In the late 80′s, I had worked for Crest Art, owned by Paul Finkel and Moe Krinsky. Moe had one of those tattooed numbers on his arm. I often think of my days at Crest Art. Moe with his twinkle in his eye and the sheer determination in his 3 foot hurried stride, running around, barking orders at his V.P.’s, two of which were his sons, the third, Paul Finkel’s son-in-law Jay. Paul and Moe were to be admired. Never afraid to look the fool if they were sure they were doing the right thing, like when they made their radio commercial talking about art neophytes. That was funny. Paul was awnry, outing Jay as a Rabbi (this in a company made up of mostly homosexuals), telling jokes, giggling, Paul reminded me of a mischievous Irish Leprechaun complete with rosy cheeks. They were both serious business men, tho. If you respected Moe and Paul, you worked as hard as Moe and Paul. Crest Art management knew the people working for them were human beings. However, the heart and soul of Crest Art, laid not only in the spirit of their convictions, but for me, in one type of person. You know, the type that you would love to shadow, to understand their magic, their thoughts, the type one deeply admires. Often, it’s not only ‘just business’.

I started searching around last night and found that Moe had passed away in 2006. While reading, I was surprised to find that Moe and his brother Joe owned Moe & Joe’s Pub, a long established and well-known Midtown hot-spot. I smiled, knowing that of course, Moe would be doing several things at once. It was sad to read that such a tour-de-force had passed.

It was late and I went on to bed. This morning, I decided to search around some more to see what happened to the Krinsky’s, Finkel’s, and Shapiro’s. Disheartened, I found that Jay Shapiro, my boss and mentor passed away March of this year. Jay was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, the same type of brain cancer that Senator Ted Kennedy died from. Jay and his family had only a few short weeks before he passed away. An unimaginable sudden death for his family and loved ones.

Jay was more than a boss, he was a mentor and friend. He ultimately was responsible for my becoming a programmer. When I met him, I was working at Binder’s Art supply in their paper department. He would cheerfully walk around the store, touching base with each area, making sure employees and customers were happy. I heard that there was an opening at the corporate office, Crest Art, Inc., for an inventory control clerk, and pleaded with Jay to give me a chance at the job. He thought it over for a week or so, then let me come and try for it. That was my first induction into computers, the corporate environment, Jewish people, and true friendship.

I used to just come and sit in Jay’s office, listening to him answer his phone calls, delegate work, chit-chat with him about various topics, mainly the Jewish religion, people’s personalities, and family, just ‘being’. I said to him once, “You know, they don’t teach us much about ya’ll, you know, Jewish people”, he just laughed and said “They don’t teach us much about people like you either, you know, Christians”. He told me about his Hanukkah bush – the neighbors old Christmas tree he’d drag into his childhood home and decorate after Christmas was over. No matter what he was doing, he would always take a few minutes to make sure I was doing okay and would stop for a few minutes, if I wanted to talk, no matter what it was about. I felt like I was visiting a big brother, he said I was like a daughter to him. lol Always feeling like the ‘old’ one in the bunch. I remember how annoyed he was when he had to get glasses and how he dreaded the teasing he would get. Always just taking life’s little curves in stride.

When I talked with him about an idea to start Creative Hearts, an organization to encourage creativity in children, he used his contacts to get us printed stationary, envelopes, art supplies, and volunteers. Jay was warned by the controller on numerous occasions that he was just too friendly (hugging, chit-chatting, etc) with the employees and that one day it would lead to a discrimination suit. Jay knew tho, that you cannot go through life scared, with a glass window between you and those you are asking to work for you. He knew they were human beings, with outside lives and interests, and that the best way to get someone to give you their all was to give them yours. I never ran into another manager that treated his employees with such respect and dignity.

