My big man turned five last week. I feel a little guilty about writing a full blog post celebrating Nicholas turning two, then completely ignoring Owen’s fifth for a week. On the other hand, the number of photos and videos I have of Owen’s first two years makes it seem like I lost my camera when Nicholas was born, so maybe it evens out.

After cohosting (with the parents of one of Owen’s best friends) what was generally considered by all in attendance to be the best fifth birthday party of all time, we took Owen and his friend to the circus the next day. Not some new fangled Cirque du High Concept Performance Art, but the O.G. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Yeah, I know, it’s not PC to keep elephants in train cars and make them do tricks. But whatever, it’s the circus, and it’s still pretty darn cool. Now, to be fair, they have made some changes since I last saw the greatest show on earth when I was a kid. They’ve taken a few elements from the Playbook du Soleil. They’ve mostly bailed on the three-ring format, and their costume designers have clearly been looking to make the spandex look a little more “now.” But despite the updates, some things are almost exactly as I remember them.

But this isn’t really a post about the circus. Or about Owen’s birthday. (Sorry, big man. You know I love you, and it’s crazy that you’re already five and starting Kindergarten. There will be more about that in other posts, I promise.). This post is about the circus as a metaphor for my life. Most of the circus wasn’t actually in three rings. It was one act at a time, allowing the audience to focus on that rather than splitting their focus trying to decide what to watch and not miss anything really good. But at a few points during the show, they did do more than one thing. There was some three-ring action. At one point there were FIVE acts at once. I tried to watch all five, but multitasking is a myth. You can only really pay attention to one thing at a time. I think I caught some good bits of at least the four performances closest to where we sat, but I’m sure I missed a lot, and I have almost no idea what that fifth act did.

Here’s the metaphor part. Sorry for the lack of slickness in the transition, but there are two or three other things I’m supposed to be doing at the moment, so the badass writer chops are not what they could be. A year ago I was jobless, overweight, drinking more than my share of margaritas, and trying to figure out what to do next. Oh, how things change. Now I have three jobs, of a sort, each of which I’m exceedingly grateful for, none of which yet pays enough to quit any of the others. Plus there are my kids, my marriage, and this obsession with running which I’d worry was a problem if it weren’t so beneficial to both my mental and physical health. Oh, and this blog. You may have noticed there haven’t been so many posts of late. And in case you’re curious, I’m off margaritas, but haven’t given up wine or chocolate.

I’m fairly certain none of these endeavors is getting what amounts to my best work. That said, I’m pretty darn good, so even with split focus I’m holding my own. But there are times I’m not sure which way to look. Which act to focus on. And sometimes I slip up. I suppose more than anything I hope it’s not my marriage or my family that suffers, though some days I know my fuse is shorter than it ought to be and my attention isn’t where I’d like it. But the occasional slip is to be expected. The dude on the trapeze didn’t manage to hit the quadruple somersault, and the missed attempt was actually pretty exciting. If I do miss one of these days, I just hope there’s a net down there.

loving life, as usual

Nicholas is two years old today! Our littlest boy. Our baby. Our amazing, adorable, irrepressible little dude, with an unrivaled enthusiasm for all things that makes the rest of us look like we’re phoning it in.

It’s hard to believe it was two years ago you were born. Two years ago last night I went to the opera to sit through opening night of La Rondine, because your mother was the calling stage manager, and despite having had regular contractions since around 3:30 that afternoon, she was pretty sure she could get through the show. So, with the show clock on one side and the contraction timer on the other, she called the show.

meeting little brother

I went back at each intermission to check in, asking, “Uh, think maybe we should go to the hospital now?” But not until the curtain came down did she decide it was time to head out. Even then we didn’t go straight to Cedars, but stopped at Chris and Becky’s to make sure it was REALLY time to bother going to the hospital.

