still feel the intense heat and smell the urine-soaked floors of the Port Authority men's room from my first trip to New York City.  For that matter, I still vividly recall the crisp air and overcast sky on my first date with Sue Ellen, before I was foolish enough to propose, before she accepted, before we found ourselves in Vegas.

After that, though, it all gets hazy.  Is it because I know how the story ends?  Have I distanced myself as a form of protection?  Or was it maybe just not as big a deal as it seemed at the time?  I'd never been in love before, and I thought it was supposed to last forever, but really, it was only five years out of a life that has lasted fifty-two years.  Maybe it was just a blip along the way.

We're still friends.  We don't talk as much as we used to, but that's okay.  We have different lives, and as time goes on, it's become more obvious that we don't really have all that much in common.  But I suspect we have similar memories of that night, and of all our time together.  It was a thing that happened, but it was another time, another place.

Another life.

PEOPLE TELL ME IT DON'T TURN NO MORE

The first person in my life to die was Uncle Burr.  I don't even remember how old I was, but young enough that Mom decided it would be for the best if I didn't attend the funeral.  Everyone else did, though--on that day I came home from school to a plate full of brownies, a new comic book and a note from Mom.  I may not have grasped the concept of death, but hey--brownies!

The thing is, I don't remember Uncle Burr.  I remember that he existed, I remember that he and Auntie Alice would come to visit once in awhile, and they'd stay in Grandma's trailer, right across the driveway from our house, but there's a hole where the actual man should be.  My memories of him are like a bad, smudgy carbon copy--a memory of a memory.

Even my Dad, who died twenty-one years ago, is no longer as active a presence in my mind as he should be.  I recall his blue chambray shirts, his fondness for Grain Belt and the sound of his voice, but I have to work a little harder to remember what he was actually like, to remember him doing or saying something specific.  Dad, my brother Keith, even Mom, in whose memory I started this site--yeah, they're there, but not all the time.

On the other hand, Walter Becker and Tom Petty, guys I never met, never had a chance of meeting--they won't ever leave my memory.

Partly it's the music, of course--there's always a Steely Dan or Petty tune playing in my head.  But I only saw The Dan live one time, and Becker's hilarious, rambling patter ("I'd like to invite you all--figuratively, not literally--back to my hotel room for a drink"), his old-man sweat pants and countless dazzling guitar solos will stay with me, even as I forget memories I shared with actual family and friends.

And Tom Petty, well, I mean: Damn The Torpedoes dropped like a big-ass bomb just as I was entering high school, and its string of perfect singles--Refugee, Don't Do Me Like That, Here Comes My Girl--tracked one of the most difficult periods of my life, and the depression I spiraled into for most of the eighties was made largely bearable by Hard Promises, Long After Dark and Southern Accents.

Our cultural heroes become a part of us, whether we're telling their jokes, singing their lyrics or watching their movies.  They matter, and when they die, it's natural to grieve--if not for the actual person, then for what they brought to our lives, and what they can never bring again.  Or to put it another way: I loved my mom, but she didn't write American Girl.

I LOVE BEING REDUCED TO A CULTURAL STEREOTYPE

In the online world, things get recommended to you for reasons you don't always understand (No, Amazon, I do not want the soundtrack to Xanadu, so please stop trying to push it on me.)  In this case it was Google that thought I would be interested in the trailer for this new movie.

That, uh, looks a little familiar, doesn't it?  I mean, the specifics of the plot and characters may be somewhat different, but in form and intent, doesn't it seem a lot like this?

 Look, I realize that not every New York-set comedy/drama is automatically ripping off Woody Allen.  I haven't seen Person To Person.  Sure, everything about the visuals in this trailer, from the staging to the framing of the shots, is, shall we say, reminiscent of the style Allen worked out with cinematographers Gordon Willis and Carlo di Palma, just as the clipped pacing strongly reminds one of the cutting style of Allen's former editor Susan Morse.  But it's just a trailer.  Maybe the movie's different.  (Louis C. K., incidentally, hired Morse to edit one season of his series Louie, but hey, I'm sure that was pure coincidence.)

I have, however, seen Frances Ha...

 
...and yeah, it's a really good movie, and the focus and characters are different, but come on.

And then there's the most egregious example of all.

i mean, they're not even trying to hide what they're doing in this case, right down to the use of  white-on-black titles and old timey music.  The difference, of course, is that Annie Hall is prickly and uncomfortable while When Harry Met Sally is cuddly and lovable.

