Archive for the ‘Remembrance’ Category
Reflections on the Passing of Actor Leonard Nimoy
Actor Leonard Nimoy, Spock of the original “Star Trek” TV series, died yesterday at the age of 83. Nimoy wasn’t solely an actor — he was a musician, a poet, a photographer, and a movie director, among many other things — but he was known mostly for bringing one role to life: Spock, the half-Vulcan, half-human first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Spock, the quintessential outsider.
Spock, a type of Everyman who could comment, dispassionately, about subjects otherwise often seen as off-limits in contemporary society (much less TV).
Many people are going to be discussing Nimoy’s legacy, and rightfully so. He was a brilliant actor, and in many ways he was at the center of what “Star Trek” was all about.
But my own reflections are far closer to home than that.
When I was young, I discovered “Star Trek” on television in syndication. I was a fan of DeForest Kelley’s Leonard “Bones” McCoy more than Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, mind you, but without Spock’s dispassion, McCoy’s emotional outbursts would’ve had no foil and much less resonance. Somehow, even in my early teens, I picked up on this, and wanted to know more about the actors behind “Star Trek.”
So I read Leonard Nimoy’s first biography, I AM NOT SPOCK. What I found out was that Nimoy was many things besides his most famous, iconic role. His journey as an artist and a sensitive soul was one of my biggest inspirations as a teenager.
It was because of Nimoy’s book, at least in part, that I realized you could be different and still be a good person. That you could be a sensitive artist who your parents did not understand — as his own parents definitely didn’t understand Nimoy’s passion for acting, or the arts in general — and still be able to forge a good life for yourself. And I learned that sometimes it takes time for your vision of yourself to be realized — as Nimoy struggled for years as an actor before he finally landed his role on “Star Trek.”
I did not know Mr. Nimoy, except for watching him on TV and once, very briefly, meeting him at a science fiction convention. But he seemed to me to be a man of worth, talent, and grace.
I mourn his passing.
ESPN Anchor and Personality Stuart Scott Dies at 49
It’s been widely reported today that ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor and personality Stuart Scott has died at 49 after a seven-year battle with stomach cancer. And the news hit me hard, even though I knew as a long-time viewer of ESPN that Scott wasn’t doing particularly well.
For those who don’t follow sports as I do, Scott was a new kind of anchor when he first took to ESPN in 1993. He came up with numerous catchphrases like “Booyah!” and “He’s as cool as the other side of the pillow.” And while he wasn’t the first well-known African-American sports anchor in the Western world, Scott often seemed like the coolest, getting athletes like the intensely private Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods to actually reveal a little of who they were without getting them upset in the process (a very neat trick indeed).
Basically, Scott was the type of guy other men wanted to be like. He had class, he was smart, he understood sports, he spoke and dressed well, and he related to everyone.
In other words, Scott was a very good person. It came across in how he spoke to people. He didn’t see Jordan and Woods as wealthy, privileged athletes so much but as people who’d had to struggle to get where they were — people who were still vulnerable, who still wanted others to know that their money didn’t define them — and that changed sports journalism.
I know that’s a very big statement to make, so let me unpack it a little.
First, the explosion of salaries at the major league level in the 1980s and beyond for major league baseball, the NFL and the NBA all tended to make the average viewer feel like he or she had no frame of reference for the players anymore, save on the field. This wasn’t as much of a problem for the players in the 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970s because while the best made very good money, most of the rest still had to drive garbage trucks in the offseason. (Or whatever they did instead of driving garbage trucks.)
In other words, while Scott celebrated the amazing feats of athleticism that sports can and do provide, Scott also provided a deeper human element to help balance it out.
So while others may speak of Scott’s hipness, freshness, and ability to relate to the younger set — and while that is certainly all true — I think most are missing the point.
Scott was, first and foremost, a caring human being, as this story discussed within ESPN’s lengthy obituary for him illustrates in full measure:
“NBA Countdown” anchor Sage Steele remembers the day last year when her family moved from Connecticut to Arizona to be closer to her show in Los Angeles: “The moving trucks were at my house, and Stuart was there with his girlfriend Kristin to say goodbye to us, and my 10-year-old son Nicholas had to say goodbye to his best friend across the street, and he came back sobbing, sobbing, leaving his best friend in the world. … Stuart said, ‘I got it.’ And he took Nicholas aside and just sat down with him and described his moving away as a kid, losing his best friend as a 10-year-old boy and how he handled it. He spent 20 minutes sitting there with Nicholas, helping him feel better.
