November 15, 2012

Today is Jake's birthday, he would be 24 today. For me he IS 24 today, growing up in a different place.
I got up after laying in bed for about 45 minutes thinking. The evening had it's usual nightmares, not clear enough to remember, maybe not even about him. Just a low level tenseness with pieces of memory flashing by and some moments of extreme sadness and still of course, disbelief.

I lay there in bed there wondering what to do with this day. Live was the answer. Live and be happy. Today is a day of celebration for me. A celebration of the excitement and thrill, and appreciation of the gift I was given 24 years ago. One of my 3 finest gifts, the other two being Annie and Alex. I am so lucky really. I have been given so much, and while it hurts so bad, so much of the time it is the loss that really makes me appreciate the gifts. Not that I want it that way, I would much rather be much less appreciative and have Jake alive, more than just in my heart and wherever he is. But it is the loss that has made me appreciate my children and my life even more.

I still remember, standing by the Will Call shelf at Captain Video when I got the call. My wife telling me we are going to have a baby today and that I needed to get to the hospital. In my typical fashion, I thought immediately of Rob and Laura Petrie from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and at that moment I was Rob. I immediately lost all my calm and walked in circles wondering what to do next.

Jake did not show up till the next morning,  24 years ago today but I will always remember the moment I held him in my arms. I remember him crying and I looked at him and said "Hi Jake" something I had done every day to his mom's stomach for 9 months. He stopped crying immediately. I knew then for sure he would be my buddy. Just like Annie was, going with me everywhere, constantly falling asleep in the shopping cart at the market against my hand, or Alex who still will lean over on to me to this very day when we watch a movie, and hug me, or fall asleep against me. I have some great kids, some great gifts. Now I watch people around me that are just starting out, whose children are infants or toddlers and it makes me so happy to see the love they have for their children. I see it in their eyes, I feel it in the air. It is the gift that I was given. I really have led a charmed life.

I have equated my life to a series of television shows (big surprise). Small moments in time with great happiness and great sadness. "Dan as a Child", "Dan as a Teenager"  "The Dan & Marci Show,  "The Duplex" and the show I am currently involved in which is still running.
Each of these series have had a lot of episodes, some good, some not so good, but If I look back at each series, I can honestly say that there were far more great episodes than bad ones. A lot of people do not get the chance to be in so many good shows. We have to appreciate and remember these shows, especially the good episodes because that is what life is, a series of small moments in time, and they can be gone before we realize it. Don't think of your life as one long life. It will be filled with all kinds of adventures, lots of short stories. Appreciate them and find the good in each story. If you look at your life as one long story, you will continually long to reach some sort of  happy ending. but life is full of small happy endings, short television episodes. Remember the episodes. The Dan & Marci Show will probably, most certainly be my all time favorite show because this show starred Me, my wife and my kids. There was no greater cast. It was the Seinfeld of my life and will never be duplicated. I had some of my finest moments and most difficult times in it.

A lot of you are in a similar show right now, your Seinfeld. Live in the show and enjoy each episode aware that it could get cancelled. That way you will enjoy each episode. It is the loss, whether through passing of time or through disaster that gives us the balance and the appreciation of what we have.

I miss Jake. Every single day. Every single day. But today is his birthday, a celebration of the gift I was given. 20 years of heaven on Earth was given to me in the form of a child.
I love you Annie and I love you Alex my other two  gifts I am happy to be your Daddy.
And thank you too Marci for these gifts.

Happy Birthday "Jake-Old"

Love "Dan-Old"

November 9th 2012

I have been feeling the need to write lately. A lot of things happening in my life while at the same time not a lot of things happening. Financially, I am pretty much the same. Still trying to eek out a living that is consistent enough that I can get back out on my own. Unfortunately that is not yet happening, but I continue to send out resumes and do a variety of side work from I.T. to video production. I am fortunate that I know how to do a lot of things.

At times I feel somewhat obsolete. Technology has changed significantly since 2005 when I had a thriving repair business, and worked as a programmer for a computer dating company. The products I used to repair are now pretty much disposable and the dating company has been replaced by social networking. It seems to have had a somewhat negative toll on my self esteem and I struggle to  not feel useless.  I am learning to deal with it and  push on hoping for a new break. I feel like it is going to happen soon, I don't know why but I just feel it.

Several months ago while doing some I.T. work at a clients, I happened to meet a very interesting gentleman. He is mostly blind, struck by an illness called low grade glaucoma . He was left with significant tunnel vision. An avid tennis player he somehow is still able to play tennis even though it is difficult for him to do anything else without assistance. Simple activities such as walking down the street must be done with an assistant.

His story is located at this link:
http://carlsbad.patch.com/articles/nearly-blind-carlsbad-resident-plays-tennis-daily-video#video-11766852

We struck up a conversation and he told me that he had also lost a child. His daughter died at the age of one and one half possibly due to SIDS. When he told me this I felt an immediate connection. Perhaps because I knew that he could feel and understand the way I felt about losing Jake. Here was someone who went through the loss of a child just like me.
In talking to him, I found out that he had written a few novels and had been hoping for years to get them edited and published. He also was interested in starting a blog. The problem with doing any of this was  his lack of vision which made writing an impossible task.
As he spoke to me my mind was already thinking ahead. I thought maybe I could help this man and perhaps he could help me. Because of my technical and creative skills perhaps I could use technology to help him get some of his dreams accomplished.
I talked to him about the possibility of setting up voice to text dictation wherein he could talk and the computer would type for him. This made him very excited and we decided to meet at his house later that week. When he left, I started to feel nervous thinking "What am I getting myself into? I need to worry about myself now not anyone else!" However I knew that helping others is always the right thing to do and as they say when you give, you get back, at least that's what they say.

