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Something To Say

It is not an overstatement to say that those who meet my girlfriend fall in love with her. They ask after her the very next time they see me without her. They ask for her number and want to be friends with her in a stand-alone relationship. The same can be said of her family — it’s just that most of my friends don’t get to meet them.

Her sister passed away unexpectedly and there is a lot to be said about why, you just won’t hear me say it.

Take a breath, blink, or rub your hands together. Do it. Do it now,  as you sit and read these words.

I’ll wait.

You’re alive and information has been transmitted and received. That’s what we get to do. That’s what will no longer happen for my girlfriend and her family. Yet they will never cease communicating and loving, and missing, they will just have to do it in that space that is hard to inhabit for most of us. In the silence. In the moments before sleep or idle time alone. They will mourn for the rest of time.

To be a witness is excruciating and all that popularity and charisma that is palpable if you know Sedonna is going to be muted while she endures this loss. It is that spirit that defines families, and groups of friends, and the spirit of the one who has passed. It’s why we cry in the face of their harrowing loss.

To have light there must be darkness. Good times come with the bad and all that stuff we have to say. All the stuff we tend to avoid. We settle for dull constants, rather than feeling those deep valleys.

Days like this make me wonder if the highs even mitigate the way my family feels right now. I don’t know if it’s possible to move forward. I wouldn’t blame someone who said, “I can’t go on.” But we must. Goddamn it, we must.

People are taking it on the chin with this one. I don’t have words to bounce back in conversation. I want to be able to say nothing. I want people to understand. I wish we were telepathic in times like this, so the effort of searching for words could go away. I guess I want magic to be real and I want to remove pain. Alas, we don’t live in that world.

We live in a world of beautiful people. One of whom was taken from us. We have to remind ourselves to be more like those we lose too soon. Better. Nicer. Warmer.

I don’t know what to say anymore. Rest easy dear Shawn.

Forsake Not The Days Of Small Beginnings

There are a million sports analogies and cliches about momentum and building on a small positive step. A yard here, a first down, a bunt single, a 2 out walk, the first win of the year, and too many to count. My father was a sports writer and I grew up with sports references and cliches as parables and guidelines for life.

When I became an avowed man of the theater I found that cliches were abundant and often espoused the same spirit of teamwork and pulling together. Stuff like, bad dress rehearsal, good opening night. The first day off-book is always brutal, the show must go on, and enough superstition to rival a minor league dug-out.

As I found myself recently on-set for a small role in an upcoming TV series both world’s cliches and quotables ran through my mind. While in the grand scheme of things I was barely moving the needle, for a day last week, on this great planet, I was an actor going to work, even if the naked eye would miss my screen time or if the scene were cut, I was there taking my cuts in the batter’s box. I was there, even if I was straining the boundaries of the “no small parts, only small actors” adage. I was there.

The quote that ran through my head was one I have heard from my girlfriend as she tried to contain her glee over my tiny part, or any time I had a good set in front of 9 people, a quote that is echoed in the single step of any journey,”forsake not the days of small beginnings.” Cliches aren’t always hackneyed when they speak the truth, they revert back to their original form — a condensed statement of wisdom. Now, go out there and take it one game at a time.