El Dorado posted to Youtube

I've posted Michael's recording of El Dorado to Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhKxHtCV150

It's hard to watch. He looks good, and he sounds good. It reminds me of what I have lost, and it makes me cry. It's beautiful, and I am so glad he recorded it, because at least we still have this.

Michael's Music Legacy

Just before Christmas, I was exploring Michael computer and I found the following note from him to us. It was dated February 20, 2012:

Faced with the harsh reality of a serious cancer diagnosis in 2010, I began to realize that none of us will be here forever. In early 2012, while undergoing chemotherapy and taking advantage of good days and nights as they came, I slowly began working on cataloging and archiving all the songs and tunes that I have written. I also include a few covers (obscure and not so obscure) that I play. I will note which songs are mine and which I have covered. 

Some songs also appear on various recordings here and there, and some are seen here for the first time. Many of these are songs that no one -- not even those closest to me or my bandmates -- have heard me play. I thought it would be nice to get them down, just for the record. 

The video is terrible, and is captured using the built-in iSight camera in my Mac into PhotoBooth. The audio, which is all that matters anyhow, was captured using a Zoom h4n stereo recorder, linked via USB to the desktop. The recordings will not be perfect, and are usually single takes. 

I retain copyright to all of my own songs, and likewise I also copyright the arrangements of my covers.

His movies and the recordings were not new to me, but now I understood them. It was really important for him to capture his music, to have it live on, and to share with us. There was already plan for a CD that was nearly completed, but with these new recordings there will be enough music for perhaps 2 CD's. 

Ray and Jen and Kevin and I are greatly motivated to help Michael see those dreams realized. Ray will do his sound engineering magic with the recordings that Michael has left and other musicians, like Matt Ogden, will help and there will be soon be more Michael music recordings that we can all enjoy.

And it is a joy, I made a CD of his new recordings and played it all through Christmas and New Years. It was a balm to my sad spirit. I had a wonderful moment while napping on the day before Christmas. Mike S. played Michael's CD for me as I was dosing off and I thought "Oh, how wonderful, Michael is here." Almost, but not quite. But it was beautiful and I was so happy for a moment.

There are several of his movies that Kevin and I want to share on You Tube. The first one we will put up as a present to all of us. He is singing "Eldorado" and he looks so great, the way we want to remember him.

Best wishes to you, his friends and family, in the new year and thank you for loving him and helping to keep the sweet memories of him alive.

Michael's Mom

Life After Michael, Six Months On,
How Are We Changed?

Aching loss and constant awareness of his absence. Sadness and bitterness at his life left unfinished. Surrounded by his beautiful, well crafted and quality things. Pain from sudden memories like  lightening bolts. Joy for his music and the sound of his voice. Grateful that he escaped death so many times. Thankful that he was in my life for so long. Awed by all he did in his short life. Amazed by the number of people who loved him and were touched by him.

How do I remember him, honor him and yet go on with my own life?
How has his death changed me? Do I live differently?
Has the sorrow marked me and set me apart?
How have his friends been affected by his death?

What did I learn from Michael? 

I see that I am gentler with myself and others.
Gentleness was always my way, but I more quickly give permission to myself and others to be imperfect and incomplete.

I want to do things I have left undone.
He was so tenacious and pushed the envelope so hard.
I had given up on making any further mark or contribution.
I was old and failing so why even bother to try.
But I saw that he fought every day, not just to live, but to fulfill his dreams.
He planned, until the day he died, to get up out of that bed and have a good life:
to marry Jen, buy a house with her, finish his album, write more music,
become a teacher, go to Holland with his Mom and his brother,
travel with Ray and Gabriel, raise greyhounds,
enjoy the company of his family and friends ...

So, I have a life, a good life, and damnit, I better use it well.
That's what I learned from Michael.

Other Lessons Learned:

Be open and honest with my feelings.
Let sadness be there, but let joy also come in.
Be patient with others and with myself.
Be OK with retiring from the world for a day or a week when needed.
Let those you love know it.
Kiss them and hug them whenever they are within reach.
Keep pursuing the things you want from life.
Do not be discouraged, keep fighting.

My Grief Journal:

Month One
Will I survive this?
Do I even want to?
Can you die of grief?

Month Two
I guess I will live.
I seem to have chosen Life.
One foot ahead of the other.

Month Three
Soggy, tears and stress.
Saying goodbye to his house.
So sorry for all of us.

Month Four
Drowning in his things.
Everything different and changed.
Wanting the normal and comfortable back.

Month Five
Looking for focus and purpose.
Finding it in cooking and working with clay again.
Understanding that I will never be the same.

Month Six
Mind returning to better function.
Being busy is good therapy.
Sadness and tears are there, but do not interfere with life.


