Attending to The Last Business of a Child's Life. Chris Martinez

When I worked for a plaintiff's firm, we represented the wife and mother of a young man who had been murdered at his place of employment.  We were pursuing employer liability while the criminal case against the killers proceeded in the courts.  The wife and mother, both spoke only Spanish, and were often accompanied by the murdered man's brother when they came to the office.  The brother spoke English and he and I would chat.  One day he expressed dread as the second criminal trial was approaching and he wondered if he had the strength to sit through it.  He said that he though it was easier on his mother and sister-in-law as they did not understand the language and did not have to hear the horror of this terrible death.  He wondered aloud, why he felt compelled to attend, as it was so unbearable.

I told him of Dominick Dunne, the author and father of the murdered young actress Dominique Dunne.  He was asked a similar question as he sat every day in the small Santa Monica courtroom, a few short feet away from the man who choked the life out of his only daughter.  He said that he had to be there as he was attending to the last business of his child's life.

I told this bereft brother, that Dunne, a famous author who traveled in the highest circles of wealth, privilege and social class shared with him a duty to family that crossed all strata of human society.  The brother nodded, looked off in the distance and said softly, "Yes.  It is the last business of my brother's life.  That is why I go." I have never forgotten this and was reminded of it when I saw my friend Rich Martinez on television responding to the senseless murder of his son, Chris, in Isla Vista in yet another grotesque mass murder that has once again, stained our nation.

Too early for grief, Rich's anger and blame was no more than an extension of the devoted parenting skills he and Chris' mother had exercised for the last twenty years.  Through his grief, he directed his words toward improving our social good--the very thing he did as a parent in shaping Chris to be the kind, loving, generous boy that he was.

I am gobsmacked at the bravery of Richard's last parental act, to think of others and to try to achieve social change. I don't know if I have ever seen anything so brave as Richard Martinez attending to the last business of his child's life.

I am a cautionary tale of woe.

I don't know how it got by me.  I'm pretty good about health care. But I really never thought about the shingles vaccine.  Perhaps I didn't know anyone that got it.  Maybe in my mind's eye I am not a little old lady but still in my thirties and still cute as a biscuit.  But I did not get the vaccine and I am now a cautionary tale.  I think that as a public service, they should prop my shell of a body up in public place (perhaps in the stocks in the village square as we did in Puritan New England) and tell people, who are looking at my anguish with concern. "See that pathetic woman. SHE didn't get the vaccine. She knew about it and she has money and health insurance.  It is inexplicable."  And then the on-lookers, will all go "Ahhhh, and she doesn't even look stupid" as they race to the nearest pharmacy for the shot.  I am the Johnny Appleseed of shingles vaccination.  I travel the country (via Facebook) and drop seeds of my woe and hope they sprout and bear the honey-crisp fruit of preventative action by others.

It is not only shingles that has struck its blow, but a family thing that I won't talk about now other than to say that even without postherpetic neuralgia I would have been struck low in anguish.

If I were Ian Fleming, I would title my book, "The Woman Who Saved Me" (The Spy Who Loved Me, for those of you who weren't James Bond obsessed at the age of eight).  Sukey Buchanan showed up on my doorstep.  I would tell you that her being in her pajamas illustrated the depths of her concern and worry but Sukey has been known to just go out in her p.j.s . I've been way too self-absorbed to take a picture of her bad self as she sits next to me and makes me stop working.  I wish y'all could have seen us listening to "Mack the Knife" yesterday--oozing life.  Two old ladies carried away by...

But Sukey is an artist and she gave me some of her work.  A life book, which is a moveable feast of her art.  One is interactive with it. Some paintings that I love.  I know why.  My life is filled with pain and anguish and she wants me to be distracted by beauty.  So she comes every day and sits with me and when I was maniacal she let me run on (How you talk) and then gave my pick(s) from a lovely collection of her beautiful work

  I figured out what she is doing.   She sees me consumed by pain, grief and anger and is applying the balm of beauty to it.  She gave me a lovely avian coloring book and asked me to color ONE picture. I refused. I cried.  I told her she was pressuring me.  But I just didn't want to because I thought I wouldn't be any good.  But she flipped some switch in my brain and now I have all these IDEAS for making things.  I want a glue stick.  NOW.