9:11 PM, 10/21/15

CHS 1979 Production of Li'l Abner

With about half an hour of time to kill prior to auditions for The Crucible in high school, I was being typically loud and rambunctious and walking all around the auditorium on the arm rests of the seats. I passed this girl with curly hair and she asked me who I was and what the hell I was doing. We began to talk. I asked if she wanted to know a secret and when I shared it with her she told me she shared the same secret. I was 15 and she was 16.


That was how Karen and I met.


When devoted stoner Bart Berry still didn't know his lines three days before opening night, our director fired him. I was promoted from the smaller part of the feisty and crushed-by-stones Giles Corey to take over Bart's bigger role of John Hale. Karen offered to help me learn all those new lines over the few remaining nights before we opened. Every evening at her house we would go through the play over and over again, running lines for hours. We stopped only to make out the way high schoolers do, meaning: frequently and for a long time.

12 Years After High School

That was how Karen and I fell in love the first time.


Twelve years later, we reconnected when Karen and her roommate visited New York in early September. She was in the city for three days and we spent as much time together as possible. I got people to cover my dinner shifts at work and freed up all of those days. She eventually returned to Tucson and we racked up some major long distance bills. She came back to NY for four days that Halloween and we went to the parade and we marveled at how my boring ass temporary roommate managed to find a way to spend the whole evening with models while dressed as a cow.


That was how Karen and I fell in love the second time.


The following November I artlessly asked Karen if she wanted to get married during one of those epic long distance calls. On January 1 she joined me. we married in the summer, and we eventually moved into a four room railroad apartment in Chelsea. We were young, broke, crazy in love, and living in the greatest and most exciting place on this or any other planet. It was the best time of my life and it just kept going, at heart continuing that same initial conversation through 25 years of marriage, enriching it with the addition of our children's unique and brilliant voices a few years in.


And that was how Karen and I lived.


At 9:11 this evening the beating heart of my life and family finally stopped. She was attended by myself, her children, and her dearest friend, each one of us touching and stroking her, telling her how much we loved her.  She craned her neck as if to see something distant and then she was gone.