Everybody’s Got a Little Light

You know that soundtrack that runs under your life? Could be folk, rock, rap, classical or jazz. It could change. Different tunes fit different situations - John Williams can’t write them all.

Some times it’s Peter, Paul, and Mary singing “Inch by inch, row by row” sometimes it’s Eric Clapton’s guitar, but every spring it’s that descending bass line in Parliament’s “Flashlight”. Singing “Now, I lay me down to sleep. Ooh, I just can’t find a beat.”

Yesterday we went to a funeral and then had a meeting over at the cemetery. I went to bed with the day spinning over and over again. At the funeral the pianist played and sang “Ave Maria”. I’ve heard my sister sing it twice - once at Kim and my wedding and once at Elena’s funeral.

Context is everything.

It’s not just the singer or the song. It’s the setting.

I was thinking of that yesterday at Patty’s funeral. It was the first funeral Kim and I had been to since Elena’s. Just three weeks between the two. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Paul and Sue. At a wedding all of the focus is on the people being celebrated and yet at a funeral all of my attention was drawn to the family members. I don’t know if that’s the way it is. I have a hard time remembering funerals before Elena’s.

Paul spoke eloquently about his dead sister and tied it back to thoughts of his father as well. I watched admiring his ability to choose words that painted a picture of the dead as well as her relationship to those that were gathered at the funeral. Somewhere after his talk and Sue’s reading I drifted off a bit only to be shaken back into the present with the playing and singing of “Amazing Grace”.

It could be a youth spent in the company of folk singers, but I’ve always associated that song with the story of composer and his belated and slow realizations and conversion of a slave trader to a minister and abolitionist. But here in a church it was the story of a life considered.

Again, context.

I was about Elena’s age when my parents took me back stage to talk to Pete Seeger and to request that he sing “The Bullfrog Song”. A song I never thought to sing to Elena.

Surprisingly, it was not hard to keep our thoughts on Paul and his loss. This wasn’t about us. Paul, like Maggie, had just lost a sister. Kim and I spent some time downstairs with the friends and family and had some lunch.

Kim and I drove with the radio off. Our internal soundtracks enough to fill our ears.

A few hours later we were back at Lake View Cemetery to pay the balance on the graves we had purchased. Derrick has been an amazing man to work with. More so when you realize that his nineteen year old son was recently killed in a car accident. His son’s birthday approaches. I can’t imagine working with so many others who are grieving given his personal situation.

We drove over to Elena’s grave. Just behind it was the fresher dirt with the just fading flowers for the eleven year old girl and her grandparents who died in a car crash. So many people with so many losses.

Kim, her mom, Maggie, and I walked around the graves near Elena’s surrounded by context.

But yesterday was also the first day of Spring. It is finally officially Spring. Even at a funeral. Even in a cemetery. Even in Ohio.

The cemetery gave us a brochure telling us when different flowers and trees tend to bloom. We’ll be back in April for a picnic near Daffodil Hill.

Spring.

When I worked in Urban Contemporary radio at WDMT, Dean Rufus used to bring out Parliament’s “Flashlight” to celebrate Spring. Not on the first day of Spring according to the calendar - but on that first really nice day when it smells like Spring and you want to blow off work and enjoy the day. Dean would play it on the air over and over. Somehow he couldn’t repeat it enough. I’ve continued the tradition for the twenty years since I’ve left the station.

The bass line just sets me free in a way I can’t explain. I’ve got the funk cranked up way too loud. Teams stream down my cheeks as I see Elena dancing with all her heart. I join her.

“Flash light - spot light”.

Crying and yet so happy. Dancing with my baby.

“Everybody’s got a little light under the sun.”

Just a Pip

There are people who want to be Gladys Knight while others are content with being Pips. Of course, most of us spend our lives being a little bit of both.

Elena loved those times when she could be Gladys. She would sneak looks at herself doing different things to see how others might view her. Even when she was getting ready to cry about something that wasn’t fair, she’d glance at her reflection in the oven door to make sure the look would have the impact she wanted.

When the music played she would run for a plastic microphone in the same way that her mom had held a hairbrush when she was Elena’s age. The microphone didn’t even need to be plugged in - when she was downstairs the microphone was just a prop. When I asked her who she’d want to have over for her birthday if she could have anyone from history, Elena immediately said George Washington. She then thought a bit and said, “no, I’d rather have Aly and A.J.”

Me, I’m happy being a Pip. I’m the voice between the music. I’m happy telling you what kind of day is coming or what happened in sports yesterday when other Gladyses were playing in the NCAA finals. I’ve loved jobs where I’ve written or edited articles about technology that a Gladys here or there has made beautiful music with.

