dedalus_1947 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dedalus_1947) wrote2014-06-06 12:55 pm
dedalus_1947) wrote2014-06-06 12:55 pm
New Beginnings
The whole world’s broke and it ain’t worth fixing
It’s time to start all over, make a new beginning
There’s too much pain, too much suffering
Let’s resolve to start all over, make a new beginning.
Now don’t get me wrong – I love life and living
But when you wake up and look around
At everything that’s going down – all wrong
You see we need to change it now,
This world with too few happy endings
We can resolve to start all over make a new beginning.
(New Beginning – Tracy Chapman: 1995)
Late in May I happened to look at the kitchen calendar for June and noticed that the name Debbie was inscribed in my handwriting on the 17th. I recalled doing so a while back, hoping that it would act as a triggering reminder. June 17 is the day Debbie Greaney Parker died in 2003. I never had the courage to write about her, and I wasn’t sure why. You see, I have some very clear memories and images of Debbie as a woman and a mother, but they are inconsistent with the person who died alone in Sherman Oaks.
The details of that day are murky and sporadic. The discovery was made in the waning days of one of the most difficult school years in my career as a principal. 2002-2003 was the year of the Red Team Scare. It was the year the school staff, from principal to cafeteria worker, had to implement an immediate academic reform plan to offset our inadequate achievement scores over the previous years. The school had undergone a blisteringly critical review the prior spring, which forced us to question our competence as a school. We struggled that entire year under a cloud of suspected inferiority. We were driven to prove to the District that the negative evaluation of the Red Team was wrong. We were convinced that we were a great school with excellent students and fine teachers, and so the goal of 2002-2003 was to show it on the May achievement tests, even though the results would not be known until November. Honestly, I just wanted the school year to end. The tests had been given, and I was addressing the aftermath of the urgency and pressure that had driven us all year. The stress to excel had been too much for many teachers and administrators, and I was looking at many staff vacancies and transfers. The school and its students, teachers, and staff were worn out, tired, and depressed.
It was on the Tuesday morning of graduation week, on a grey and gloomy day, that I received a phone call from Kathy telling me of Debbie’s death. From that point, my memory of events is fractured and uneven. The events sometimes merge with past and future scenes of rooms, faces, mortuaries, and the funerals of Kathy’s Aunt Mary and her mother. As best I can recall, Kathy told me that she was driving directly to Debbie’s home, and I was to call my daughter Prisa. The plan was to have Prisa meet me at school and then drive together to Debbie’s house. Prisa tells me now that I was very cool and detached when I called her, not volunteering any emotional information about her godmother, other than there was an emergency at her residence and we needed to investigate it. Prisa had just completed her first year of teaching, and I think meeting me in a school environment helped her maintain a calm and professional demeanor after I told her what we might find at the Sherman Oaks house. When we arrived at the house on Longridge Ave, and saw the Coroner’s van parked in front of the house, with two police officers lounging next to it, we stayed in the car for a long time – neither of us wanting to enter.
Three words always leaped to my mind when describing Debbie: elegant, fashionable, and glamorous. Among all the lovely Greaney girls, she stood out as uniquely beautiful. She was tall and statuesque, with clean lines, and sharp distinctive features. Kathy told me that Debbie imagined herself as Audrey Hepburn, in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, but I thought of her more as a brunette version of Grace Kelly, in High Society. I suppose that’s how I thought of her, until I got to know her better. I ultimately fell in love with Debbie on the day my son Toñito was born in 1978.
At first, I thought I was handling Kathy’s labor pains pretty well – until they kept going on and on through the early morning hours at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. During that time, I think Kathy’s mother, Mary, and her dad stopped by to check on their daughter, but I was alone when her doctors came out to speak with me. After more than 15 hours of painful labor, Kathy had not dilated sufficiently and they were recommending a C-section. A C-section! What was that? I’d somehow managed to miss that chapter in the Lamaze childbirth classes we attended. I was prepared to support her back, coach her breathing, speak supportively while holding her hand, and ignore the pain-induced taunts and accusations she would fling at me for getting her pregnant. But I never expected this! A C-section was surgery – cutting Kathy open and removing out child. Was my son doomed to suffer Macduff’s fate and be “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb? Panicked visions filled my head. For a moment, I mistranslated the doctor’s words to mean that they were trying to save both mother and child, but there was no guarantee that Kathy would survive the procedure. Were they asking me to choose who should live? After these first waves of irrational terror swept past, I managed to gulp down some air and listened more carefully. A Caesarean procedure was being recommended because the labor had gone on too long without sufficient dilation for a natural birth. They made the procedure sound reasonable and safe, and so I finally agreed – but I was shaken and afraid. I’m sure now that they also conferred with Kathy’s father, who was a general surgeon, about this situation. I was told later that he even had blood donors lined up and a surgical team on standby in case any problems arose during the procedure. But at the time I was shaken, afraid, and alone. It was at that precise moment, in the rainy, solitary dawn of morning, that Debbie appeared. She was bathed in a spotlight of golden radiance as she moved effortlessly down the corridor in her voguish outfit and stepped into the waiting room. Her beguiling smile was so gentle and reassuring, that when she asked me how I was doing, I fell into her arms and wept. Heaving sobs shook me, and she held me in her embrace until I was calm and able to speak. After I described what the doctors had said, she gently explained the benefits of a C-section, and the risks of an extended labor on mother and child. This was my first glimpse of Deborah, the certified, nursing graduate of Mount St. Mary’s College, and the mature and experienced mother of three children. I eventually let her go to see Kathy and check on her progress. I was fine after her intervention and reassurances.