And it's weird that people rip off Allen by making generic "neurotic New Yorkers" or "bittersweet romance" movies, because Allen himself has made relatively few of those.  He has one of the most recognizable visual and verbal styles of any filmmaker in history--at his worst, they become mannerisms--but he's really quite diverse in his subject matter.  Many of his best films--Zelig, The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Alice--are fantasies, or memory pieces like Radio Days and Cafe Society.  Some of his best comedies, like Manhattan Murder Mystery or Bullets Over Broadway, are pure door-slamming farce, but nobody tries to emulate that.

No, they go for the things that are stereotypical "Woody Allen" without seeming to realize he's a filmmaker, not a brand.  The only other director who has been stolen from so shamelessly for so long is Steven Spielberg, everything from Cocoon to Super 8, and like Allen, Spielberg has made relatively few movies in what is thought to be his signature style. 

Allen has a new movie, Wonder Wheel, coming out later this year.  He's in his eighties, and his best days are almost certainly behind him, but even if this one sucks at a Curse Of The Jade Scorpion level, at least the only person ripping him off this time will be himself.

IT'S BEAUTIFUL, AND I THINK IT'S WHAT I WANT TO BE

As she started explaining the details of the chemo, my mind wandered, because that was my defense mechanism.  Anytime she talked as if she had limited time left, I pretended she and the doctors and everybody else was wrong, because it was the only way the world made sense.  I didn't want to live in a world without my mom, and I tried to will it so.

But I wasn't listening in another sense.  As she explained the possible side effects, what chemo could and couldn't do, she was also expressing her own ambivalence about the whole thing.  The cancer was fatal.  There was no doubt about that--it had spread too far, and her body was too old and weak to fight it.  All the chemo could do was slow it down, give her another few months or weeks or days.

Well, you have to do it, I said.  You have to live as long as you can.

So she did.  The first round went okay, but the second round was much worse.  She was violently ill and physically weak, and since she lived alone, she took a nasty fall.  Her medical team had somehow neglected to take her off her blood pressure meds, and they combined with the chemo to limit the flow of blood to her brain.  She started hallucinating giant scarecrows and fissures in the earth.  Her body weakened.  Her heart stopped.  She died, and the chemo hadn't extended her time on earth, and in fact only made her final days miserable.

And I realize now that she never wanted any of it in the first place.  Living with cancer was uncomfortable, but she was still herself, still eating and going out to movies (and complaining about them), and she probably saw the end coming and just wanted to be done with it.  To make a comparison I'm sure Mom would have appreciated, she wanted to end like Season Five of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, at the top of her game and like she'd always been, but the chemo made her more like Season Seven, muddled and weird and somewhat out of character.  

How dangerous it is to play the "what if?" game.  What if she hadn't had chemo?  Would her final days have been less painful?  Would her mind have been clearer, her body more steady?  Would she have not fallen, and fallen again, with welts and lumps on her face?  Would she have seemed less small and sad when the time came?  Could she have spent her final hours at home, surrounded by her beloved cats and dog, instead of an anonymous hospital room?

No.  Or, put another way, maybe, but so what?  She died, and she would have died either way, and it wouldn't have been pretty because death never is.  And none of that means anything, because the important thing is that she laughed and cried and sang to her cats and marveled at rainbows and loved her children with the intensity of a thousand suns.

She lived.

IT MAKES IT BETTER, I KNOW

The flimsy cardboard kitty carrier may not be strong enough to hold him if he starts to struggle.  Delmar is a very strong cat, and can be very determined.  But he simply eases in and rests there.  He knows.

He and I have such history.  I've had him since he was born, the first cat I owned after my protracted, painful divorce.  I had to move back in with my mom for awhile, and Delmar was there.  I got a job, moved into a tiny apartment, got a better job, kept the same apartment, and he remained my constant companion.  Mom died, I was in despair, he comforted me as best he could, mostly just by being there, which was always enough.

It's a gray day.  Not cold, but a dampness in the air.  Not that I notice it as I take him out to the car.  I reach through the air holes of the carrier and touch his coarse, spiky fur. "It's okay, Buddy.  We're going for a ride."