Some of us love being a Pip.

There are those who stand with the other Pips, moving in unison and singing a melodic line that makes no sense on its own and are happy with their contribution to the whole. So what if no one else notices their contribution - they feel it and take pride in what everyone has created. It could be that we’re risk averse - but I don’t think so. We’re the ones who blush when it’s our birthday and everyone is fussing a bit too much over us.

Oh, we still like being recognized. We want to know that others have noticed and appreciated our contribution. But we’re happy if they then move on to other things. We don’t want to be on Oprah or even local television. I’ve been on local t.v. and believe me, it’s not a pretty site. We just want people to pause a moment so that we can touch them in some way. Maybe the music will bring a little smile.

You can be Gladys night to some and a Pip to others.

Miles Copeland explains this in the movie about Sting’s tour with great Jazz musicians. Branford Marsalis was in the band but, Miles reminds the audience, people are still coming to see Sting. In this tour, Branford, Omar Hakim, Kenny Kirland, and the others were not the draw. They were Pips.

This might seem wrong. After all, in “A Chorus Line” we see how hard it is to go back to being a Pip. Once you’ve learned to kick a little higher and express your own personality, how can you go back to the line and not stick out. The chorus line is supposed to be an entity - not the collection of individuals that it really is.

Sarah, a talented producer with whom I’ve worked for years, has shown the power of being a Pip. She refuses to sing a solo and yet she leads the team from the chorus line. Things don’t tend to happen unless she approves them and yet she never seeks nor accepts the spotlight.

My current gig involves a lot of sound editing. I produce a weekly half hour podcast. My voice might be heard for three to four minutes a show. To those who don’t know, it may seem that my entire contribution are those few minutes of being Gladys. I influence the show much more in my moments of being a Pip.

While others speak, I edit. I select which things that they’ve said will be heard and I shape the way in which they will come across. I commit to doing this while maintaining the integrity of what they originally said. The most recent program has a single segment containing a single voice. Maybe there is two minutes of my voice in the entire show. But there are more than two hundred edits.

A Pip has power.

I think all people are both. Even Elena did not spend most of her time as Gladys. It’s interesting to watch when it is important for someone to be Gladys and when they are content being a Pip. You can see this in meetings at work. You can see this in little league baseball and soccer. Some coaches and parents understand that they are Pips for their children who are on the field playing and some insist that they are Gladys and it is the young players’ job to support their dreams.

Some people insist on being Gladys more than would seem to be healthy. They stand too often with a hairbrush by their lips. Step up to the CD player and cut the music for a moment. Let them listen to how they sound without the Pips.

Hopefully they are still happy with how they sound while being extra appreciative for the voices that support them.

Father Gary’s Homily

Father Gary’s address at Elena’s funeral was, in my view, perfect for the occasion. I can not imagine how hard it is for a priest to prepare for such an address. When a six year old dies it would be easy for a priest to say “it’s God’s will” or “she’s in a better place.” Father Gary did not take the easy approach. He dug down deep and spoke to us and those gathered in a personal way that spoke to our questions and frustrations without dismissing them.

We’ve all been to funerals where the person officiating didn’t really know the person who died or their family. They may mispronounce the person’s name or paint a picture of their life that those gathered don’t recognize. Gary has known Maggie and Elena as long as we have. Kim has been a member of his church. When we were first married we lived in a house just a couple of blocks from Our Lady of Peace and Kim would walk over each Sunday and I would meet her for breakfast afterwards.

Here, with permission, is the text of Father Gary’s Homily.

ELENA STEINBERG (FEBRUARY 27, 2006)

I WANT TO WELCOME ALL OF YOU – ESPECIALLY ELENA’S FAMILY AND THEIR GOOD FRIENDS TO OUR LADY OF PEACE CHURCH. EVERYONE WHO VISITS THIS PLACE REMARKS ON WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CHURCH WE HAVE - AND THEY ARE RIGHT. BUT ITS REAL BEAUTY IS NOT CONTAINED IN MOSAIC OR MARBLE. THIS PLACE IS BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE WHO COME HERE TO PRAY AND TO CELEBRATE THE PRESENCE OF GOD. ELENA WAS ONE OF THOSE SPECIAL PEOPLE WHO MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL.