When we finally did get there, after waiting for a room, they had your mom lie down, which of course slowed the contractions. They were almost ready to send her home when the nurse convinced the OB on duty to check her. She was around seven cm, I think, so we weren’t going anywhere (thanks, nurse). About three hours later you were born.

no fear, and no stopping him

Life since then has been a bit of a blur. Watching you grow is a joy, if a maddening and stressful one. You aren’t the cautious child your brother is, slow to take any unnecessary risks. Instead, you hurl yourself into each new adventure with little concern for the inevitable facial bruises. People might think we abuse you if everyone you meet didn’t witness you whirling about, careening into any solid object slow or stupid enough to get in your way. You walked at 10 months, and ran at about 10 months and a week. You were a bit slower to talk, but now that you do you speak with the emphasis of a preacher. We believe, little man, we believe.

he's a lover AND a fighter

Bam Bam, you continue to live up to your nick name. We know you love us from the force with which you smash us with your fists, your toys, your head. It’s a good thing Owen adores you, since you make him cry far more than ever you get upset about anything he does to you. On the few occasions he does do something to upset you, it’s almost never intentional. You, on the other hand, whale on him as though he’s indestructible. I imagine in your mind, he is. As are we all. And you hug us with as much zeal as you beat on us, so we know there’s no lack of love.

If nothing else, your mother and I are certainly thankful you’ve survived your first two years. There were times we weren’t sure it would happen, the way you throw caution to the wind. I think it’s fair to say you’ve gotten a running start at the terrible twos, though I’m sure they’ll also be spectacularly awesome, in addition to terrible. You can be all four seasons in one day, little man. Who knows what you can accomplish in an entire year. We can’t wait to find out.

treasure

Happy Birthday, Nicholas. We love you so.

Today my wife and I celebrate the eighth anniversary of our wedding. Last year on this date I wrote a love letter to Lisa on this blog. I don’t usually try to one-up myself. I want to grow and improve, but I think each new experience should be embraced on its own merits. It’s natural to compare today to yesterday, this year to last year, second kid to first kid, but each one is unique, and comparisons only go so far to tell us what things are really about.

So, I don’t intend to try and best last year’s note. Instead I want to acknowledge this day for what it is. A celebration of another wonderful, challenging, growth-filled year. I knew 12 months ago this year would bring change, challenges, and surprises. It did. It’s been one of the hardest years we’ve faced, and one of the best. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times? Cliché, but fitting.

Thinking of our wedding, I recall a moment during our reception. We were married in Lisa’s hometown of New York City in June 2002. Many arrangements were already made before September 11, 2001, and we had no intention of changing our plans. Most of our guests were not from New York, and many had never been there, so we decided to have our reception on a boat circling Manhattan. It afforded the best possible views of the city, including a sobering moment as we glided past the site of the World Trade Center attack. Some might think such a stark reminder of recent, horrible tragedy would be the last thing you’d want while celebrating your wedding. For me, though, the only honest way to cope with loss is to face it. Sadness is a part of life. We lose things we love. On Sept 11, 2001, nine months before we were married, we all lost a measure of our innocence. For some that loss was deep and acute: losing a family member, a loved one, or a friend. For others it was remote and abstract, but still painful. Looking at the hole in the city where the towers had stood, still fresh with twisted metal not yet repaired or removed, was a reminder that there will be dark times. The best we can do is weather them together, and look ahead to another day. Each year is a new opportunity. Every day a little death, and every day, rebirth.

So, we begin another year. Our ninth year married, our 17th as a couple. This year we’ve had our own minor tragedies, and triumphs. I know next year will be the same. I am hopeful the bright spots will outnumber and outweigh the dark ones. Whatever comes, we will face it together, arm in arm, with our children beside us.

I love you, Lisa. Happy anniversary.

I missed my own blogiversary. This blog is now one-year old. Yay blog!

I started badassdadblog on April 14, 2009. That first post was titled “stuff that’s hard,” and in the 12 months since, I think I’ve done my share of that sort of stuff. I’m not sure a full recap of the last year is worth the time to read (or write), and much of that you could get by going through the archives, if you wanted. But I do want to share a few things on this auspicious occasion.

March for Babies 2010. Photo by Megan Hook.

I’m very proud to have walked in last weekend’s March for Babies with Heather, Mike, and Annabelle Spohr (who is clearly slacking off by not having her own blog. I mean, you’re three months old, kid! What are you waiting for?). This blog was largely inspired by the amazing courage, resilience, and support I witnessed from and surrounding the Spohrs when they lost their first daughter, Madeline, just over a year ago, because of complications related to her premature birth. I discovered many wonderful things through those events. An amazing community of parents and others, an enjoyable and valuable outlet in writing, and the power of social media to bring people together in very real ways.