“Stuart spent three hours at our house that day, in pain and hardly able to stand, but he did it. And he sat there for my kid.”
Not everyone does that. Most particularly when he’s gravely ill, weak, and in pain.
Yes, Stuart Scott loved sports. Loved them with a passion. But he also loved life itself — and somehow that showed through during every sportscast he ever did.
May his loved ones be comforted by his memory.
Jim Valvano and Michael B. Caffrey: Transformational Lives
On this, the tenth anniversary of my husband Michael B. Caffrey’s passing, I want to discuss something interesting I’ve recently watched. Something I hadn’t expected to have parallels with my husband’s life . . . but actually did.
This, oddly enough, was the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Survive and Advance, about the 1983 NCAA Champion North Carolina State Wolfpack and their charismatic coach, Jim Valvano.
For those who don’t know much about sports, you may not know much about Jim Valvano. He died in 1993 after a yearlong battle with bone cancer at the age of 47. But even though he’s been dead now for 21 years, Valvano’s shadow continues to linger — in a good way.
Valvano was a coach who believed very strongly in his players, in his team, and in dreams. (Yes, I said dreams.) He believed if you couldn’t dream something and believe it would happen, you couldn’t achieve it. And he actually had his team rehearse things like cutting down the basketball net (something done after winning a very important game, like a national championship), because he wanted them to know deep down to the bottom of their souls that they could do anything.
Valvano — affectionately known by his players as “Coach V” — lived a transformational life.
But what goes into making a transformational life, anyway? Was it the charisma, which is still evident in this speech (at the 1993 ESPY Awards, when Valvano was eight short weeks from death)? Was it the sheer tenacity of the man, who gave as his personal philosophy this phrase — “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” — as part of that same speech? Was it because Valvano was one of the best basketball coaches the East Coast ever produced?
It was all of that, but it was also something more. Jim Valvano made people believe they could do it. He was a positive, inspirational force of nature, with the outsized personality of a stand-up comedian but a heart as big as the Atlantic Ocean. And he made people believe in themselves — not just his 1983 Wolfpack team, but the many people who heard his motivational speeches, read his autobiography, and heard his final major speech at the ’93 ESPYs.
Having a talent like that is incredibly rare.
I’ve only known one person who had it in my entire life: my late husband, Michael. Though Michael was not an outsized personality — certainly not like Valvano, at any rate — he had a presence that was beyond anything I’ve ever known. A certainty, a positivity, and a belief that I could do anything I wanted no matter the obstacle. No matter how many times I might stumble. No matter how many times I might actually fall.
He believed I could do it. More than that: he believed I would do it.
Watching Survive and Advance was both inspirational and heartbreaking for two reasons. One, Valvano died at age 47; Michael died at 46. And two, there were so many things in there that “Coach V” said that reminded me of my husband . . . it’s hard to explain, because Michael’s manner was nothing like Jim Valvano at all.
But the message — the powerful, motivational message — was exactly the same.
The words that rang truest of all were these, again from Valvano’s ’93 ESPY speech:
“”Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”
My husband did not have cancer. He instead died of several heart attacks in one day, without warning, to the point his ventricle failed him. But he once told me that no matter what happened to him — as he believed his own health wasn’t all that wonderful — he believed his heart, his mind, and his soul would endure. And he’d never stop loving me. He’d never stop caring about me. And he’d never, ever stop believing in me.
He told me that about a year before he died, when I was about to go in for a needed surgery that I was fearful of, and I have never forgotten it.
I know that Jimmy V’s life was lived in the public eye. Michael’s certainly wasn’t. Michael’s life didn’t touch nearly as many people — how could it?
But Michael is remembered by many. He helped many writers, including the late Ric Locke, with his editing. He helped many people believe they could indeed do exactly what they put their mind to doing . . . and that’s what makes a transformational life.
You come into contact with someone like that, and your whole life changes. It gets better, because you can do more. Even through the mourning, you can still do more. And you get up every day and you try your level best, because you want to be worthy of that belief.
My husband would be astonished that I’d mention him in this particular context, especially as he was also a sports fan. He’d probably see absolutely no parallels between himself and the famous “Coach V.”
But he’d be wrong.
It’s because Michael lived, and was with me, that I continue to do what I do. His loss was so painful that I continue to struggle with it, ten years later . . . but it’s because I knew him, was married to him, and got to see how he overcame his own obstacles that I have refused to give up.