DANIEL AND KIM, ON WEDNESDAY EVENING IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM OF UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL I JOINED THE COMMUNITY OF YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS – ALL OF US BEGINNING OR SOON TO BEGIN A SEARCH FOR A WORD WE COULD OFFER TO CONSOLE YOU — ALL THE WHILE KNOWING THAT NO WORD, HOWEVER SINCERELY SPOKEN, – NO SENTANCE, HOWEVER WISE, COULD ACCOMPLISH HALF OF WHAT WE HOPED IT WOULD DO. YOU SEE, WHEN AN OLD PERSON DIES, THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO SAY. “HE HAD A GOOD LIFE.” “SHE LIVED LIFE TO THE FULL.” AND, SOMETIMES WHEN A PERSON HAD SUFFERED FOR A LONG TIME WE EVEN SAY, SINCERELY, THAT “DEATH WAS A BLESSING – A BLESSING IN DISGUISE.” BUT WHEN SOMEONE AS YOUNG AND AS FULL OF LIFE AS ELENA IS TAKEN FROM US IT IS NO BLESSING IN OR OUT OF DISGUISE. WE FEEL CHEATED AND BETRAYED BY THE GOD WE TRUSTED. WE’RE CONFUSED – AND YES, WE ARE ANGRY. ANGRY AT GOD, ASKING JUST WHERE GOD WAS ON WEDNESDAY, AND ANGRY AT OURSELVES BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE THE WORD, WE DON’T HAVE THE SENTENCE. WE CAN’T FIND THE SAYING THAT COULD MAKE SENSE OUT OF THIS FOR YOU OR FOR US.

THAT EVENING WHEN WE GATHERED TOGETHER AROUND ELENA – WE ANOINTED HER – WE PRAYED TOGETHER – AND THERE WERE TEARS THAT NO PARENT OR GRANDPARENT SHOULD EVER BE CALLED ON TO SHED. WHEN OUR PRAYERS FELL SILENT – I HEARD ONE OF ELENA’S GRANDMOTHERS SAY, MORE TO HERSELF THAN TO ANYONE ELSE, “WE WERE SO LUCKY – WE WERE SO LUCKY TO HAVE HER AS LONG AS WE DID.” THE WISDOM AND THE FAITH OF GRANDMOTHERS — GRANDMOTHERS LIKE PRISCILLA AND GERALDINE: SOMETIMES THAT’S ALL WE HAVE TO KEEP US FROM SCREAMING OUT LOUD.

IT WAS THE WORDS OF A GRIEVING GRANDMOTHER THAT HELPED ME REALIZE WHERE GOD WAS ON WEDNESDAY. GOD WAS RIGHT THERE. GOD WAS IN THAT LITTLE ROOM WITH US. GOD WAS WEEPING WITH ELENA’S PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS. OUR FAITH ISN’T A SUIT OF ARMOR – WE HAVE ALL LEARNED THAT TO ONE DEGREE OR ANOTHER. IT HAS NEVER CLAIMED TO BE A GUARANTEE THAT ACCIDENTS WON’T HAPPEN, TRAGEDIES WON’T WOUND US – OR EVEN THAT BEAUTIFUL AND PRECIOUS LITTLE GIRLS WON’T DIE. OUR FAITH IS A PROMISE THAT GOD IS BESIDE US AND WITH US TO BEAR US UP WHENEVER ANY OF THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS INVADE OUR FAMILIES AND OUR LIVES.

THE NINETIETH PSALM – A PRAYER OF MOSES – CONTAINS THESE WORDS … “FOR A THOUSAND YEARS IN YOUR SIGHT ARE BUT AS YESTERDAY WHEN IT IS PAST, AND AS A WATCH IN THE NIGHT.” FOR US, SIX YEARS ALMOST SEVEN IS WAY TOO LITTLE, MUCH TOO SHORT. PERHAPS IN THE EYES OF AN ETERNAL GOD FOR WHOM A THOUSAND YEARS AND A YESTERDAY ARE THE SAME, FOR WHOM TIME HOLDS NO MEANING - ELENA LIVED A COMPLETE AND PERFECT LIFE – A LIFE THAT WAS BLESSED AND SANCTIFIED. FOR EVERY ONE OF THOSE YEARS AND YESTERDAYS, AND WATCHES IN THE NIGHT, SHE WAS WANTED AND LOVED, TREASURED AND CHERISHED. TRUTHFULLY, WE CAN SAY SHE HAD A GOOD LIFE. MAYBE WE CAN EVEN SAY SHE DID LIVE LIFE TO THE FULL.