Recently Learned:
A grieving person experiences pain. The MRI of the brain of a grieving person looks like that of a person in real physical pain. But then we knew that. Right?

Missing Michael

I am missing Michael very deeply today. Though I miss him nearly every hour of every day, in sometimes heart stopping ways, today I want to reach out and TALK to him. I need his ideas on something that is troubling me.

He would listen to me in his you-have-my-complete-attention kind of way, respect my worries, give me insight, add his own personal knowledge, and provide help and the kind of support and balance that only he can give me because he is Michael, my son, and Kevin's Brother, the missing piece of my family. I miss you so much, Michael.

My daughter made me cry

Nell made me cry tonight.

She didn't mean to. She was catching up with a friend she hasn't seen in a couple of weeks, chattering away about a book that the two of them have just read. They were having a very animated conversation about plot points and characters and the frustration that both of them have with the ending, and at one point Nell remarked to her friend Maggie "if anyone is hearing just one side of this conversation they probably think we're crazy."

She got off the phone, and asked me a question. "Dad," she said. "When you were little, or when you were my age at any rate, did you have a friend you could talk to about anything at all?"

I couldn't answer her, because my voice wouldn't work.

I had a brother. And I could talk to him about anything at all, and he understood my jokes, and I loved him.

The last thing I said to him, when he was able to respond, was "I love you." And through the breathing mask, he said "I love you too."

I miss him every day.

The Long Goodbye

Michael died nearly 5 months ago; a hard, hard, thing to come to terms with. We, who loved him and miss him, have tried to find ways to say goodbye. The letting go is hard, our respect so deep, and the missing him so huge that this seems impossible to do. It seems that with a traditional (sort of) memorial, an Irish Wake, a goodbye to his house, and three separate memorial concerts, we should be able to say that we have paid our respects and completed our goodbyes.

Yes, a part of me knows that there is really no need to say goodbye to him at all because our memories of him will remain with us forever. We also have his beautiful and soul searching music to console us. And, joyfully, he was composing and recording to the end, which means that there are more recording of his music yet to come.

Nevertheless there is still one piece missing.

We found that Michael had made a list of things he wanted us to do for the wake, but we found the list only after the wake was past. As we read it we were relieved and pleased that we had done well in bringing together the people and music that he would have wanted, except for one thing. He wanted the poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, to be read by his friend, Bill Lochen. It was to be, I think, his goodbye to us. It seems a message that he was, and that we should be, at peace about his passing.

So I reproduce it here for all his friends and family, his parting message to us. Imagine it being read by Bill Lochen, or you don't know Bill, imagine perhaps Patrick Stewart's voice.

Posted by Mom

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core. 

By William Butler Yeats

Minnesota Renaissance Festival tribute show

I just got this from Michael's Gallowglass bandmate Lojo Russo:

You are invited to a special memorial show for Michael Matheny on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 5pm on the Pavilion Stage at the MN Renaissance Festival.

This show will be a time of remembrance and celebration and will include musical performances by Gallowglass and many of your favorite acts from the MN Renaissance Festival. A traditional “skiffle session” will follow these performances.

Many thanks to Carr Hagerman and the staff at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for making this happen.

The Minnesota Renaissance Festival ("Festival" to some of us, "RenFest" to others, and simply "the Fair" or "the Renaissance" to many more) was a big part of Michael's life. He discovered it in 1983, I think. I know he talked me into going out there in 1984, in the summer between high school and college. He was assistant stage manager of Crown, where the featured act was Penn & Teller. Over the next few years, he talked Ken Larson out of being a juggler and into being a musician, met Lojo and (after some initial rough patches) formed Gallowglass Irish Trio, which made him part of the Festival forever.

There's a lot of history there, and I'm glad that the musicians and cast members will have the chance to remember Michael in the place where one of his stories began.

Probate as a learning process

So how does this probate thing work?

Basically, when someone dies, we have to figure out what to do with their estate - the things that are legally theirs, including both assets and debts. 

Someone needs to do this work. In our case, I'm doing it, since Michael wanted me to take care of his finances. I'm getting a lot of help from Christina and Mom, and the rest of the support network, but there's a lot to do. 

First is getting the estate into probate. We're fortunate in that since Michael's assets were not significant, we can do "informal" probate. This means getting someone (me) named as Personal Representative for the estate. To do that, the primary heirs (Mom & Dad, since Michael was not married and had no children) needed to both renounce their claims to the estate and nominate me as Personal Rep. 

A note on "renouncing claims" - someone who does this is not giving up the ability to receive things from the estate, they're just declaring that it's okay if someone else (the Personal Rep) makes the decisions. 

I also have to petition the court to be named the Personal Rep. This petition needs to include an inventory of the assets of the estate. If there's too much money, or complex property stuff, then you may need to go into formal probate. That looks like it sucks; there are a lot of forms. 