After Toñito’s birth, my relationship with Debbie changed. Despite revealing my fears and uncertainties about childbirth and parenting, Debbie wholeheartedly accepted me and loved me as a member of her family. I stopped characterizing her simply as a beautiful woman with excellent taste, and saw her as a reliable friend and confidant, someone you could count on for help and support, because she always showed up. This was the family trait I would eventually recognize in all the Greaney siblings – especially the women. But Debbie was the first. She would show up if you were in trouble and needed help. She showed up to family events, games, performances, and birthdays. She opened her home to all who needed a place to stay, or hosted family events that needed a large venue. She was generous to a fault and loved throwing parties, but she demanded honesty, loyalty, good value, and quality effort in return. In many ways her parenting activities and devotion to her three children, Jeff, Christy, and Alicia, also provided a model for Kathy and me. We followed her lead and introduced Toñito and Prisa to AYSO soccer, swim clubs and parish swim meets, children’s theatre groups, and female athletics. We could not think of a better example for our only daughter, Prisa, and we asked her and Mike to serve as godparents when she was baptized in 1980.
There was one characterization of Debbie that I could never understand. As she became more involved in various charity aspects of the TV and movie business in Hollywood, and in the community theatre group that formed at her parish church, she assumed more responsibility in the production of its musicals. A nickname slowly evolved over time and it somehow took hold. Mentioned at first in whispers behind her back, and then quite brazenly by friends and co-workers, Debbie was called “The Dragon Lady”, the terrifying chairperson, producer, or director you didn’t mess with. Although I recognized her desire for quality and excellence in this moniker, it was never an acceptable name for me. I detested hearing it, and I distrusted people who used it to describe her. The name confused her strengths for toughness, and Debbie was never hard. In some ways Debbie reminded me of my beloved Tia Totis, my mother’s closest sister (see Forever Young). Totis was elegant and smart, strong and demanding, and charming and funny. Debbie was all of these things too, but while Totis was tough enough to weather family difficulties and tragedies, Debbie was vulnerable. In the questions she asked me, or the advice she sought from me, when I joined her in kitchen conversations, helping to prepare drinks, appetizers, and hors d’oeuvres for parties or family events, Debbie betrayed a depth of doubts and insecurities I could never fathom. I can only imagine that these long hidden vulnerabilities only grew and expanded with time, as her children became more independent, left home for colleges and jobs, and married and moved away. What became noticeable was that Debbie stopped showing up. She missed Prisa’s games, Toñito’s performances, and family events. After a while, Debbie’s presence was the exception rather than the rule.
The last time I saw Debbie was at her parent’s 60th Wedding Anniversary party. She was elegantly dressed and coiffed, but despite the heavy makeup, she looked tired, drained, and weary. Kathy and her sisters were worried, and attempted making contact with her later, but Debbie continued drifting farther and farther away. On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, in the only notations in my office notebook for that day, I wrote:
My memories of June 17, and the days that followed, up to the funeral and burial, are a blur. The happiest moments occurred on Friday night, when Debbie’s 7 younger siblings met at our home for their private version of a Sibling’s Wake. Laughs were shared, family photographs were examined and commented on, and stories were told of Debbie and the Greaney family. Through the prism of eight pair of eyes, and the reflections of eight minds, a spectrum of scenes and images of Debbie emerged which were able to bring her back to life for one more evening – one more party, one more feast. The tears came in private, at the funeral, and at the burial. The only photographs I took were at the Sibling Wake and during the reception after the burial. Greg’s three boys escaped the somber and morose atmosphere of the reception and started a spontaneous volleyball game on the country club lawn. It was an idyllic scene of children at play during a time of grief and sadness. It would have brought a tender smile to Debbie’s lovely face.