ON THOSE SUNDAY MORNINGS – WHEN ELENA AND MAGGIE AND MOM MADE IT TO CHURCH ON TIME WHICH WAS, WELL –TO BE KIND – ABOUT THIRTY PERCENT OF THE TIME. THEY SAT IN THIS SECTION CLOSE TO THE ALTAR. WHEN THE MUSIC BEGAN AND CROSS AND CANDLES LED THE PROCESSION DOWN THE AISLE, I COULD SEE KIM AND MAGGIE FOLLOWING THE WORDS IN THE HYMNAL, FACING THE SANCTUARY, AND JOINING IN PRAYER – ELENA HAD OTHER THINGS TO DO – MOSTLY ENTERTAINING THOSE WHO SAT IN THE SAME SECTION OF CHURCH. AS I CAME DOWN THE AISLE SHE WOULD PEAK AROUND MOM AND GIVE ME SMILE AND A WAVE. THAT WAS HER GIFT TO ME AND TO OUR CHURCH. I LOOKED FORWARD TO THAT SO MUCH.

DANIEL, AND KIM AND MAGGIE, I KNOW THAT WORDS ARE MORE THAN USELESS RIGHT NOW. BUT WE WERE LUCKY TO HAVE HER FOR AS LONG AS WE DID – AND WE KNOW THAT WE SHOULDN’T STOP LOOKING FOR HER SMILE OR FOR THAT WAVE – FOR THIS SEPARATION IS ONLY TEMPORARY. WE WILL ENJOY THEM AGAIN BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, BECAUSE …. A THOUSAND YEARS IN HIS SIGHT ARE BUT AS YESTERDAY WHEN IT IS PAST, THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A WATCH IN THE NIGHT.

Little Things

There we were last night on the other side of sympathy again feeling completely inadequate. A friend had just lost his sister and our words and offers seemed so small.

To us.

Half a lifetime ago, when I was in college I remember hearing of a bank scam. Some young programmer had figured out a way to take the fractions of a penny that are rounded off each day in interest calculations and divert these to his own account. No one who lost a piece of a penny felt the lost of such an insignificant amount. And yet, his bank account grew quickly.

Since then there have been countless times when we’ve seen a mother or a father at the bottom of a staircase with a baby in a stroller. It is nothing for one of us to pick up one side of the stroller and help the parent up the stairs. Such a small act. And yet, when someone has stopped to help me out in the same situation it has meant so much. It’s not just that they’ve made my journey easier - it’s more that someone else took a moment in time to notice and help me.

And so, no matter how stupid and small our gesture seems to be, we offer food, conversation, a place to stay, whatever they need to our friend who has lost somebody. He says something important when I apologize for not being there when his father died. He says that he didn’t tell anyone. He says that he didn’t realize then that it would be important to other people that want to help him.

I didn’t understand that either until recently. I didn’t understand how much other people want to help and how much they are certain that they are not up to the task. So many people have called this week to apologize for not doing more. I keep telling them, whatever you did was exactly the right thing to do - even if it was nothing at all. Coming across country to give us a hug was an electric connection that helped us through. Sending us an email saying you were thinking of us was the reminder we needed. Quietly contributing to Elena’s fund will help other children. Taking a moment to read Green Eggs and Ham to your children like it has never been read before or just to give them an extra look or a hug makes the world we all live in better.

It all seems small and meaningless. But like those fractions of pennies it all adds up to make us all richer. Thank you again for the little things.

Elena Would Have wanted

When we were considering whether or not to go to Wisconsin the weekend after Elena was buried people told us “it’s what Elena would have wanted.”

Of course that’s impossible to know.

You hear that all the time in reference to someone who has died. When a father dies you might be told, “Here’s his pocket watch. He would have wanted you to have it.” After a spouse has died people might wait a while but then say, “You need to start dating again. She would have wanted you to be happy.”

This is harder when a child dies because “what they want” has not had a chance to mature. In fifteen years we can’t still be using the measure of what Elena would have wanted when she was six. Her wants are frozen in time at a very young age.

When Kim’s grandfather died, Elena told us every day that she wanted to go to heaven to be with great grandpa. Kim told her there would be time. But Elena was very touched by death. She thought about what would happen when our dog died and she used to say to me before every trip, “bye daddy, I hope you don’t die on the plane.” Not exactly the phrase I wanted ringing in my ears as I boarded.

We might be sincere in trying to express what someone who is dead would have wanted but it is really our interpretation of what we think they would have wanted. No matter how sincere we are, it is still a wish of our own expressed in terms of the person no longer able to speak for themselves. When I say, “Elena would have wanted it this way,” how much of that is me and how much of that is really her?

There are so many little things we will miss out on and so many big things. As our niece waved goodbye the other night we looked at this beautiful fifteen month old child and realized she would never know her cousin Elena. I have a friend who said, when his dad died, that it was the little things like knowing his dad would never see the Red Sox win the World Series. My bachelor party was at an afternoon Indians game and Kim and I got to see a World Series game together. Elena will never see the Indians win the World Series. Then again, I’m pretty sure I won’t either.

