I have no life without phyl. I only go to movies with phinnie and paige, so, though fluent in cartoon, screeners are my home. And my taste buds must resent it. Highly rated Three Billboards; Dunkirk; The Post; Get Out, Downsizing…awful. Star Wars; Lady Bird; Coco….not bad. I, Tonya; Wonder; Molly’s Game; good movies. The Big Sick, The Shape of Water….wonderful. Of course, last year I thought La La Land was incredible and Moonlight was barely passable, so what do I know?

Phyllis had the worst singing voice I’ve ever heard. Essence of tone-deaf.  Florence Foster Jenkins was Streisand compared to Phyl.  Phyl was quite aware of her dreadful vocals, but being Phyllis, that didn’t prevent her from wailing away her favorites, top volume, head thrown back, sounding like a wounded frog with tourettes.

Our music was like our marriage; many opposites.  We both loved the Beach Boys, Beatles, the schmaltz of Barry Manilow, and Jersey Boys.  Otherwise, nuh-uh.  Never the twain… Norman Greenbaum, Sha na na, Art Garfunkel, John Denver, Roberta Flack.   Noise to me, however only one actually hurt.

When her fave of faves, Neil Diamond intruded, I knew pain.  My ears’d ask for witness protection.   Aside from quintessential lyrics; “good times never seemed so good” “song sung blue, sleepin’ on my pillow” “pack up the babies, and grab the old ladies.” “no-one heard at all, not even the chair,” was what was called music. We attended about umpteen of this charlatan’s concerts.  Phyl would wail away at the unsurpassed esoterica of Sweet Caroline (“was in the spring, then spring became the summer”) and Song Sung Blue (“when you’re feelin’ good and make a song, you sing it out again”)  Yup, can’t beat Neil for depth. “So good” is irony.

She’d especially rock her favorite vocals, Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show and Cracklin’ Rosie.  And despite everyone over 50 at his concerts (which IS everyone at his concerts) singing along too, even Neil kept looking to see if a dying goose was mating.  I know Phyl had to go through natural childbirth twice, but I had to endure the duet of Phyl and Neil multiple times, multiple nights.  Even people around us would look to me.  I’d lean in to shush my librarian, and, before I got the first ‘sh’ out, Phyllis would stop “singing” for a fraction, glare at me with that fire, and, in that deliberate, low, gravelly voice, she’d snarl, “Don’t!” She loved it. She didn’t care. And I envied that.  Really, I adored it.  That passion imbued everything she cared for.

]I miss you like crazy,

ever since you went away

every hour of every day      Natalie Cole.   by Glass, Goffin, Masser

It’s five years without Phyllis.  There’s only sad.

I doubt I cried when Phyl was here.  Phyl used to complain that I had no feelings.   We’d go to something like ‘Marley and Me’; she’d be bawling, and I’d say, “Phyl, it’s a DOG.”  “You have no feelings.”  The movie, ‘The Piano’;   “B-o-r-i-n-g”.  “You have no feelings.”    QVC; “OMG, Jeanne Bice died”, “”So you can stop buying that stuff?” “You have no feelings.”  Looking back, she was right.

Since, though, I hide it, but cry a ton.    Grandbabies’ births are beyond bittersweet.  Mother-son or grandmother-grandkid scenes in anything.  Any sappiest, ubermaudlin, cheesiest, oversentimentalized ad pap extant.   Vacation travel, life insurance, Indian casino, Viagra, medical lawsuit, cancer adverts.   Any happy ending.   I often cry when I just see a couple our age.

There is one particular moment that encompasses it all.   And my life.   In nothing less prepubescent than Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  A single instant during the song, ‘Something There’.   It’s in the movie, stage, and animated versions, but the latter does it best/worst for me.  The most beautiful girl in the town, the book-obsessed, library-loving Belle sacrifices her future for her family and town to live away from the hometown she loves with the Beast, a hideous, uncouth asshole with no empathy.    “True, he’s no Prince Charming.”

She slowly humanizes him with kindness.  In ‘Something There’, both sing individual thought bubbles of budding feelings.  Sitting at dinner, at one point, he lifts his soup, slurps directly from the bowl, realizes he’s screwed up, and glances up, expecting her disapproval.   She shrugs, drops her spoon, and slurps from her own bowl.  It’s so Phyllis, it’s overwhelming.   Every time, i cry.  Every fucking time.  Watched multiple times, with Phinnie, with Paige, even alone.  So very many instances that evoke Phyl, yet somehow, none are real as that moment.