After those gloomy final days of June, and the end of that awful school year, life resumed in the family and at school. Things began happening, and changes occurred over the summer that promised of new beginnings. A colorful wall mural was completed in the school quad, depicting the fulfillment of youthful dreams emerging from the spiritual and cultural diversity of Los Angeles. A labyrinth, modeled on the one in the Cathedral of Chartres in France was also constructed in the quad. Although interpretations of its function and symbolism varied among faculty and staff members, I liked to think of it as an instrument depicting the human journey through life; a path in which each step should be a timeless moment to be experienced, enjoyed and cherished. Eight young and enthusiastic new teachers were hired, and their melding into the renewed school energy of the veteran staff promised for an exciting year. It was also the summer that Kathy, Prisa, and I traveled to Chicago to watch Debbie’s son Jeff perform in Stephen Sondheim’s pre-Broadway production of the musical Bounce at the Goodman Theatre. It was a joyous chance to experience Chicago, watch Jeff participate in the career Debbie promoted and supported for her son, and visit with Jeff and Lynn’s two girls at Northwestern University. Finally, at the beginning of the new school year, the scores of the California Academic Performance Index were released for all public schools. The students and staff of Shangri-la Middle School had raised its combined score by 45 points, marking the greatest academic gain of all other middle schools in District.
It’s taken me eleven years to overcome my denial of Debbie’s deteriorating illnesses, the shock of her sudden death, and my fears of writing about it. I wanted to remember her the way she was when she soothed my fears in the maternity ward of St. Joe’s. The way she greeted me, radiant and luminous, at the CIMA (Catholics In Media Awards) banquets she organized and hosted. The way she chatted with me wistfully in her kitchen, chopping carrots and celery, and spreading plates of shrimp cocktails before a party at her home. The way she always showed up at family events and important occasions. Those scenes and images were glimpses into the soul and essence of my sister-in-law Debbie, and that essence has never waned or evaporated. I see Debbie in her roses that continue to bloom, year after year, in Kathy’s garden. I see her in her children, Jeff, Christy, and Alicia, and their children. Debbie is with me still, and will always be a part of my life, and the lives of my children. She will be a part of our lives until we join her in the next.
It’s time to start all over, make a new beginning
There’s too much pain, too much suffering
Let’s resolve to start all over, make a new beginning.
Now don’t get me wrong – I love life and living
But when you wake up and look around
At everything that’s going down – all wrong
You see we need to change it now,
This world with too few happy endings
We can resolve to start all over make a new beginning.
(New Beginning – Tracy Chapman: 1995)
Late in May I happened to look at the kitchen calendar for June and noticed that the name Debbie was inscribed in my handwriting on the 17th. I recalled doing so a while back, hoping that it would act as a triggering reminder. June 17 is the day Debbie Greaney Parker died in 2003. I never had the courage to write about her, and I wasn’t sure why. You see, I have some very clear memories and images of Debbie as a woman and a mother, but they are inconsistent with the person who died alone in Sherman Oaks.
The details of that day are murky and sporadic. The discovery was made in the waning days of one of the most difficult school years in my career as a principal. 2002-2003 was the year of the Red Team Scare. It was the year the school staff, from principal to cafeteria worker, had to implement an immediate academic reform plan to offset our inadequate achievement scores over the previous years. The school had undergone a blisteringly critical review the prior spring, which forced us to question our competence as a school. We struggled that entire year under a cloud of suspected inferiority. We were driven to prove to the District that the negative evaluation of the Red Team was wrong. We were convinced that we were a great school with excellent students and fine teachers, and so the goal of 2002-2003 was to show it on the May achievement tests, even though the results would not be known until November. Honestly, I just wanted the school year to end. The tests had been given, and I was addressing the aftermath of the urgency and pressure that had driven us all year. The stress to excel had been too much for many teachers and administrators, and I was looking at many staff vacancies and transfers. The school and its students, teachers, and staff were worn out, tired, and depressed.