Another thing I’m proud and happy about is my health and fitness. I’m in better physical shape than I’ve been at any other time in my life. I’m wearing pants the size I wore in high school, and I ran 10 miles last week. In a row! That’s huge for me. I’ve been running regularly since October 2009, and the benefits have been amazing. Weight loss and fitness are definitely among them, but so has been finding yet another wonderful online and real life community: runners. Much of that has been through dailymile, which has been a constant source of motivation, support, and inspiration for me as a new runner.

Here’s how many miles I’ve logged so far:

Better yet, here’s how many donuts I’ve burned:

Other areas of my life have been less rosy. OK, to be fair, there’s really just ONE area I have any reasonable right to bitch about: work. Or, more specifically, lack of work. Or, if we’re being REALLY specific, lack of income. I’ve certainly been busy for most of the last year. Between working with a close friend on his startup business, building web pages for small businesses with a former coworker, and many days being full-time dad, there’s been no shortage of WORK. There’s just been a shortage of monetary compensation. I think one day I’ll look back on this year, a year where I have been able to spend more time with my boys and my wife than ever before, and think how lucky I was. But that will be much easier once I am again gainfully employed, and not worried about the steadily sinking waterline of our savings.

I’ve written less often here recently. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, or whether I plan to do more or less in the future. I intend to keep writing, and I expect I’ll go through periods when I’ll write a lot, and others when I’ll write less. Whatever the case, I want to sincerely thank you. All of you who read, comment on, and share this blog with me. It’s been a really exciting, challenging, fun year. How about we go for two?

I run for me.

To be healthy. To feel better. To look better. To live longer. To be able to eat and drink more of what I want and still be fit. I run because both my grandfathers and my father had heart attacks before they turned 60. To paraphrase Christopher McDougall in Born To Run paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, “You don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.”

I run for my wife.

To have more energy. To be hotter. To be better in bed.

I run for my kids.

To play more energetically with them. To show them being active is good for you and fun. To survive long enough to see them move out and build their own lives.

I run for my grandkids.

To meet the grandkids I may one day have, and be able to play with them, too.

I run for you.

This came later. I didn’t start out running for you. No offense. I like you. But you’re not why I started to run (unless you’re listed above). But as I’ve been doing it, and sharing my experience here, and on Twitter, and on dailymile, I’ve found it feels great when people tell me I inspired them to run, or walk, or get off the couch. And that, that sense of community, that evidence that doing what’s best for me can inspire someone to do what’s best for them, that is by far the most unexpected benefit of running. So for that, thank you.

See you out there.

This is a companion piece to one the nice folks at dailymile graciously allowed me to post on the dailymile community blog, where I talk more about running barefoot and in Vibram Fivefingers, and about becoming a runner in general.

This is my first entry in the Write-Of-Passage Writing Well Challenge. Like Mrs. Flinger, whose brainchild this challenge is, I like good writing. I read blogs to get a sense of the personalities behind them, but mostly I read them for stories. Well told stories. Yes, this includes using reasonably good English and not murdering spelling and grammar. But (and don’t believe anyone who says you aren’t allowed to start a sentence with a conjunction) it’s more about using language to engage readers and evoke an emotional response.

Anyway, I’m all about good writing and shit. So, I thought, sure, I’ll take the challenge. The first challenge was to describe your most embarrassing moment.

Some of the stories other writers in the challenge have shared are really brilliant. There are links to them at the end of this post so you can see what I mean. Reading them and wracking my brain, I honestly couldn’t come up with a single good story about an embarrassing moment. The few I did come up with paled in comparison to the gems shared by others. Try as I might to exhume a hilarious anecdote about public nudity, flatulence, or general buffoonery, I either had a very high tolerance for embarrassment or I’ve successfully blocked out those parts of my life. There’s no way I was cool enough to avoid them, but I just can’t come up with any.

So, I’m skipping right over run-of-the-mill embarrassment to abject humiliation. Why not go all the way, right? This is a post I’ve been trying to figure out how to write for a long time, and maybe this was the trigger I needed. Here goes.