Mybeauty, you reveled in life like no-one else, though it certainly was a bazillion miles from what you deserved.  For me, you were life.  In that, I cannot believe my good fortune.  Corny, but there will never be another you, because that good isn’t possible.  Your stunning beauty, especially within, and that’s sayin’ somethin’ to certainly the most gorgeous girl ever.  Hundreds of friends and a ton of family; everybody loved you.  Both your empathy and passion were beyond.   Pets, reading, bullying, needlepoint, flood channel, lgbt, student govt, holocaust, hospital volunteering, ahs drama, libraries, full-time at chs and phms, and your very best work, motherhood.  You’d have been the greatest grandmother ever.   Your humanity; your compassion; especially that motherhood: all transcendent. Without your love, it isn’t life.  I miss you like crazy.

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Tomorrow is five years.

My life is, was, will always be Phyllis.

The hurt is overwhelming.

Phyllis was the most passionate speaker I’ve ever known.  As I’ve written, literacy, print, LGBT, strays, spay and neuter, social misfits, and bullying; these were the many causes Phyllis advocated in her library presentations and programs.  Each school year, she was caring, eager, and intent on teaching these lessons.  Her colleagues always admired her commitment.  Phyl’s passion for each was what distinguished her efforts from those of us ordinary folk.  It was remarkable and even I, who thought she was doing too much, despite being right there, forget all she did.

Yesterday the body of a missing LAUSD student was found.  He had drowned in theflood channel, the wash that Angelenos call the L.A. River.  And I remembered anotherof her unique passions.  Every school year, at first rain, Phyllis would present a video ofpast incidents and host a discussion about the dangers of cascading water in the floodchannel.  As far as I know, she was the very first teacher in the San Fernando Valley todo this. She shared it with other librarians.

Until last week’s incident and the record rains, I had forgotten.  It’s kinda testament that she cared about so very many causes that I again overlooked another.

Don’t need more contributions, just FYI, changes in Phyllis’ scholarship:

California Readers Association were about to dissolve, contributions were no longer to be tax deductible, and we couldn’t ask an association to do all the work.   So donors and librarians  could realize their full contributions and control, we incorporated the Phyllis Bennett Memorial Book Scholarships as a nonprofit, with the state and federal governments.

It took us 100 years to jump through 100 hoops.  Finally done.  (IRS Tax, EIN #47-4206625  p.o.box 1633 Agoura 91376)   Each year, each member of the Los Angeles School Librarians Association will still be able to designate one of twenty BN.com or Barnes and Noble $25, book scholarship, with free postage and handling to one of their helpers, preferably, as Phyl wished, a student who first used the library as a safe haven from bullying or ridiculing or friendlessness.  Phyl’s close friend Tammie Celi gives out the scholarships at the annual LASLA luncheon at school year’s end in June.

I desperately miss you…
Putting ice cubes in the cats’ water throughout the day, Killing bugs by drowning them in windex, sending around your library aides with water for the teachers
Having me put the toilet paper on the holder, take spiders outside, do the math, fold up the grocery bags. open up the grocery bags because you were afraid bugs were hiding.
And recalling anew, Myphyllis…
Reading agatha christie, amidst a bruins game in the garden or a theater show you didn’t like, and reading the end first.
Doing your fake coughing fit or fainting or wearing your illness mask or piling up stuff or just getting angry when someone would try to sit in the empty airline seat you liked to have between us.
Having me take the antenna and eyes off the lobster before we ate, so he wouldn’t see you eating.
Awakening me at 2 am, because I was mean to you in a dream or jeanne bice just said something “hilarious” on qvc or you saw a bug in the kitchen.
Forty years of the financials, cars, cats, shopping, cleaning, laundry, dishes, and taking offense if we tried to do anything without you. Except cooking.
Your coupon box; lusty voice; oversized glasses; funny knees; accent, spinach pie; cuckahyodees curse; limp; omnipresent heavyweight canvas bag’o’books; answering the phone, “what’s the matter?”; ‘singing’ along; feigned disinterest in maury and jerry; knowing everyone’s name in the neighborhood, stores, offices; thanksgiving dinner the day after thanksgiving dinner; always damn-the-consequences speaking up; writing the names on unfinished water bottles; running out the last piece of trash to the garbagemen; talking to the cats; reading aloud to the special ed kids.
Somehow keeping in touch with nearly everybody you ever met
And your stunning beauty, perpetual innocence, raucous laugh, incomparable mothering, nonexistent ego, everpresent affability, that impassioned eloquence in front of an audience, and the inimitable empathy, whether a bullied kid or a stranger with a like cancer.
We were suppose to grow old together. I’d give my life to hold your hand once more. Really. I actually cry every damn time I watch the love scenes in the disney cartoons; tarzan and jane with phinnie or the prince and ariel, anna and kristoff, or beauty and the beast with paige. I try to hide it and feel like an fucking idiot, but it’s uncontrollable. God damn cinderella; “No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true.”
Well, I do not believe any more, but every night I still ask to see you again.