It was on the Tuesday morning of graduation week, on a grey and gloomy day, that I received a phone call from Kathy telling me of Debbie’s death. From that point, my memory of events is fractured and uneven. The events sometimes merge with past and future scenes of rooms, faces, mortuaries, and the funerals of Kathy’s Aunt Mary and her mother. As best I can recall, Kathy told me that she was driving directly to Debbie’s home, and I was to call my daughter Prisa. The plan was to have Prisa meet me at school and then drive together to Debbie’s house. Prisa tells me now that I was very cool and detached when I called her, not volunteering any emotional information about her godmother, other than there was an emergency at her residence and we needed to investigate it. Prisa had just completed her first year of teaching, and I think meeting me in a school environment helped her maintain a calm and professional demeanor after I told her what we might find at the Sherman Oaks house. When we arrived at the house on Longridge Ave, and saw the Coroner’s van parked in front of the house, with two police officers lounging next to it, we stayed in the car for a long time – neither of us wanting to enter.
Three words always leaped to my mind when describing Debbie: elegant, fashionable, and glamorous. Among all the lovely Greaney girls, she stood out as uniquely beautiful. She was tall and statuesque, with clean lines, and sharp distinctive features. Kathy told me that Debbie imagined herself as Audrey Hepburn, in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, but I thought of her more as a brunette version of Grace Kelly, in High Society. I suppose that’s how I thought of her, until I got to know her better. I ultimately fell in love with Debbie on the day my son Toñito was born in 1978.
At first, I thought I was handling Kathy’s labor pains pretty well – until they kept going on and on through the early morning hours at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. During that time, I think Kathy’s mother, Mary, and her dad stopped by to check on their daughter, but I was alone when her doctors came out to speak with me. After more than 15 hours of painful labor, Kathy had not dilated sufficiently and they were recommending a C-section. A C-section! What was that? I’d somehow managed to miss that chapter in the Lamaze childbirth classes we attended. I was prepared to support her back, coach her breathing, speak supportively while holding her hand, and ignore the pain-induced taunts and accusations she would fling at me for getting her pregnant. But I never expected this! A C-section was surgery – cutting Kathy open and removing out child. Was my son doomed to suffer Macduff’s fate and be “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb? Panicked visions filled my head. For a moment, I mistranslated the doctor’s words to mean that they were trying to save both mother and child, but there was no guarantee that Kathy would survive the procedure. Were they asking me to choose who should live? After these first waves of irrational terror swept past, I managed to gulp down some air and listened more carefully. A Caesarean procedure was being recommended because the labor had gone on too long without sufficient dilation for a natural birth. They made the procedure sound reasonable and safe, and so I finally agreed – but I was shaken and afraid. I’m sure now that they also conferred with Kathy’s father, who was a general surgeon, about this situation. I was told later that he even had blood donors lined up and a surgical team on standby in case any problems arose during the procedure. But at the time I was shaken, afraid, and alone. It was at that precise moment, in the rainy, solitary dawn of morning, that Debbie appeared. She was bathed in a spotlight of golden radiance as she moved effortlessly down the corridor in her voguish outfit and stepped into the waiting room. Her beguiling smile was so gentle and reassuring, that when she asked me how I was doing, I fell into her arms and wept. Heaving sobs shook me, and she held me in her embrace until I was calm and able to speak. After I described what the doctors had said, she gently explained the benefits of a C-section, and the risks of an extended labor on mother and child. This was my first glimpse of Deborah, the certified, nursing graduate of Mount St. Mary’s College, and the mature and experienced mother of three children. I eventually let her go to see Kathy and check on her progress. I was fine after her intervention and reassurances.
After Toñito’s birth, my relationship with Debbie changed. Despite revealing my fears and uncertainties about childbirth and parenting, Debbie wholeheartedly accepted me and loved me as a member of her family. I stopped characterizing her simply as a beautiful woman with excellent taste, and saw her as a reliable friend and confidant, someone you could count on for help and support, because she always showed up. This was the family trait I would eventually recognize in all the Greaney siblings – especially the women. But Debbie was the first. She would show up if you were in trouble and needed help. She showed up to family events, games, performances, and birthdays. She opened her home to all who needed a place to stay, or hosted family events that needed a large venue. She was generous to a fault and loved throwing parties, but she demanded honesty, loyalty, good value, and quality effort in return. In many ways her parenting activities and devotion to her three children, Jeff, Christy, and Alicia, also provided a model for Kathy and me. We followed her lead and introduced Toñito and Prisa to AYSO soccer, swim clubs and parish swim meets, children’s theatre groups, and female athletics. We could not think of a better example for our only daughter, Prisa, and we asked her and Mike to serve as godparents when she was baptized in 1980.