Kim and I were driving somewhere talking about this issue of what Elena would have wanted. We agreed that we can’t know so we can’t use that as an influencing factor. But it’s hard.

We heard that the eleven year old girl who was killed was buried right near Elena. It’s hard not to say “oh, Elena would have liked that.” Really, Elena would probably have been fascinated with and horrified that another child had died. Of course I can’t know for sure.

We sat at a stoplight and talked about these two young neighbors. How no one would ever know what they would want as adults. We would never see the women that these young girls would become. When Elena was alive, you never had to guess what she wanted. She always told you. She often didn’t care if she got what she wanted - she just like letting you know. Just in case.

The light turned green. The woman driving the convertible next to us shifted into first and sped off. Kim looked at me sideways and smiled.

“Elena would have wanted me to have a convertible,” she said. “A red one.”

Just for today

We tend to want to make big and permanent changes.

It’s a new year so I’ll start exercising or give up smoking or be nice to others or . . . We look up and it’s about half past January and we’re back doing whatever we resolved to give up.

I like a more pragmatic approach. In Reiki, for example, you don’t promise that you will change anything forever. You wake up each day and say “Just for today do not worry. Just for today, do not anger.”

And what happens when around lunch time you find yourself furious with someone? You shrug. You notice your anger. But you’ve only lost today. Tomorrow you start fresh and say “Just for today . . .”

Suppose you’ve given up meat for Lent and without thinking you are half way through a corned beef sandwich on Ash Wednesday. First day of Lent and there you are enjoying the very thing you gave up. Have you blown the entire lenten promise? Do you finish your sandwich? When do you start back up again?

What if instead, you had resolved to become a vegetarian for the rest of your life? What then when you find yourself halfway through that sandwich?

Dean Ornish claims it is easier to make bigger changes. He writes that it is easier to give up meat entirely than to reduce the amount you eat. He and others also write about the time it takes to make a permanent change. But health clubs survive because of the memberships they sell to people who only use their facilities for a short time.

John Webster used a thirty minute strategy for giving up many of his addictions. He quit smoking and lost a great deal of weight with a simple thirty minute rule. If he wanted something - a cigarette, a bag of chips, whatever he was trying to reduce - he would look at his watch. If he still wanted it in thirty minutes he would have it.

He was able to eliminate those things that were fleeting fancies. He wasn’t denying himself anything he wanted. He was taking time to confirm that he really wanted what had popped into his head.

Think of the power of managing time at both ends: forgiving ourselves and starting fresh each day and slowing down our response to stimuli.

I’m not sure I could do either. Just for today, I’m going to try.

You Think That’s Bad . . .

When Kim was pregnant with Elena, women told her the most horrible stories. It could have been a bonding ritual; their way of welcoming her to the club. She had to keep telling people that this was her second child but first pregnancy. In return they told her about the worst deliveries they knew of. They told her of women in pain for days. They told her of epidurals accidents.

Two different women told her of different women who had started to deliver naturally. After an episiotomy and a great deal of discomfort, the doctors in each case decided that the baby would not be able to be delivered vaginally and had had to push the baby back and perform a c-section.

Now the people telling the stories are friends so their intent isn’t evil. It seems almost like a variant on the “you think that’s bad” reply. You  know how that one goes. You tell a story of how you tripped on the ice and sprained an ankle and a friend says “you think that’s bad, someone I know tripped and fell and broke their hand in seven places.”

It could be something simple like accidentally deleting an email you wanted to keep. “You think that’s bad,” someone will say, “when the power went out last night a friend of mine lost four year’s of work on their doctoral thesis.”

Kim and I have never been fans of this technique. We never saw how someone else’s misfortune should make us feel better. Now we feel bad for them on top of what we were feeling for ourselves. We’ve never played the “you think that’s bad” game although it has occurred to me lately that we have the ultimate trump card up our sleeve.

Several times in the past few weeks we’ve been in a group of parents. One will say that their child has had the sniffles, another will top it with what they think is the flu. It would be incredibly inappropriate for Kim or me to say “you think that’s bad” and top their stories with that of Elena. We know that. There is a whole “meta” layer after a death where we think about what is said and what isn’t said. We’re comforted a bit by the fact that people can still play the “you think that’s bad” game about minor sickness in front of us. It lets us know we haven’t been excluded from ordinary daily banter.

In fact, if you look at the comments on this blog, people have made incredible contributions. Some have expressed empathy or sympathy. Others have made a comment that is specific to us or to Elena. Many have shared their own losses. None of these have been in a one-upmanship way. They have shared their own stories in a generous “we’re trying to help you through this” way. And by sharing, they are helping us through.

