Sparks from the Fire

A family pastor once said at a funeral. “Ed is like a cracked walnut, the shell is here and the nut is gone.”

I’m back to work on my new CD, Going Home, reflections on crossing over and beyond.

It’s a little tricky sometimes writing music about death. It’s a subject that I’m presently fascinated with, but I’m not looking at it in the usual ways – tragic, sad, devastating and final.

Rather, I’m trying to see the experience from different angles – trying to make some practical sense of it all.

I’m also trying to make the CD an inspiring piece about an experience that we all will face some day and probably don’t consider enough in our lives. Yes, there’s clearly a deep sadness attached to the experience. We usually don’t want to leave and hopefully, there are folks around us who don’t want us to go.

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I woke up this morning thinking about sleep – mostly how little we know about it.  We spend nearly a third of our lives in it while we’re here on the planet and yet we think about it little.  It’s just something we do.

I’m not at all an expert on the subject.  But I do have nearly 20 years of experience.  Trouble is, while I’ve been experiencing it, I’ve been asleep.
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I know one thing for sure: I don’t get enough of it.  Also, for the last 10 years my sleep patterns have really changed.  I used to get my 8 straight as a boy, then as a young man I moved to 6 a night.  I seemed to do just fine with that, but if I got even 5 on one night, then I’d have to get in a couple of 8 straight to get on top of it.  Otherwise I’d just be wasted for days.

Then, in my latter years, my sleep patterns changed again.  I think it was when my son was born and I used to take the middle of the night feeding so that my wife could sleep.  Waking up around 3 or 4 was excruciating for me.  I was a 6 straight guy and I would crawl out of bed when the baby would cry and stagger around like a drunk.

After the feedings stopped, I kept waking up anyway and laying there trying to go back to sleep.  I began, at those times, to suffer from insomnia.  It was not fun.  No matter what I did, I could not go back to sleep.  I tried everything.

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In my religion we’re taught not to mourn the dead – primarily because we understand that life is eternal. This was not always the easiest concept for me to grasp, especially when someone close to me passed away.

When my dad died, that was probably the first whopper that I had to face. I was in my 30s at the time and remember taking the adjustment that he did not die, but instead moved to California and gave up his telephone.

This helped. Often, over the years we have had little visits in my dreams and I’m always grateful for those times together no matter how intangible they are.

Lately, dear friends seem to have been dropping right and left. So many, in fact, that I find myself feeling slightly accustomed to the experience. The Aids epidemic in New York where I live was a rough stretch also.

Working in the theater where there has always been a large gay population, I lost over a hundred friends and cohorts over time. That disease decimated several generations of hugely talented artists and changed the course of the American theater.

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