There was one characterization of Debbie that I could never understand. As she became more involved in various charity aspects of the TV and movie business in Hollywood, and in the community theatre group that formed at her parish church, she assumed more responsibility in the production of its musicals. A nickname slowly evolved over time and it somehow took hold. Mentioned at first in whispers behind her back, and then quite brazenly by friends and co-workers, Debbie was called “The Dragon Lady”, the terrifying chairperson, producer, or director you didn’t mess with. Although I recognized her desire for quality and excellence in this moniker, it was never an acceptable name for me. I detested hearing it, and I distrusted people who used it to describe her. The name confused her strengths for toughness, and Debbie was never hard. In some ways Debbie reminded me of my beloved Tia Totis, my mother’s closest sister (see Forever Young). Totis was elegant and smart, strong and demanding, and charming and funny. Debbie was all of these things too, but while Totis was tough enough to weather family difficulties and tragedies, Debbie was vulnerable. In the questions she asked me, or the advice she sought from me, when I joined her in kitchen conversations, helping to prepare drinks, appetizers, and hors d’oeuvres for parties or family events, Debbie betrayed a depth of doubts and insecurities I could never fathom. I can only imagine that these long hidden vulnerabilities only grew and expanded with time, as her children became more independent, left home for colleges and jobs, and married and moved away. What became noticeable was that Debbie stopped showing up. She missed Prisa’s games, Toñito’s performances, and family events. After a while, Debbie’s presence was the exception rather than the rule.
The last time I saw Debbie was at her parent’s 60th Wedding Anniversary party. She was elegantly dressed and coiffed, but despite the heavy makeup, she looked tired, drained, and weary. Kathy and her sisters were worried, and attempted making contact with her later, but Debbie continued drifting farther and farther away. On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, in the only notations in my office notebook for that day, I wrote:
- Call LAUSD @ 866-633-8110
- Take car for service
- Talked to Kathy – Debbie found dead @ home.
My memories of June 17, and the days that followed, up to the funeral and burial, are a blur. The happiest moments occurred on Friday night, when Debbie’s 7 younger siblings met at our home for their private version of a Sibling’s Wake. Laughs were shared, family photographs were examined and commented on, and stories were told of Debbie and the Greaney family. Through the prism of eight pair of eyes, and the reflections of eight minds, a spectrum of scenes and images of Debbie emerged which were able to bring her back to life for one more evening – one more party, one more feast. The tears came in private, at the funeral, and at the burial. The only photographs I took were at the Sibling Wake and during the reception after the burial. Greg’s three boys escaped the somber and morose atmosphere of the reception and started a spontaneous volleyball game on the country club lawn. It was an idyllic scene of children at play during a time of grief and sadness. It would have brought a tender smile to Debbie’s lovely face.
After those gloomy final days of June, and the end of that awful school year, life resumed in the family and at school. Things began happening, and changes occurred over the summer that promised of new beginnings. A colorful wall mural was completed in the school quad, depicting the fulfillment of youthful dreams emerging from the spiritual and cultural diversity of Los Angeles. A labyrinth, modeled on the one in the Cathedral of Chartres in France was also constructed in the quad. Although interpretations of its function and symbolism varied among faculty and staff members, I liked to think of it as an instrument depicting the human journey through life; a path in which each step should be a timeless moment to be experienced, enjoyed and cherished. Eight young and enthusiastic new teachers were hired, and their melding into the renewed school energy of the veteran staff promised for an exciting year. It was also the summer that Kathy, Prisa, and I traveled to Chicago to watch Debbie’s son Jeff perform in Stephen Sondheim’s pre-Broadway production of the musical Bounce at the Goodman Theatre. It was a joyous chance to experience Chicago, watch Jeff participate in the career Debbie promoted and supported for her son, and visit with Jeff and Lynn’s two girls at Northwestern University. Finally, at the beginning of the new school year, the scores of the California Academic Performance Index were released for all public schools. The students and staff of Shangri-la Middle School had raised its combined score by 45 points, marking the greatest academic gain of all other middle schools in District.
It’s taken me eleven years to overcome my denial of Debbie’s deteriorating illnesses, the shock of her sudden death, and my fears of writing about it. I wanted to remember her the way she was when she soothed my fears in the maternity ward of St. Joe’s. The way she greeted me, radiant and luminous, at the CIMA (Catholics In Media Awards) banquets she organized and hosted. The way she chatted with me wistfully in her kitchen, chopping carrots and celery, and spreading plates of shrimp cocktails before a party at her home. The way she always showed up at family events and important occasions. Those scenes and images were glimpses into the soul and essence of my sister-in-law Debbie, and that essence has never waned or evaporated. I see Debbie in her roses that continue to bloom, year after year, in Kathy’s garden. I see her in her children, Jeff, Christy, and Alicia, and their children. Debbie is with me still, and will always be a part of my life, and the lives of my children. She will be a part of our lives until we join her in the next.