Dear Mr. Deprado, once you told us that our lives would work in stages. We resisted this immediately claiming independence, announcing our unique journey as "unable to be messed with." You told us that we march through these stages whether we like it or not: adolescence, puberty, college, and pretty soon, we would begin to see all of our friends getting married. We would probably get married too, and we would see people begin careers and projects and life adventures, searching and finding the fulfillment of all of their hopes and dreams. You also told us that we would see endings in marriages, in projects, ideas turned to unrealized memory, hard work turned to dust and ash, lifestyles changed and released. You told us to always remember that these are stages too, part of the game, part of the universe. You hinted that there just might be a divine plan maybe much grander and more wonderful than our own.

But sometimes, these stages seem strange, and it’s even harder to find the good that comes out of any kind of immediate loss. Like for example, how my prom date ended up being a lesbian. She was such a popular girl in high school, a star athlete, always the life and death of any party. Only now, years later at our ten year reunion, she brings her girlfriend to the pre-reunion party and suddenly it all makes sense; when she would get mad at us for dating within our group of friends, she wasn’t actually mad at us for violating some unwritten code or doctrine she was jealous of us taking the other girls’ attentions away. This must have been so hard for her, so much pain trying to fit in, kissing all of those boys, flirting, trying to be a "regular" high school girl. At the reunion we were so happy to see her, and it seemed, yet only for a moment, a bit out-of-place when she was dancing CLOSE to her girlfriend while Cinderella blurted out across the sound system–"Don’t know what you got till its gone!"

Her realization and acceptance of identity was a loss for her, but it was also a gain, a new kind of freedom and acceptance, at least temporarily, until life catches up in other ways.

You also told us that these very losses or opportunities we didn’t understand would metamorphasize into gains. This has become abundantly clear in my adult life when the struggle is much more dire. Once, I was turned down from a waitiring job at a small Italian restaurant in Hillcrest. I Didn’t understand it. I was Qualified. It was walking distance to where I lived. They were hiring. What was wrong with me? I remember borrowing money from friends just to get by while I waited for a manager to break from his busy schedule to hopefully eek a call back. Eventually, I ended up getting a job bartending with some friends at a very popular bar/restaurant downtown where I made enough to get me through Grad School, lifelong friends and a lifestyle that gave me a freedom I couldn’t have imagined. A few weeks later, while riding my bike along University Ave. I noticed that the little Italian restaurant had closed down.

There are so many decisions to make that are based on an apparent loss of some kind, but these are the very choices that chisel us from soapstone into sculpture. Like that grueling decision to leave that guy or girl, even though you had wished that he or she was the One! Or, if you are the one being left and you feel like your life is ending and that there is no point to anything, food tastes bad, alcohol tastes too good, and you forget how to pay bills for awhile, but suddenly you find parts of you that were dying to emerge. Suddenly you realize you are a painter, an athlete, a scholar, you are a person who loves surfing, or reading, or spending more time with your friends. You find that you are a person on your own, and that for a long time, part of you was sleeping quietly, hibernating until you had learned all of the necessary lessons. Then, a little while down the road, you look back at how this negative wasn’t negative at all. Sometimes you find out that the person created for you is waiting just around the corner. Think of how many stories there are of good coming from bad, of the phoenix rising out if the ashes. All of art in its various forms often finds its beginnings in this very story: the triumphant return, the rite of passage, the movement from one stage of life into the next.

Still, what about the unbearable pain of losing someone we love? So much unfairness? Injustice? Mr. D, even in this, I see that after the loss there is a rebirth, that there is a divine plan, that we go on even when we feel we can’t. I know that we are not alone even if we feel like it sometimes. People are out there sometimes, stumbling around trying to help, trying to love, trying to be the community you need to help you even when it is most silent and dark. Like the time I thought I had reached the end of my rope, it all turned into utter despair and darkness because I had achieved most of my goals in Career, Education, Love, Adventure, yet I felt like I had nothing left. It was there when I woke up to the warmest sunshine on my face, a light that pulled me from my loss, like when you lose your car keys and you’re frustrated because you are late to work, you have to take the bus, and on that bus is this girl, and you end up getting her number, and then you get off the bus and walk part of the way to work, and you see the world differently, and now you take the bus everyday. There are endless examples like this, but I wanted to share one in particular that reawakened me...

