It’s not a mistake.
I got the call on January 11th. It was almost a comedy. I was at the gym and missed Deana’s call. On the voicemail, she’d said something about TC, so I ran upstairs to call her. No answer. I called TC. His girlfriend Gillian picked up and told me to call Deana. Meanwhile, Deana was calling me back, popping in on the other line. The pancreatic cancer had done its worst. TC wasn’t expected to make it through the weekend.
I hung up and just stood there for a long while. People went by me. No one stopped. No one put their hand on my shoulder and consoled me. They had no reason to. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on except when it doesn’t.
The service is great. My friend Mark is in for the weekend and he’s surprised … yet not really surprised … that the thing will have a performance aspect. I was never surprised. We are theater, after all. We are this theater.
Gillian’s sister sings “Alfie” and breaks. TC’s son comes on stage and makes everyone laugh. Actors and actresses who have performed TC’s songs in the past take the vast stage and try to approximate what it was to inhabit his music. Kara Gelormini performs a song…
Way back at the old theater, TC and Adam Brooks put on a show called Ladley & Craig. It was brilliant. The songs were written and rehearsed in advance, but the show itself – something like a Behind the Music for theater, looking at this performing troupe through the decades – was improvised. The tagline of the show was “Music to Love By,” and I did. I didn’t miss a single show back in those heady days, and after the last performance, the whole cast signed sheet music for my favorite song, the Hindenburg dirge, “Oh the Humanity!”
But Kara’s song weekly brought a tear to my eye. Step left, step right, and dance in place again. Tonight, I am overcome.
Everyone’s here. It sounds diminishing, a little, but it’s just the truth. Everyone is here. People I haven’t seen in years. People who I used to watch perform all the time, before I was a director and a producer, when I was just an ImprovBoston fanboy. Friends. Actors. My buddy Josh is here from California, and when I see him I am reminded how much I miss him, especially on stage. There’s a slideshow of TC moments playing on the gigantic screen above, and I’m pretty sure I took one of those pictures: TC at karaoke, doing that thing where he’s holding his ear that I always thought was so adorable and actory.
So, this obviously isn’t real, right? It’s can’t be real. We hung out. This isn’t like going on Facebook and reading that a friend of a friend’s great-grandmother has died. It isn’t even like when my great-grandmother died. Nana Burke was old, old. And it’s not like when my ex’s best friend died, although I went to his memorial when I was 18 and it ruined me then. Al had AIDS. When I met him, I knew that. That was a known quantity. This … I fucking knew him. We did stuff. We ate pancakes and did a duet together a few times, and he sang Meat Loaf songs and he was my friend. My friend. My friends don’t die until we’re way older. This doesn’t happen. This can’t happen.
This is happening.
Greg Wymer, DJ, wrote to me days before the memorial and asked me to give him like five or six songs that TC liked to sing at karaoke. Well, “Bat Out of Hell,” of course, and “Town Called Malice,” by The Jam. Oh, and “Oh! Darling,” by The Beatles, which Gillian also sang during one of hers and TC’s few Rosebud Karaoke nights. When they play “Oh! Darling,” that’s the moment I first break entirely. Shawn is next to me and holding my hand. Mark touched me on the back. I am surrounded by my friends and the people I love with one exception. It’s a big exception.
Gillian sings and we all lose it. A big song from TC’s play, What the Dickens? A sing-along to Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” It’s funny. We’re all singing. We’re all having a good time, because seeing everyone like this, it’s impossible not to. Everything’s great. Everything’s awesome. Except it’s fucking not.
I cram food into my face and for once don’t judge the smokers. Some people are drinking. Some people have to perform tonight. I keep hearing songs I recommended to Greg and on the stairs, I see Emily Holland and I grab her and can’t even get words out. I bet she’s freaked out. I wish I hadn’t mentioned all those songs, because it’s Way Too Much. And I keep thinking, when I go, will this be the type of thing I want? Yes. Sure it is. But I don’t want to go. And I don’t want TC to go. Because he was my friend, and I loved him. I love him. I miss him.
I really miss him.
Step left, step right, and dance in place again.
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