We feel for the people who have lost children - either before or after they were born. We feel for the people who have lost parents and spouses and friends. In fact, we feel for them in a way that I don’t know we would have before.

After Kim and I were married, going to weddings was very different for me. Before we got married it was a nice show followed by a party. After we got married, I felt the importance of the moment we were witnessing in someone else’s life. The promise being made. The future being started. Weddings were now different.

After we adopted Maggie we were struck by how many people we knew who were adopted or who had adopted. It seemed that once we had entered this world, all of a sudden we noticed how prevalent adoption is.

With Elena’s death, both of these changes have happened. We see how many people have lost someone close to them. I hope that it wasn’t that we were insensitive before, but we seem to be more tuned to it now. As well, we feel more personally about the loss of others. Again, that may sound selfish. After all, you’ve been so generous in your feelings for us. I don’t mean that we never felt deeply about others’ losses - but that now it feels different.

There is a “you think that’s bad” story that has hit us in our little community. An eleven year old girl and her grandparents died in a car crash. Her mom was also in the van that was rear ended by another car. The mom survived - physically. I can’t imagine what she is going through right now. Even given what we’ve been through I can’t really conceive of the depth of her loss.

Like many of you have with us, we want to do or say something for this woman we don’t know. We just don’t know where to start.

No Parking Amy Tan

When Maggie was very young her response to people thanking her for something was to beam and say proudly, “no pleasure.”

She had mashed up the two responses she had often heard from me and Kim and combined “no problem” and “my pleasure” in her own way.

I love these little phrases that we hear each day from our children, friends, and colleagues. I always mean to write them down but sometimes forget. Time passes and I don’t get them exactly right. These phrases are never as good once our mind has smoothed them out as they were raw and in context.

I once stopped a class to write down a response to a correction I made. A student had told me “I be going to factor the polynomial.”

“Be going?” I asked.

“I know,” she said, “be be in all my sentences.”

Maggie loved to tell secrets before she was two. She loved the intimacy of walking up and whispering in someone’s ear. It was somehow a private moment in public. The problem was that she didn’t know any secrets. So she would walk up to me or Kim and cup her hands around our ears and whisper “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” Kim was able to maintain a serious look and nod her head as if receiving a very important secret. Me, I would giggle and give her a hug. Maybe I’m not good at keeping secrets.

Maggie loved homonyms and words that could mean different things in different contexts. That’s great for joke telling as so many early jokes for children turn on words that can have two different meanings. Maggie would show us something and we’d say “that’s great.”

“Great great” she’d ask, “or great great?” Her intonation indicated that she was trying to determine whether we meant great as in that’s fantastic or great in a sarcastic sense as in “oh great you spilled again.”

Elena was fascinated with sarcasm. She loved the fact that you could take a phrase and say it with a different intonation and people would understand you meant the opposite. She didn’t quite get it at first and would try to say phrases like “I am five years old” in a sarcastic voice not understanding why it wasn’t working for her. But soon she became fond of delivering complements with a sarcastic voice.

“Maggie, you look nice today,” she would say. She was never trusted that we would pick up on the sarcasm so she would raise her hands to gesture air quotes around the word “nice” and announce to the room, “I was being sarcastic.”

Thankfully, she outgrew that stage. She also went through a phase that she learned at school. This was the “no offense” stage. She’d seen people say horrible things and then follow them with “no offense” so she thought you were supposed to do this. She’d say, “dad, your belly is as big as a cow. No offense.”

I’d have to explain, “Elena, you say no offense when you have accidentally said something that someone might take the wrong way. You don’t use it on purpose to allow yourself to say something mean.” One of her best qualities was her sensitivity to others. As much as she loved the “no offense” tool, she quickly gave it up so as not to hurt others’ feelings.

Elena loved to sing and, like all children, often got the wrong lyrics stuck in her head. The words didn’t have to even make sense. She would sing them loud and wrong. “Little red caboose, little red caboose, little red caboose behind the train. Comin’ down the track, Moosebees on its back, Little red caboose behind the train.”

“Elena?”

“Yes daddy.”

“What’s a Moose bee?”

“I dunno. It’s something on the train.”

Maggie would roll her eyes  and say, “Elena, it’s a ’smokestack on its back’ there’s no such thing as a Moose bee.”

Elena would laugh long and hard. “Moosebee”. But every time she would sing the song from then on she would punch the word “Moosebees” just a little bit harder - especially if Maggie was nearby. Mistakes like that drove Maggie nuts.

Elena would come into a room where I was working and say, “Knock knock”.

“Who’s there Elena?”

“Moosebees.”

“Moosebees who?”