If that’s not the epitome of what a transformational life is all about, I don’t know what is.
————
Note: If you want to read Michael’s writing — and I hope at least some of you do — please take a look at the two stories I’ve been able to put up as independent e-books over at Amazon: “A Dark and Stormy Night” and “Joey Maverick: On Westmount Station.” These are both stories of military science fiction, though the first is while Ensign Joey Maverick is on leave and participating in a “low-tech” sailing regatta (meaning approximately 20th Century tech) and the second is when newly-minted Lieutenant Maverick is about to ship out for the first time. In essence, the first story is a search-and-rescue story with some romance, and the second story is that of a young officer stopping an unexpected saboteur at a very early hour in a completely unexpected place.
A third story has been started (a bridge story, written by me with some details from Michael’s notes), and I’ve also written two stories in Michael’s universe from a different perspective entirely that are currently making the rounds (if all rounds end up exhausted, they, too, will end up as e-books).
So at least some of Michael’s words continue to live, which is what I vowed when Michael died suddenly. And if I have anything to say about it — if I get enough time on this Earth — all of them will.
Keeping Hope Alive . . .
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing my best to keep hope alive. Life has been difficult and frustrating; it’s almost inconceivable to me, sometimes, that I’m still alive and my husband Michael has been dead for nearly ten years.
And I’m all that remains of what we’d hoped and dreamed for. I’m the only one who can finish his work, as well as my own. And as it’s difficult for me to figure out just what Michael had intended to do — writer Ursula Jones called this phenomenon “breaking into” someone else’s thinking (she was discussing finishing up her sister Diana Wynne Jones’ novel THE ISLANDS OF CHALDEA in the end-notes) — sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing in carrying on Michael’s work.
Then again, I loved Michael, and I loved his stories, too. It makes me feel closer to him to do whatever I can to keep things going, even if what I write isn’t exactly the same as what he’d have written. Even if it’s taking me ten times as long to figure out this new novella set on Bubastis as it undoubtedly would’ve taken him, at least I’m trying to do it.
And that, in and of itself, is worthwhile. Michael would tell me so, if he were here . . . though of course, if he were, I’d not be doing this.
Mind you, I’m not the only writer who has ever wondered whether or not what I’m doing makes any sense. This blog from writersrelief.com about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and writing explains why writing and hope are so inextricably mixed:
As human beings and creative writers, we sometimes have a tumultuous relationship with hope. Hope keeps us going. We hope someone will understand what we’re trying to say with our writing. We hope the world will be a better place for our children. But when times get tough, hope can also feel like cold comfort.
Why have hope? we ask ourselves. What good will it do me if I know I can’t succeed? Sometimes when the task ahead seems truly impossible, hope seems futile.
But few people understand what it means to be hopeful as deeply as the man we honor every year at this time: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a pioneer of the civil rights movement. King’s dream was simple, but achieving it meant overcoming countless barriers and complexities. In many ways, hope was the driving force behind his remarkable achievements.
I missed this blog when it was first put up in January of 2014, but I find its words to be especially meaningful right now. (After all, studying the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., is never a bad thing.) I cannot imagine the odds against Dr. King when he first started agitating for civil rights and fair pay for laborers and equal rights for women and any number of other positive things — and he must’ve felt discouraged from time to time, too.
He didn’t show it very often, because Dr. King knew that people needed to believe that their lives, however meaningless they seemed, could indeed make a difference. So on bad days, he must’ve said, “I’m going to go out there and do the best I can,” and given whatever speech he had planned with whatever energy he had. And in so doing, he helped to lift people up with his words.
Words matter. Whether you’re an orator or a writer (or somewhere in between).
When I write a story, I want to make you think about something beyond yourself. Pondering something else can give you hope, because it means you can still think, still feel, still understand.
And I know that was Michael’s motivation for writing, also. He wanted to divert people, get them outside of themselves, and give them a few hours of entertainment that might actually make ’em smile . . . maybe that’s why I’ve pushed so hard with my own novel AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, because as a comic fantasy, what else can it do but make people smile?
Before I go, let me share one quote (also cited in the Writer’s Relief article) I found especially meaningful from Dr. King: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
That, in a nutshell, is why I keep writing. Because I believe in hope. And that hope has to come from my own, hard work and effort — otherwise, why would it be worth anything?