Junior high sucks. This is a fact like gravity is a fact. You can fight it, but sooner or later it’ll drag you down. Some have it better than others, but for most people there are few times in life more full of awkwardness, confusion and despair than adolescence. Plenty had it worse than I did. I wasn’t one of the popular kids, but I wasn’t an outcast. I was smart, I did well in my classes, and I had friends. Good friends, I thought.

When I was nine, my parents got divorced. Their divorce was not the horror show some could describe. I never heard them fight. I never saw my mother cry or my father storm out. No doors were slammed, nobody got hit, and when it was over we could all still be in the same room together and be basically decent to each other.

My parents were fairly evolved about how they handled their split. Both veterans of the EST training, precursor of today’s Landmark Forum, they were steeped in self awareness and understanding your true motivations and being honest with yourself and all that self-actualized crap. Taken to extremes this can be crazy making, but in moderation there are plenty of worse ways to approach life.

Having done all that self exploration, when the paths of their lives diverged, my parents were pretty grown up about it, as much as my nine-year old self could tell. By the time we kids found out they were splitting up, they’d been discussing it for at least a year and had made the decision to go their separate ways. For many kids my age, this might have prompted a tortured exploration of why this happened. Did my parents not love each other anymore? Did I do something to break the family apart? Why, why, why?

But I knew why. My father told me why. My parents were getting divorced because my father was gay.

“Do you know what it means to be gay?” he asked as we stood alone in his bathroom. He’d just explained to me and my two younger brothers, six and three, that he and my mother were going to be splitting up, then asked me to stay while they went off to play.

“Yes,” I said. And I did, basically. I’m not sure exactly what I knew, or how I knew it, but I had the basic idea. It was the 80s. Reagan was president, AIDS was in the news and gay people were on TV. My parents were both singers and theater people, and had plenty of gay friends. So I knew what it meant to be gay as much as I knew what it meant to be straight in my prepubescent nine-year old way.

“I’m gay,” he went on. He said that was why they were getting divorced. They still loved each other very much, and loved us boys very much, but he was attracted to men, not women, and said he needed to be honest about that and live his life accordingly. I’m paraphrasing now. He said something like that, but after your dad says “I’m gay,” things go a little staticky for a while. He asked if I had any questions and I said I didn’t, and I asked if I could go play, and he said yes.

My memory of that conversation is clear, but the days, weeks, and months after are a blur. My life changed significantly. We moved to a new house. My mom started dating someone almost right away. And I had this new weight on me I hadn’t carried before. My parents were divorced, and my dad was gay. These things were now with me constantly like an invisible, non-fatal illness. I couldn’t change them. I couldn’t make them go away. I just had to carry them around and try to understand them.

My best friends in school at the time were Dale and Mark (not their real names). I didn’t tell them right away about my dad. They knew my parents were splitting up, but that wasn’t so unusual. Lots of kids had divorced parents. It took a while before I was ready to share more details. I don’t know how long it took, where we were, or how I brought it up, but in my very evolved and mature way I told them what, for me, made my whole family situation make sense. My parents were splitting up not because of anything mysterious or sinister, but because my father was gay. No big deal. He’d only just realized it, or come to terms with it, or whatever, and had decided he couldn’t be honest with himself and stay married to my mother.

In hindsight, I can’t say I’m surprised they didn’t take this well. Neither of them came from families that were very socially progressive. Mark lived with his mom. I never met his dad, but I know he at least had some perspective on divorce. Dale, on the other hand, lived with his still-married parents, who could fairly be described as … backward. I don’t know exactly where they were from. Maybe West Virginia. Somewhere south and east of our small Northern California town. Where ever it was, they’d brought their values and attitudes with them and imparted them to their son. Dale would not have sworn allegiance to his parents, but when faced with something as fundamental as homosexuality, he reverted to his roots.

It didn’t happen right away. It started gradually. Dale would make jokes about my dad. About him being gay. Being a fag. He’d draw semi-pornographic sketches of my father with a man. To be funny. I didn’t object at first, tried to be cool about it. It was just Dale. He’d always had a biting and sarcastic sense of humor. But it didn’t stop there. The drawings got worse, the comments more hurtful, and then things took a nasty turn. I’d confided in my two friends. I wasn’t ready to tell just anyone about my personal situation, but them, I trusted. They didn’t take that confidence as seriously as I did.