A few blocks later, we're at the vet's office.  They wave me right in to the exam room.  The table is covered with a little blue blanket, and it looks so much like the penguin blanket my mom had, the one I inherited, the one Delmar so frequently used for naps.  I start to lose it.

Del was born pretty much fully-formed.  He never had a cute kitten phase.  He was awkward and gangly from the very beginning, and always would be.  He could be cranky, he could be sweet, he was never quiet and restful.  I could usually anticipate his moods, but he couldn't tell me when his kidneys started failing, not until he started drinking massive amounts of water and eating less, and by then it was too late.

I set him on the table and he immediately curls up, as if he's bypassed all the other stages and gone straight to acceptance.  The doctor comes in and explains the procedure, asks if I'm okay with it, has me sign some forms.  I hold Del as they give him a sedative, then they leave the room while it takes effect.

I talk to Del, I sing the lyrics I invented for the first season instrumental theme from Walker, Texas Ranger ("Hey!  It's Delmar and he's great!  It's Delmar and he's grea-ea-eat!").  The doc comes back in, shaves some fur from his hind leg and administers the IV.  Del puts his paw in my hand.  I grip it as tight as I can.

And he's gone.

"Do you need some time?" the vet asks, and I nod.  "We don't need this room for the rest of the day.  Take as long as you need."

His paw is still resting in my hand.  He looks like he's asleep.  I don't know what I expected.  I talk to him some more, running through his many, many nicknames.  (Del Star, Delmar Von Delmington, Li'l Feller, My Special Little Guy...)  My tears are falling without control, hitting the table, dotting the blanket all around him.

There is a thoughtfully provided box of tissues on a stool beside the table.  I blow my nose, then again, and I turn back to Del.  "Not so bad, was it?" I say.  "See you, Buddy.  See you whenever I can."  A final tissue to wipe my eyes, and I leave.

Driving home, I'm listening to Ben Folds' Songs For Silverman because it's the album that happens to be playing, and I know I will always unfortunately associate it with this.  Janie will be there when I get home, and two other wonderful cats, and my beloved beagle.

But Delmar won't be, and he never will be there again.

COMMON CLAY

It was burnoff season in the summer of 1980, when the Big 3 networks aired all the failed pilots and unloved theatrical releases to which they owned the rights, and which would inevitably get terrible ratings.  But they had these things, and they were contractually required to air them, so when they knew no one was watching, they'd go ahead and show them, these pathetic Bob Denver sitcoms and terrible variety shows, and these odd, obscure movies.  Like The Little Prince.

A failed, little-loved adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's book, it was airing in a ninety minute time slot as part of The CBS Saturday Night Movie.  Though a short film, it would have been extensively cut to fit in that time slot, which shows how little the network cared about it.

Nonetheless, my brother and I made sure to watch.  We didn't know Saint-Exupery's book at all, or care about the fact that it had an original score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.  We just watched because it featured an appearance by Bob Fosse, and we were both huge admirers of Fosse's All That Jazz, and the chance to watch the man himself, as opposed to Roy Scheider portraying him, was just to strong a lure.  Plus, hey Stanley Donen directed!  Singin' In The Rain, Bedazzled.  How bad could it be?

Well, it wasn't very good, and even Fosse's sequence is kind of disappointing.  But it does have Gene Wilder as a fox, a wild fox tamed by the title character.

This scene was followed by a commercial break.  We were watching this in my brother's room upstairs, and during the break, I went downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink.  Turns out Mom was watching it, too.  She'd exiled herself to the kitchen to watch it on a small black-and-white TV, because she knew it wasn't anything Dad would like.

And she was crying.  I asked her if she was okay.  "Oh, honey," she said.  "The poor fox," then, unable to say anything more, she continued crying.

I could talk and talk and talk about the greatness of Gene Wilder, who died Sunday at the fine age of 83.  I could explain how his surprisingly melancholic performance in Blazing Saddles anchors that film's anarchy, how his meticulous preparation for the role of Willy Wonka, a role many actors would have tossed off, resulted in a film that is rediscovered and loved by every new generation.  I could tell you that the screenplay he co-wrote with Mel Brooks for Young Frankenstein is a masterpiece of carefully-escalated comic madness, or that his performance, descending from barely-controlled calm to outright madness, in a brief segment of Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex is possibly the greatest comic performance ever put on film.

I could tell you all that, and it would be true.  But more important than any of that, at least to me, is this: Once upon a time, he made Mom cry.