When it came time to leave Crest Art, it was because I had an opportunity to learn programming. It was a chance for me to move up, and Jay was, as always, very supportive. I didn’t realize until my last day, what a crush I had on this man. I had not spoken with him for more than 20 years, mainly over embarrassment over my crush, yet, there was not a long time that went by, when I didn’t remember some little thing he said or did, or the way he laughed at himself or his own awkwardness. Last year, when Flash died, I thought of Jay and his heartfelt conversations when he had to decide to put his dog down. When my children were born, I thought of Jay and how excited he was when his sons were born, and how heart broken he and Andee were when some of the babies were not born. When a colleague at another business passed from cancer – with the company worried over insurance costs – I thought of Jay, and how he would have fought for this man’s dignity. Jay put people over profits, but also knew, that profits are what kept those people employed. He knew what to take and what to give.

He became a mentor to me, a Godly man, a man of strong convictions who knew what mattered the most in life and had the courage of his convictions to defend them. We used to tease Jay about being a 6 ft. sap tree, but we all knew that he was as strong as any maple tree out there.

I just want Moe and Jay’s loved ones to know how the gentle breeze of their souls filled my main sails for a long time to come.

Rest In Peace

I believe 100% in the the Holy Trinity. They have come to my aid so often that it’s as if I carry them around in me all day and night, calling on them when needed and saying Thank You (though not as often as I should). I read somewhere where a lady used her laundry room as her altar place to talk to God as she washed clothes. That’s how I feel about him too. There are several wonderful moments during the day when I talk with him. One evening I was rocking in my chair, and I felt someone whisper deep down in my soul that Flash had the cancer so that Mom wouldn’t.

While I was at Mom’s helping out for the couple of weeks during her surgery, Flash became gravely sick. Slobo called me in tears, and we decided that we needed to let him go. Several times, I’ve tried to post about it, but couldn’t. Slobo did a very loving tribute to him that summed it up for all of us. We were talking just the other day in the car about how we still hear or feel Flash around. Slobo and our Middle Son have heard him sigh. We have all smelled him from time to time and I’ve felt him.

I had a really hard time accepting that it was okay to put Flash down and I’m not sure I’ve really accepted it. I’ve spent years fighting the notion of euthanasia, either for animals or humans. After having a sister like Pooh, who has been told she wouldn’t live so many times, and next year will turn 50, It’s not something that I felt people had control over. Either it’s time or it’s not and God decides that. Slobo and I took Flash to the vet while the children stayed at my parent’s house. We went in, sat on the floor with Flash and said our goodbyes and Thank You’s to him. He passed as if he fell asleep with his head in my lap. I didn’t even know he had gone. That was in March and it still feels like it was last week.

A couple of weeks ago, my mom called me in tears because her sister, my Aunt Charlotte, who is 52 was just diagnosed with stage 4 serous cancer (cancer is in the fluids of her stomach and started with ovarian cancer). At first we heard she had been bed ridden with the flu, then maybe was bleeding from some advil she had taken for a stomach ache, then a blockage, then a mass in her stomach that was causing her kidneys to shut down…. She weighed 90 lbs. when she went into the emergency room and when she was sent home last week, she weighed 75 lbs. She says they won’t perform any extraction surgeries because she weighs so little, they told her to gain weight and then they will do the surgery. We know when they opened her up, it was everywhere, they did a few biopsies, put in a large port in her back to drain each of her kidneys and closed her back up. Her daughter is talking of taking her to a Cancer Institute in PA. – in any case, she sees two doctors this morning to begin chemo. She is really looking forward to starting chemo and beginning her fight. I find it strange, from what I’ve read about this stage of cancer, that they did not go ahead and remove it, but I think they know something the rest of us are just guessing at. But who knows, as Mom says, Charlotte is stubborn and that may work in her favor, but she is having a tough time in her personal life anyway, so that will make it harder to fight. Their house has gone into foreclosure and I just pray they stay off an eviction until she gets through this – one way or the other.

Cancer deaths aren’t something new to me or my family. Several relatives have passed from it, some slow – some fast. My maternal grandmother passed just two weeks after the same type of diagnosis as my aunt. I wonder what makes us know when it’s time to let go, do we even have control over that? or does that Holy Trinity whisper to us that it’s time to let go because it’s going to happen whether we are ready or not? I can’t help but chuckle and wonder if it’s an eviction notice from God himself?