12 Years Ago Today…
. . . I married the love of my life, Michael B. Caffrey, in Waukegan, Illinois.
Had Michael lived, we’d be celebrating twelve happy years together. I have no doubt of this.
I also have no doubt that Michael is the person I was intended to be with all along. I didn’t find him until I was in my mid-thirties, going through a second divorce. But I did find him, we did marry, and we had two wonderfully blessed years together.
I know duration does not equal value. (If it did, my first marriage would be three and a half times more important than my marriage to Michael. Which is flatly absurd.) But I do wish we’d have had more time together.
That said, out of our union came several wonderful things. The Elfyverse, for one . . . I can’t imagine writing the ELFY duology (of which part one is AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE) without knowing Michael, because I wouldn’t have had any idea at all what love truly was about without him.
In 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-8, the Bible says this about love (quoting the GOD’S WORD® Translation from BibleHub.com):
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. 5It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. 6It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. 7Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.
8Love never comes to an end.**
Note that this is exactly how Michael was, with me. He was extremely patient. He was unfailingly kind. He certainly wasn’t jealous — he was the farthest possible thing from that. He was a self-effacing man who, when I complimented him, almost always tried to turn it away — and when he did accept it, did so modestly. (Or humorously. Or maybe both.)
And I believe verse 5 — love not being rude, not thinking about itself, not being irritable and not keeping track of wrongs — also applies to Michael. Because he wasn’t rude. (Trust me; with two ex-husbands behind me, I well know what rude can be in a marital context.) And he faced life with a courage and optimism that I’ve never seen out of another living soul . . . something that continues to give me strength, nearly ten years after his body went to dust.
I especially think verse 6 in this particular translation applies to Michael. He hated injustice with a passion. But he loved the truth, even if the truth was difficult to understand and/or frustrating.
(Personally, I think that was the Zen Buddhist in him. But I digress.)
And verse 7, too, sounds much like him. Michael believed with all his being that I would make it. No matter what happened to us — and we suffered through a flood that damaged many of our belongings, not to mention a huge and financially ruinous cross-country move, and many other things — he believed that success was what you made of it.
And because I got up and tried my best every day, whether it was playing my music, composing music, or of course writing and editing (which he went a long way toward teaching me, and I wasn’t the most apt of pupils), he honestly told me I was a success — and meant it.
To him, it wouldn’t matter that I wasn’t world-famous. What mattered to him instead was that I was my best self, and kept being my best self, no matter what other awful things might happen.
And while I intentionally truncated verse 8 (that’s what the two stars are about, in this context), I like this version’s translation — “Love never comes to an end.”
Because that’s how I feel about it, too.
So while this is a “sadiversary” for me, insofar that I’d much rather Michael be alive so we could do the normal things couples do when they’re celebrating the date of their wedding, it’s also an oddly happy day, too.
I got to marry and be with the most wonderful person I’ve ever known. Not many people can say that. And he loved me until the end of his life, with everything he had, and I believe wherever he is now in the positive Afterlife, he continues to love me, too.
And I know I will always, always, always love Michael, too.
That’s more precious to me than any amount of money or fame could ever be.
Poet, Renaissance Woman Maya Angelou Dead at 86
Poet, Actress, and Renaissance woman Maya Angelou has died, according to the Associated Press. She was 86.
Ms. Angelou wrote many poems, several autobiographies (her best-known was probably I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS), acted in the original ROOTS TV mini-series and appeared, as herself, in Tyler Perry’s MADEA’S FAMILY REUNION, where she recited a poem that discussed true love and its timeless nature.
In reading her obituary, I was struck by how many different things Ms. Angelou did during her life. She was a singer, an actress, a dancer, once owned a brothel . . . writers often kid each other about how many different jobs we’ve held, but it sounds like Ms. Angelou had all of the rest of us beat on that score.
All of that experience went into her writing, deepening and broadening it immensely. She was unafraid to be who she was, and admitted to several very bad things that had happened to her early in life. Somehow, she rose above those awful things, and became her best self.
It’s rare when a writer or poet gets to know a President. Ms. Angelou got to know at least three: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. All three men have said in the past that they felt inspired by her, so I cannot believe it would be any different now that she’s passed on.
I hadn’t been aware of half of the things Ms. Angelou did during her thoroughly extraordinary life. But I honor her for everything she did, everything she said — even if I didn’t always like it — and for living a life that inspired millions.
May her Afterlife be everything she hoped it would be.
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