I emerged from class one day to find Dale and Mark standing with a group of guys who weren’t exactly regulars in our social circle. These were the guys who liked to push the smaller kids around. Guys who took pleasure from intimidating those smaller or less confident. I wasn’t friendly with them, but neither had I spent much time as the object of their abuse. I wasn’t a small kid. There were easier targets. But now they had ammunition. My secret wasn’t a secret anymore. Dale had told the school bullies my dad was gay, and in doing so had allied himself with them as the ringleader of his own humiliation squad. Target: me. Mark stood with them, not quite among them, but not on my side, either. He might have offered a half-hearted “Hey, knock it off, dude,” but no more. They taunted me. They said things about me, about my father, my mother, my step-father, and my brothers. Nasty things about anal sex and incest and things I still don’t like to think about in relation to my family.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what to do. I might have been able to beat the shit out of Dale on his own, but he, knowing that, had surrounded himself with guys I had no hope against physically. I’d like to say I brilliantly tore him down with my superior intellect like a character in a John Hughes movie. But I didn’t. I screamed “Fuck You!” I cried. I shoved him and was swiftly advanced on by his newly formed gang of thugs. I backed off. I walked away. And I cried some more. Like a fag, as far as they were concerned.

What I felt can’t adequately be described as embarrassment, though that was certainly an aspect of it. I was humiliated. I was hurt. I was devastated. I’d chosen to share a deep personal truth with people I considered my friends, and they had betrayed me fully and with gusto. Our friendship ended there. We still had some friends in common, but the closeness I thought we had was gone.

There’s still a part of me that has trouble trusting people with important but potentially damaging pieces of myself. I have thoughts I don’t share. Or if I do, I share them in a joking tone from which I can easily retreat if pressed. How much of that is because of what happened in seventh grade? I don’t know. But if the essence of humiliation and embarrassment is exposure of something dear and personal, I certainly felt exposed that day. I still cross paths with Dale and Mark now and then. We have friends in common on Facebook. I’ve had beers with them at parties and stood around fire pits talking about mutual friends and our lives now. But we’ve never spoken of what happened then. Part of me wants to forgive them, openly and fully. But another part of me still feels the shame I felt that day, and if it’s possible to grow up enough to move past that, I’m not there yet.

I see myself in my kids. This can be good and this can be bad. Something I’m seeing now in Owen, who will be four in a couple of weeks (and again, where the hell did four years go?), is my tendency to sit around like a lump. Watching TV, playing video games, generally avoiding physical activity. Like right now, as I sit here, writing at my computer. When it’s gorgeous outside. (But, baby Nicholas is napping, and Lisa and Owen are out running errands, so I can’t really leave. So gimme a break). Once we actually get him out of the house he’s happy to run and climb and jump and play. But ask him what he wants to do? The answer will almost always be Lego Star Wars.

This is my fault on several levels. First, there are my genes. He’s his father’s son and his father is at his core a sedentary being. When I was a kid it was books, and also TV. Now it’s the computer, iPhone, TV, Twitter, my blog, other people’s blogs. And occasionally still books. Second, there are the things I’ve introduced him to. TV, movies, video games. I didn’t have to buy them. I didn’t have to let him use them. But I did, because I like them, and thought he would to. And boy, does he.

When Owen was a baby Lisa and I talked about making sure he saw us doing physically active things for fun – walking, hiking, sports – going outside and moving around. These things don’t really come naturally to me, and I already see my son developing what I can only describe as a serious video game addiction. Luckily, so far, he doesn’t have his father’s tendency to eat constantly while sitting around not moving. This gives me hope that in some ways he’ll be better off. And it’s not that I think he should never play video games again, or watch TV or movies, or, eventually, read books! These are things I enjoy and sometimes ya gotta do stuff inside. But when it’s a beautiful sunny day and all the kid wants to do is play video games? It just feels all too familiar.