“Moosebees who, remember how I get the little red caboose song wrong with the word Moosebees? That’s who.” She’d laugh all over again. No one told a knock knock joke worse than Elena.

I’d call home whenever I was on the road both at night and in the morning. At night I’d say to Elena, “knock knock.”

“Who’s there daddy?”

“Goat.”

“Goat who?”

“Go to bed.”

She laughed at that one for almost a year before she understood it.

There was almost exactly two and a half years between Maggie and Elena. Their birthdays were September second and March third so we celebrated each’s half birthday on the other’s birthday. Maggie was older by enough that she could pretend to be superior because she wasn’t making the mistakes that Elena made.

In fact, they’d always made different sorts of mistakes. Maggie was such a good reader early that she got lazy about sounding words out and would just assume she knew a word without looking closely enough on it. When she was three she was proudly reading every sign she could. We’d pull into a parking lot and she would read everything in sight. One day we stopped to get coffee for me and hot chocolate for her and she pointed at the sign in the space next to ours that read “No parking any time.”

“Look dad,” she said, “No parking Amy Tan.”

Retelling Stories

We bought our first house from a community organization that bought houses cheap and rehabbed them and then sold them to people who agreed to live in them for a certain amount of time. The house was in pretty good shape. The only problem that remained, according to the seller, was that some of the radiators didn’t work.

They agreed to repair the heating system and we had a deal. There was plenty of work to be done in the house, but that was all work that Kim and I could do. We knew we had a lot of painting and sanding ahead of us.

A month later we were ready for the final walk through. We stepped into the house and there was a sixteen foot hole in the living room ceiling. The person showing us around seemed not to even notice it. He was focused on showing us the radiators they had replaced. We stared at those as well. They had put in undersized radiators to replace the ones that had been there.

We asked about the hole in the ceiling and he said that when they had hooked up the new radiators and pressurized the system, pipes in the ceiling had burst. “But,” he said pleasantly, “don’t worry. We fixed the faulty pipes as well.”

“What about the large hole in the living room ceiling?” I asked.

“What about it?” he replied.

“Well, you need to fix it,” I answered.

“No,” he said quickly, “we only agreed to fix the heating system. We didn’t say anything about cosmetic work on the ceiling.”

“But,” I said, “there was no hole in the ceiling until you caused it by fixing the heating system.”

He shrugged. In his opinion he’d done what he’d agreed to do and now the house was ours.

We continued our walk through. When we got to the garage we saw that there was no way for me to park my car in the garage because it contained the eight bad radiators they had replaced.

“You need to move these,” I said.

“We never said we would haul the old ones away,” he said.

This was my grown-up introduction of the difference between what is legal and what is right.

I drank coffee every day with a group of guys one of whom did plumbing and heating work. He made copies of a standard guide for calculating radiator size. The fact that the old radiators were still in the garage made it easy to measure the old ones and the replacements and show that the replacements were undersized. We took pictures of the holes in the ceiling. And we sent a nice letter off to the agency explaining what we would like them to do.

No response. We called and they refused to talk to us.

They had also spoken to one of the television channels and painted themselves as the victim. They were a do good community organization being harassed by a wealthy homeowner. Of course, at the time I was making eight thousand dollars a year as a graduate student.

We had a friend write them a letter on legal stationery and they responded. They didn’t see that they’d done anything wrong. We scheduled a preliminary hearing. We went down to the courthouse and were met by our lawyer. They were going to depose our contractor friend and demonstrate that he had a great deal of hearing loss.

Kim is a speech pathologist and knew that his hearing loss had nothing to do with anything. But again, there is a difference between what is legal and what is right. Their plan was to use his hearing loss to demonstrate that he gave us bad advice because he could not adequately hear what we were asking him.

For us, it was a no brainer. We were not going to put a friend through any hassle even though he said he was willing to go down and subject himself to it. We settled for them taking away the radiators and for a minimal amount and I repaired the ceiling and the other holes that were left with some help from friends.

For a while, it was our favorite story to tell. It had dominated our attention for months and we tended to talk a lot about it with friends.

And then we noticed something.

Every time we would tell the story, we’d get mad all over again. Telling the story would bring up the emotions we had felt living through it the first time. As a result, we spent a lot of the time feeling angry.

It’s important to think about the stories you tell. Because so many people asked, we spent a lot of the first week after Elena died talking about her last minutes. Talking about her death. Talking about seeing her on the table at the Emergency room. Talking about Kim giving her C.P.R. until the rescue team arrived. We’ll talk more about those times - just less and less frequently.

Now we mainly tell stories of Elena from when she was alive. For a moment we are able to relive the emotions we felt during those happy times.  Just after telling them, there is a sigh where we again feel the loss of her presence. But we would feel that loss all the time if we weren’t telling stories.