For a long time Mr. D., after my bartending days were over, I worked at a nice restaurant downtown. I wrote endless journals documenting my experiences there.

This journal entry is entitled–"One Slice to Share Feb 9"

I love to work on the patio. It's built right over the water, and in between some of the older floor planks you can see the shine and shift of the water underneath. The harbor surrounds the tables, separated only by thin glass windows and sunshades. It's enclosed, but the giant windows and the rush of water beneath the feet makes you feel like you’re outside. People wait hours for these tables. Through the glass, the world is like an animated postcard; sailboats bending in the wind, silhouetted against the giant walls of naval ships anchored across the harbor. Jet-boats race by, spraying cool water along the rocky jetties. Being on the patio feels like dining on the deck of an old ship. It’s warm, controlled and quiet.

The patio is away from everything else, far from the chaos of the entrance, the long wait and the cries of the hostesses. People come to the patio, they sit, and they relax. Their attitude can't help but make the waiter's life more bearable.

Tonight, my first table was a party of three. A man, his wife, and their son. The man was white, the woman black, and the child, a fine mix of the two. Normally, this wouldn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary, but looking at that handsome little boy, smiling as he pulled the bread apart and stumbled with the butter ramekin, It suddenly became apparent that the restaurant was pretty much "pressed white." They were In a good mood. They ordered well, started with steamed clams and fried calamari. The parents had a bottle of nice red wine, and the little boy smiled when I dropped off his orange cream soda in the bottle that looked like a bottle of beer. They laughed, they ate, and they allowed me time to attend to my other tables, which of course were smiling at the curly-haired little boy who was obviously the center of attention.

He was the kind who, once he felt comfortable, will ask question after question. He made me answer several questions about worms and fish, about air-craft carriers across the harbor and the ski-boats passing. he even went so far as to ask me if I liked the waitresses, and he would point at them when they walked by and yell, "That one?"

At the end of the meal, I came to the table and asked if they would care for dessert or coffee. They looked at one another.

"Well," The father spoke, "we are kind of celebrating this evening."

"Terrific," I responded." I felt the upper hand set in. One of the advantages of working in my restaurant is that the managers give us a great deal of control in order to make our customers happy. It was restaurant policy to offer dessert or an after dinner drink for almost any celebration. The boy was smiling in anticipation of the dessert menu, and I knew this would be a perfect ending to their night. "Well, I'll tell you what. Dessert is on me! What's the occasion?"

"Its my son's birthday today." The father looked at me from his chair, and I hadn't noticed how old this man looked. His eyes were wrinkled at edges, his skin worn from years in the sun. I looked over at the boy. He smiled at me. "He's twenty-five today." The father said. I laughed. I had heard these jokes before. The father, trying to make his son feel special, older, important, accelerated his age. My father would pull the same trick on my birthday. I played along, I always did, and I had gotten quite good at it. I looked at the boy. "You sure look young for your age." I smiled and laughed lightly, but there was a kind of uncomfortable silence, like I had overstepped my bounds; even the little boy looked over at his mother, maybe confused about the sudden change of tone.

"Well," the father said, "it is my son's twenty fifth birthday, but he's deceased. We used to come here when he was alive. His favorite dessert was the mudpie. I think we would like one of those please."

I didn't say anything. The walk back to the kitchen was a long one. I had never imagined how slight the relationship between the waiter and his tables really are. People have stories beyond their dressed-up Saturday night visages. How many people have had to start their lives over again and again? And even though I was overwhelmed by the thought of what a tragedy this must have been for them, I could also see the light in their faces, the joy on the face of their child. They had obviously been able to surrender some part of this tragedy to the grander scheme of things and move on into happiness. What I understood best was that they were not ignoring the situation, but instead they were acknowledging it. Celebrating it.

I went to the kitchen, scooped a large slice of mudpie from the freezer, fastened three spoons to the edge of the plate, brought it to them with a single candle burning in the center, set it in the center of the table along with some coffee. I left them alone, and as I walked to the side station to tell the manager my story, I realized that I had forgotten something.

I walked back down the ramp to the patio door. The sun had disappeared now, and the evening fog was rolling in. There was a slight chill outside, and the wind blew beneath the small cracks between the window glass and the wood floor planks. I walked to the table. I smiled. They looked at me, slowly, trustingly, and I set the fourth spoon down.

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