I haven’t written here for a while. There’s a reason. Sad begets sad. After 3 ½ years, The 19 people with access to this, especially family, empathize…..too well. No-one wants t’see alan hurt bad. But it still hurts bad. Sorry, time doesn’t make it better. Nothing makes it better. Inconsolable. So, rather than being honest, and making people feel sad, I’ve been swallowing it. i haven’t felt like writing the la-di-dah stuff. Undoubtedly, Maureen’s a reason why. But Phyllis’ own series of happenstance, what she endured, and the consequences are so unjust, that still, after 3 ½ years, my overwhelming emotions are anger and regret.
I do not dwell on the good memories, I don’t even remember most of them. I constantly think of what I did, said, didn’t do, didn’t say, wrong. Led by the big medical ones I’ve never discussed. And the moments I didn’t show how very much I loved her.
Yuh, I’ve had the “time to move on” of the bereavement group, shrink, literature, family, and friends. “think of all the years you had her, not the ones you don’t” “of the good times you had” “of how she’d feel(s) if she saw/can see you now” “that there is a reason for everything” “God has a plan” “you shouldn’t live your life like this” “it takes time,” “you have your kids to think of” “it’s time to start thinking about… yourself” or “someone else” or “companionship” or any other euphemism for ‘it’s been 3 ½ damn years, don’t you think it’s time to get on with your life?” Well, logically yes. But logic isn’t me, and me don’t feel that way. I had the proverbial love of my life. We seldom saw eye-to-eye, but hers were my life. Except for maybe sex, and I forget what that is, I have no real desire for companionship. And to most people, that is very, very sad. And that’s the reason. My family, especially my mom, would, now will, be consumed by how sad her son is. And what son wants that?
So I’m handcuffed by the dichotomy that sharing your feelings hurts people who share your feelings. So, though I write this stuff because all Phyl asked for at the end was “I’d like to be remembered”, and I hope my kids and grandkids read it some day, i can’t be dishonest. For anyone else, it’s not only the aforementioned sad, but repetitive and self-absorbed. And though I inestimably appreciate the folks who read it, (and feel embarrassed some still feel obligated to take the time,) I can write….
How incredibly heartbreaking it is to spend our anniversary today, and every fucking day, without you, myphyllis.

Seldom written about any before, but we’ve met famous people; astronauts, authors, athletes, presidents, movie stars. One always transcended any, though unlike most he always had time and never thought he wore a halo. THE most famous person on earth, one of the finest humanitarians and athletes, probably ever. HISTORY. And multiple times he was just playing around with my sons, Jody and Adam, performing sleight-of-hand, shadow-boxing, talking, and later, just listening. And he was that way with every kid. In everything we were privileged to see, in the ring or the societal arena, lighting the room or enlightening the planet, even amidst the pain of Parkinson’s, he was the personification of grace and caring. The quintessential man.
But also, the most innovative showman ever, and, even later, still Ali. One summer, a few years ago, Jody was invited to interview Ali at his house in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Ali’s wife Lonnie informed Jody, unfortunately Ali was having a bad day with the Parkinson’s. That afternoon, Ali was physically drained, and she said it was very difficult for him to talk or sit up. So she talked with Jody and, with great effort, Muhammad Ali just listened. When Jody showed her the old pictures of Jody and Ali through the years (I attached samples), she insisted it would make Ali feel better if Jody shared each of the pix with him. Ali looked at them one-by-one. He signaled he wanted to say something. His wife bent over so she could hear him. Instead, Ali slowly sat up and beckoned Jody closer. Jody leaned over, and the most famous mouth in the world, very softly and deliberately said, “Since then, I got prettier, but what happened to you?” Jody got rope-a-doped. And Jody loved it.

The last few weeks, what i’ve been writing is not for share. The short is 3½ years later there’s no home without you.  And it’s never gonna get better.

The best and worst times are with the kids.  Every grandparent says it’s the best.  No need to ask, they tell you anyway.  With pix—“Hi.  How are y…”   ”Oh, hi, this is me and my grandson reading Macbeth, here’s our family sur la Seine, and here’s….”

I say nothing ‘cause i know very, very few have what we have.

Our sons are light-years better dads than their own dad.  Really.  As all moms, both your daughters-in-laws have their own ways, but both are brilliant mothers.   Really.  i’m very proud of them all.

And the three…..yes every fucking antecedant thinks their grandkids are the best looking, brightest on earth.  They’re wrong.  Yours are.  Really. Just like their grandma, they are stunningly beautiful with huge personalities.

So, in chronological order… next week; Phinnie at 1 ½…..