Springtime – New beginnings from a soil made up of the past – maybe that’s the recipe for peace. Heck, maybe that’s what Heaven’s garden soil is made of. Maybe our lives are just compost for Heaven? lol.

Please, just say your prayers for Aunt Charl. I know the keeper is listening. Maybe he just wants to know we are too.

In any case, think I’ll sit on the porch swing out at Fort Hoochenu today and knit a chemo cap or two for Aunt Charl while I consult with my three docs up in heaven today.

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If you read Slobo’s blog, you know that Flash, our 6 yr. old Golden has cancer. We will see a specialist on Tuesday morning to see if anything can be done.

When Pope John Paul passed away, there was so much talk about spiritual growth through suffering. Many of us don’t want to admit or think about it in those terms. Myself being one of them. Self-pity was something I abhorred. I used to get so angry when I heard a christian say, “It’s God’s Will”. No it’s not! God does not will suffering. God did not make it so my young nephew died. Or that my sister was born severely retarded. God DID give the devil reign of this earth. People do stupid things. They follow him. Simple fact. Bad things happen. But God, gives us open arms to fall into when bad things happen. God give us his grace and his love, especially in the ‘boos’ of life. There is a peace and love that comes from one person’s life as it passes through our own. We don’t have a choice when we are born and we don’t have a choice when we will die. We do make choices as we interact with eachother every day and that is where Simple Grace comes to fruition. We don’t have to stand by and accept things as God’s will. God gave us a will of our own. We should do with it what we can!

Slobo loves to refer to hilly roads in a car as taking a trip on the wee-boos….. The children laugh as the hilly weeeeee’s approach, get queasy with each boooo, then get giggly with anticipation as they round over the tops, so we must do with life’s curves, It’s not about rightness, wrongness, fairness or unjustness, it’s about the moments, the seperating of the sweet juice from the bitter rinds. Having the courage to hang in there knowing that your heart might get broken or you might be making a wrong decision – those moments when your heart sick over whether right decisions were made. I just fall into his arms and let him be my guide. Sometimes, I just can’t even think about it and he knows that. After all, he made me. He’ll help me and he’ll love me as long as I do what I can and know that I’ve done what I can.

If nothing else, I hope that our children learn to discern life’s sweet wee-boos with the innocence and courage that is theirs, for in it will be their serenity and the savory sweetness of thier lives.

And… in another of my selfish moments… I post this. lol. Just remember to kiss, hug and pet your loved ones today.

My DH and I watched Steve Irwin’s Memorial tonight on Animal Planet. We recorded it for the kids to see tommorrow. It was a perfect memorial to Steve for all that loved him so much. There was a song played, “True Blue” by John Williamson which was Steve’s favorite song. What an absolutely perfect piece of music. John Williamson reminds me of an Aussie Gordon Lightfoot. There was another song played, just as touching, called “He changed the world” but I haven’t been able to find the link for it. A poem entitled, “The Crocodiles Are Crying” by Rupert McCall, was also read. They were all such magical words written for a hero who will live on in legends.

Steve and Terri are patrons to a wildlife organization called Wildlife Warriors. This organization puts all of their money where their mouth is. Single handedly, Steve Irwin put conservation in a place and time where no one else could. As he had described in an interview about the death of his mother, “That kind of pain never goes away, they are missed forever, but you can get up and go on – just keep going!” and that is what we all must do!

And how do we ordinary people do that? We don’t do it by sitting around waiting for someone to take the place of someone as special as Steve. We must take the time, educate ourselves to act responsibly, educate our children or better, let our children educate us! The kids instinctively know and love nature long before understanding it.

When anyone asks, are there anymore True Blues, just reply, YES! and then tell two friends!

“Embrace your Heart!”

Our hearts, prayers and thoughts are with Terri and her children tonight. Steve embodied a heavenly spirit for life and loving. He stated in a 2004 interview , “Actions speak louder than words” and he lived up to that ideal! His example was less and less of chivalry or machismo and more about true love, friendship, caring and living every day to it’s fullest potential. What a grand example you have left behind, friend. Our thoughts will be with you and your family for a very long time.