So again, here before you all, I commit to going outside more. We’ll go for more walks. We’ll go to the park. We’ll hang out in the backyard instead of the living room. And I will stop fighting my wife’s desire to take the family camping. As long as there is indoor plumbing nearby. And WiFi.

Hi. This post is a bit messy. I don’t want to start with an apology, but I think an explanation is warranted since this is so different from what’s usually on this blog. All this happened 14 years ago. Though I think about it nearly every day, it’s doesn’t haunt me like it used to. I don’t dwell on it. But when Heather and Mike lost their little girl Madeline this year, and so many rallied around them to try and prop them up in their darkest time, many things came back to me. What I went through is not the same as losing a child. My point of view is different. But there are enough parallels that I wanted to get all this out in writing. This also ended up being a lot more about me than I intended, but that’s just where it went. So, thanks for reading, and I’ll understand if you’d rather not.

Details are fuzzy. I’m not sure this happened the way I remember it. Probably not, considering how scattered my memories are. Time does that to memory, and it’s worse when the events themselves were surreal, as these surely were.

I was in San Francisco, on my way back to LA. My stepfather got in touch with me at SFO as I was heading to get on the plane home. I think he called my friend Nate who showed up to tell me I needed to call home. This was 1995, before cell phones were everywhere, and certainly before I had one. So somebody walked up to me and said I needed to call home. I called from a pay phone. Greg sounded serious, worried, and tired. Jeff wasn’t doing well. I should be there. I should come now. I was worried, certainly caught off guard, but he was probably overreacting. He can be a bit dire. Sure, I’ll come home. But I was sure it’d be OK.

I changed my plans and flew east instead of south. Jeff was in a hospital in Roseville. My dad picked me up and we went from the airport to Jeff’s hospital room. What Greg said on the phone was right, he wasn’t doing well. He looked like hell – puffy, pale and rough. His breathing was fast and shallow. I think he was asleep when I first got there. He was clearly having a hard time. I remember nudging him to try and get him to breathe normally. I wondered what they were doing to fix it. To fix him. He’d been having problems with his kidneys for months. Something to do with an illness he’d had several years before plus damage from lots of painkillers after surgery. He’d been on dialysis. There was some talk of a transplant, but it didn’t seem very focused. Maybe they were talking more to my parents than me. Or maybe it was confusing and vague for everyone. It started with his kidneys, but now his heart was enlarged and he had water on his lungs. Congestive heart failure, they call this. Which is weird, because heart failure sounds like you’re dead, but really it means his heart wasn’t working efficiently. Did you know when your heart doesn’t work well you start getting fluid on your lungs? Apparently they’re related. Also, it’s weird how when your heart is weak it gets bigger. You’d think a bigger heart would be all strong and shit like The Hulk but it’s more like it’s swollen and trying hard but just not doing its thing. He wasn’t doing well.

I was having a very hard time processing all this. I was in college, missing classes to be there, but clearly needed to be with my family. I spent the next few days hanging around the hospital, sitting in Jeff’s room, talking to him when he was awake. Sometimes just sitting. It was an awkward time for us. We hadn’t spent much time together recently, and didn’t have a lot to talk about. I was 21, he was 18. I’d been out of the house more than a year, off at school, thinking myself very grown up. I had all these plans. Or visions of plans. I didn’t really want to hang out in a hospital with my sick brother. I’d rather hang out with him when he got better and we could do stuff. Like have a beer or go to the river or get high or watch TV. Whatever. Not this. I didn’t understand how sick he was.

After a few days, I went back to LA. Back to school. Back to my life. It looked like he was doing better. They’d decided to transfer him to a bigger medical center in Davis. That seemed like a good sign. They were better equipped to help him, and I figured they wouldn’t move him if they didn’t think he had a good shot at recovering. Before I left I went to Jeff’s room and we talked a little. He was sleepy, not saying much. We talked about how I’d see him in a few weeks when I came home for Thanksgiving. We hugged. He held onto me a little longer than I thought was normal. Or maybe I held onto him. Maybe both. I don’t know.

I flew back to LA. There was this guy from out of town that I barely knew staying with me. Long story why, doesn’t matter. My girlfriend (now wife) was at her parents’ place in New York. So it was just me and this guy I didn’t know. As I said, my memory of the timeline and series of events is fuzzy, but I think I was home for like 12 hours. I got home, said hi to this guy, went to bed.