Then we wait for the court to process all of this. If the petition is granted (and it was), then the court can issue "Testamentary Letters" to let asset-holders know that the Personal Rep is indeed the Personal Rep and has standing to do things like get access to bank accounts and safe deposit boxes. 

We also need to post a notice of Michael's death, to let any potential creditors know that they have a limited time (4 months from the date of my petition being granted) to make claims against his estate. We did this already. 

I opened an estate account as well, to make keeping track of all this easier. And I hired a lawyer (my friend John Fossum, who helped us with the Power of Attorney in Michael's final days). 

I got an Tax ID number for the estate; this will be needed for the final tax return. 

The next step (which I'm working on now) is to get letters out to the companies that have Michael's assets (like his bank), asking them to transfer the funds to the estate account. I haven't found a good template for that in an hour or so of Google searching, so I'm making that up. Once I get a form that works (that is, one that results in the bank just transferring funds without calling me for clarifications), I'll post it online. 

- Kevin

A trip down memory lane

I just got back from Disney World. This was a trip we intended to take with Michael and Jen, so it was hard that he was not there.

Back in 2002, Christina and I signed up for the Disney Vacation Club - it's a timeshare, more or less, that works on a point system. We usually go every other year and stay in a two-bedroom suite, so the kids have their own room. This time, since we were intending to have another couple along, we booked a "grand villa" which has three bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, a tv area, three bathrooms, a laundry room and a full kitchen. It's bigger than most NYC apartments, I think - more than 2100 square feet, which is as much finished square footage as my house.

It's way too much space for four people, which reminded me of who I was missing. That wasn't all bad - yes, I'm still grieving, but I was also reminded of Michael and the trip we shared back in 2005.

When he was going through his second divorce, we spent a lot of time talking, and had made plans to take a trip to Disney together. He'd never been there, so I was going to get to play native guide, which is something I enjoy doing. I made the room and dinner reservations (with a lot of assistance from Christina), and he booked a flight to Orlando. We were really looking forward to it, since we were not seeing each other much, with him living in Colorado and me in Minnesota.

In between making the plans and taking the trip, though, his plans changed a bit. He was in his second motorcycle accident, which gave him some minor brain damage. Just enough that he had a hard time concentrating, making it hard for him to work full-time. It turns out that concentration is important for working as a communications specialist, researching and writing for publications. So he decided to make a life change, move back to Minnesota and return to school to get his BA in English and then pursue a Master's in education, intending to become a teacher.

So as it happened, he spent a week in Colorado packing his house (with Mom's help), then put her on a plane back to Minnesota, flew to Florida to spend four days at Disney with me, then flew back to Colorado, got into a truck and met me at my house two days later. Wild.

Our time at Disney was fun. I hadn't been there without kids since my kids were born (that's 1998-99 for those of you who don't know me), and it's a different experience as an adult. We spent our first evening at the bar in the Animal Kingdom lodge, which was a new thing for me. Not spending an evening at a bar - I've done that plenty of times - but spending an evening at a bar in Disney World. That was new.

We saw Off Kilter play in Canada at World Showcase, and I think Mike bought one of their albums. We stopped to see Matsuriza play in Japan, spent afternoons idly wandering through the shops, and had a great time.

One of the things about being a sibling is that you can communicate on many levels. We didn't need to talk in order to communicate, although we did plenty of talking. Our second day, we had dinner at Rose & Crown, and I learned about the way bangers & mash was served at the pub Mike went to with the Centennial Pipe Band on his Scotland trip - with the sausage "sticking up in a rather suggestive way" from the mashed potatoes.

We had an awesome dinner at House of Blues, with the best soundtrack I could have imagined - for whatever reason, they had an 80s new wave marathon going on, and we were reliving our childhood and talking about the albums we bought and the concerts we attended.

It was a great trip, and I'm glad I got to share it with my brother.

I wish I could have one more.

Dark companion

There's a song by Tuxedomoon called "Dark Companion" which Michael and I played on our radio show at Macalester back in the 80s. It's a dark, jangly kind of a song, which suits my mood rather well. Here's a link, if you care to check it out.

I thought of it not long ago, as I was musing about the specter of grief that I carry around with me. It's odd, but sometimes grief is elusive.

I know it's there - it sneaks up on me when I am driving, or walking, or doing any of a thousand ordinary things. I have that moment when I realize that my brother is gone, and I feel the tears welling up. Sometimes - when I am driving, most often - I put it aside, because I don't have time for it. Other times, I try to let it come to me, so that I can come to terms with it, and I find that it... slips away.

It's like this dark companion, hanging around at the edge of my perception. Some of the color of the world goes away, and some of the warmth. There's a hole in my world.

I miss my brother.