So, I showed up at his house and we tried to setup  vocal dictation using voice dictation software. The idea was sound, but there was an aspect of my idea that I had not thought to consider. Because he was from Puerto Rico he had a strong accent and although he spoke English very well, the software could not learn his dialect. Additionally, it was hard to train the software because he could not read the text that  the software needed to hear to learn to recognize his dialect.

So we decided to go into manual mode and I helped him create and update his blog. We became instant friends. There was some type of kinship we shared that was more than just the loss of a child. Our senses of humor were similar as were our values and we just hit it off. After we finished the blog we decided to start editing one of his novels which he called THE Interview. The basic idea behind it was four reporters that get the chance to interview God and ask him so many of the questions we all would like to know, all of the whys.
I would meet at his house every Monday and Wednesday for two hours each day and we would edit the book. And this is where the magic started to happen. We just kept becoming closer friends. Part of the book was based on his life which was full of heartache and sadness. He was able to successfully intertwine some of his life experiences into the story  and allow the reporters  to ask God  questions. Questions that I ask day after day such as "why did I have to lose Jake?" Time and time again, we would stop as the story touched both of us and start crying about our similar situations. For him, it had been 45 years since the death of his child, for me I was going on three and one half. We had great discussions, sometimes for hours on end discussing why and how to move forward. I asked most, if not all of the questions. Everything from Jake to my divorce, and the loss of most everything I owned. Through his answers and his book he gave me so many of the answers I needed and helped me through the grief process more than I ever thought possible. He told me that when I start to feel bad about Jake, to try and stop and just thank God for the time that I had with him. To appreciate every moment I had with him any time I started to feel sad (which is still every day)

 I am doing better lately. For the last several months, better than I have for the last several years. I will never get over Jake and even as I write these words, a deep sadness starts to fall over me, but I stop and am just thankful for all the time I did have, and look forward to seeing him one day. And I am thankful for Frank, that's right Frank Maldonado, this man who has helped me to get through some of these hard times. Frank who coincidentally or not coincidentally is the name Jake gave to his tumor. Maybe Jake is up there somewhere setting this whole thing up. Maybe, almost certainly, there is a lot more going on in life than we ever give credit for. Maybe there is some sort of a plan after all.

Another Day

Well, it is Sunday night. Easter night. I went over to my Dad's house in L.A. It's always a little bit difficult when I am here. For one thing, I am away from home and the things that keep my mind busy. For another, it is still weird to be here on a family occasion without all of my family. Jake's birthday on November 2008 was the last time my entire core family was together. It seemed that we were celebrating the success of Jake's treatment and looking forward to having all this behind us. Then, about a day after staying here, We left for home and on the way Jake started to feel sick. It looked like he had caught a cold from someone at the airport in New Delhi. We did not know that it was more than a cold we would be dealing with soon.. New tumors had started growing where the Cytotron treatment was not centered. We did not know we were about to begin the final journey.

So now I sit all alone. This time in the kitchen of my Dad's house writing in my blog much like I did the night before we left for India a few years ago. I have spent the last few years getting re-organized, catching up on everything I let go of when Jake got sick. I have accomplished much. All my taxes are complete, everything I had that was paper has been scanned and stored electronically and I have managed to reduce my expenses significantly. I have given away, donated and sold many of my posessions which has been very freeing. I feel that I am headed back on the track to normalcy. I have been studying new computer technologies in hopes to land a decent job and even developed a plan to exercise my creativity while being responsible and earning money.

Still, I feel as though I am in another world. Almost like I am on the other side of a two way mirror watching everyone else live. It seems that many feel or hope that I am now at the point where I should really be getting over this. The reality is that they hope for me to be better because they all care about me and if I feel better, so will they. It must be difficult for them, there is really not much anyone can say. I still wake early, get up and stay busy learning things, then go to bed when I know I will be able to fall to sleep fast. I think in general I am doing well with the struggle, but I realize now it really is not a struggle to beat, simply a struggle to continually overcome on a daily basis for the rest of my life.

For my own sake and to respect how strong Jake was I will always continue to try and be better every day and enjoy the life that I have been given but I am not sure when if ever I will really be able to come out from behind the two way glass and participate more in life. The point is that I am trying, I will always try... for my own self and to salute Jake whom I miss so much.

That being said, a small footnote. I love my two children Anne and Alex and my niece Teresa whom I consider as close to my own as anyone can be. And I love Joelle, my girlfriends daughter. I was meant to be a father. Being a father has always been the best gift I was ever given in life. It is my most favorite thing to be.

3rd Year

Every year seems similar. As it comes close to this date I start to wonder What I should do with myself tomorrow... On the day of...

I think of plans ranging from all day movie watching to walking on the beach or just sitting in the library writing. Maybe I should try to do something nice for another person today. I spend a good part of my life with these thoughts in the back of my mind but they travel right to the front of my mind as Jake's anniversary gets closer. Finally, I take out my memorial candle given to me 3 years ago today and light it. Then I place it on the mantel next to Jake's picture and continue to try and deal with how wrong it is that I own a memorial candle for my son.

I will go see "The Adventures Of Tin Tin tonight perhaps with my kids and with Pam. I think on some level I will imagine that Jake and Indy are doing some of the same heroic things as the people in the movie or at least having that much fun. And I will wonder if there is something to the fact that this movie about the adventures of a boy and his dog was directed by my favorite director Steven Spielberg and released during a very difficult time of the year. The more I try and figure things out, the more confused I become. The only thing I have really figured out is that this day and the days leading up to it are very difficult and without answers. It is very strange to be celebrating death days instead of birthdays. Pretty sure I will never get used to that. Anyway, here's to life "Le Chaim" and hoping for a good day and something very positive to write about tonight.