The phone rang. Woke me up. It was around 3am. It was my dad. Jeff had passed away. He’d died. He was dead. I should come back.

I went back to LA thinking I was going back to school for a few weeks while Jeff recovered, then going home to visit for Thanksgiving. By then we’d know more about what was going on with him and be able to talk about what was next and make plans. And hang out and have turkey.

I fucking left.

Because of school. And because bad things don’t happen to us. Bad things happened on TV and to other people, not to us. People got better. People were OK.

So I went home. Except in November 1995 things didn’t get better. They got worse. They got worse fast and they tried to save him and there was nothing they could do and he died. And I think maybe he knew when I left, somehow, that things weren’t going to get better. I think maybe that’s why he held onto me a little longer than usual. Maybe he knew even though we were saying “see you at Thanksgiving” we were really saying goodbye.

Or maybe he didn’t know. But that’s what we were saying, whether we knew it or not.

Things start spinning. This guy is in our apartment and my brother just died and I have to buy a plane ticket or maybe my friend Chris did that for me because I think he flew home with me though I’m not really sure and I had to leave pretty much right away so I threw some clothes in a bag and told this guy he probably needed to find another place to stay because I didn’t know when I’d be back and it was weird for him to stay there alone and I left and my girlfriend still wasn’t there and I remember when we came home after what seemed like years after the funeral there was leftover macaroni and cheese in a pot uncovered in the refrigerator and honestly that bothered Lisa way more than seemed logical but what the hell did logic have to do with anything at that point and he’d just left that there in the refrigerator of these people he barely knows and who the fuck does that?

When Jeff died I called Lisa’s parents in New York to tell them what happened. I called her dad at work because I wanted to talk to him before I talked to her. She was there for an audition. That day. So we decided not to tell her right away but make arrangements for her to fly to Sacramento after her audition to be with me. But let her do the audition before telling her. I still think that was the right thing to do, though she was pissed about it. She said we should have told her. She didn’t get whatever she was auditioning for so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but we didn’t know that then, and we’d only been dating about a year and who knew we’d get married and have two amazing kids and it didn’t seem right to disrupt the whole reason for her trip when there wasn’t anything she could do except make plans to come home which we were doing for her.

A lot happened in the next few days. A funeral. Many, many people. More than we expected. More than would show up for my funeral. Jeff was an amazing person. He touched a lot of people. He’d been seriously dating a girl for a while and we listed her in the paper as his fiance. What the hell difference does it make now? Clearly they’re not getting married. Listing her as “girlfriend” seemed strange, less than the truth. So we rounded her up. I think her parents were bugged by it but who cares. We created a custom headstone with a guitar on it that was supposed to look like his guitar which was all 90s metal. He loved Metallica. I still have that guitar. It’s almost unplayable but I won’t get rid of it.

I stayed home for a while — I’m not sure how long — before coming back to school in LA and going back to school. Most people at school knew what had happened and they were cool about it but those first few weeks back in LA were the strangest part of this whole thing. Because my world had a huge hole ripped in it but for everybody else it was the same world it had been a month ago. When we were home for the funeral everything was about Jeff and how awesome he was and how crazy and horrible it was that he was gone. And for me everything was still about that but it wasn’t about that for anyone else. Except my girlfriend who was incredible and my close friends who were amazing about all of it. And really everyone was pretty great but there’s no right way to be at that point. No right thing to say.

And it’s been almost 14 years. Jeff was 18 when he died. The way time is speeding up (it is, you know), in a few blinks he will have been gone longer than he was here. That’s crazy. I wanted this post to be not just about his death but about his life. But I guess what I needed to write about first was the end. And maybe that means there will be other posts about his life. I think there will be.

Today is his birthday. Jeffrey William Blanchard was born June 2, 1977 in our house on Hughes Road in Grass Valley, CA under a rainbow my father painted on the wall of our little eat-in kitchen. And today he’d have been 32. And I have no idea what he would have done or who he might have become, but it would have been awesome. I wish I could see it.

Happy birthday, little brother.