Here’s a quick story. On Friday, Maggie got the dates for her next Girl Scout camping weekend. Until this year, Elena has been too young to go on camping trips with her troop. So whenever Maggie and Kim would go on their camping weekends, Elena and I would have our own adventure. She would set the menu. Generally we’d end up cooking hotdogs on a stick over our gas stove. Then we would toast marshmallows and sing songs. Finally, we would pop Jiffy Pop and set newspapers on the floor of the living room and put the popped corn between us and tell ghost stories. She loved to tell ghost stories in her scary voice. Long non-sensical ghost stories with as much gore as she could describe.

The stories we tell and how we tell them - so powerful in almost a magical way.

Writing Assignment

Remember when you were young and your teacher would ask you to write two pages on a particular topic?

“Two pages,” you’d whine. You’d set the margins as wide as you could and the font as big as you thought you could get away with. The between line spacing could be bumped up a bit. Finally, two pages doesn’t need to mean two completely full pages. It could mean one page plus most of a second page.

And so you’d write less than a page worth and turn it in as your two page essay.

As an adult writer I’ve had the opposite problem. I never seem to be able to write in the constrained amount of space I’m given. This isn’t such an issue when writing for the web. My two thousand word articles tended to come in at around three thousand words. During the two years I wrote it, my daily blog for java.net waxed and waned but never seemed to be as short as we originally envisioned.

Working in print is different. There space is money. There when an editor says 1000 words, they mean 1000 words. Last fall I wrote two pieces for MAKE magazine that had to be 300 words. It was some of the toughest writing I’ve ever done. Taking a two day conference and trying to capture it in a few paragraphs is very challenging.

Not as challenging as capturing a life on a grave stone.

I worked for a bit as morning man on an urban contemporary radio station. The out of town consultant said that the audience wouldn’t accept a white morning man and so they brought in a new guy from Pittsburgh and moved me to morning news guy. I was young and felt demoted and angry, and Carol Ford took me aside and told me why I would want to stay as news person. She was right about everything. I learned to write fast, clean, and tight. I learned to work off of another person.

What she couldn’t know is that I also made a friend for life in this new guy that they brought in to replace me. Matt called when he heard about Elena. He said, “remember when I told you, you can’t make friends in radio?” I did remember. “Well,” he said,” I was wrong.”

Each morning Matt and I would get to the station at an indecently early hour. I would read two newspapers and the newswire and start constructing the morning news. Less than two minutes per cast with six to ten stories in each cast and a couple of sports scores. I’d write the top stories three different ways so that people listening for a while wouldn’t hear the exact same newscast and there would be a couple of different stories included each time we broke for news.

As Carol had promised, this type of writing prepared me for so much of what I would later have to do. It hasn’t helped much with our current task of deciding what goes on Elena’s head stone.

There are so many different things that can go on a stone. There’s a classic one in Pelham, Massachusetts on which the family of Warren Gibbs accuses his wife of killing him with arsenic. The inscription reads “Warren Gibbs died by arsenic poison”. That didn’t make it clear enough so his brother William Gibbs also had the following poem carved on the tombstone:

Think my friend when this you see
How my wife hath dealt by me
She in some oysters did prepare
Some poison for my lot and share
Then of the same I did partake
And nature yielded to its fate
Before she my wife became
Mary Felton was her name.

I remember my aunt taking me to see that stone years ago, but this text from the Poison Oyster Stone was copied from the account on the Text-Heavy Ego Pit.

There is a modern style of stone that includes a picture of the deceased etched in. Kim and I don’t really see that as an option but I’ve suggested another use of this for my mother-in-law. Kim’s parents have bought plots next to ours at Lake View. They also own plots at All Souls and aren’t sure what to do with them. I’ve suggested they place a stone with a map to Lake View etched in so that people who come to visit them at one cemetery will know how to find their actual resting place. Kind of a permanent cross index.

The idea of pictures on a grave site is not new. The british have had brass images of the dead for years. People use paper and wax to do rubbings of the brass. You walk away with a copy of the brass image. We used to do the same with graves and inscriptions and use crayons and big pieces of paper.

My favorite epitaph belongs to Mary Kellogg who is buried in Oberlin’s Westwood cemetery. It reads simply “born slave, died free”. Of course there is so much more to her life than this. But how do you capture a life on a gravestone.

Kim and I have decided that you can’t. Perhaps it is more accurate to say, we’ve decided that we can’t. We are currently planning to just include her name and her birth and death dates.

Elena Maxine ChunXue Steinberg March 3, 1999 - February 22, 2006.