I was thinking last night that I have five dead people. I don't mean in the basement or in my pocket, but that only five people that I really loved have died, and how lucky I am that the number is so low.

Of course, it's not true, more than five have died, but only five deaths have really affected me strongly, I think because they all happened in the last ten years. Or possibly eight years. I really didn't have any big deaths as a kid, as out of my five grandparents two died before I was born, one died when I was around five, one lived in Belgium and I only met him twice, and one I never met at all.

There was a girl in my class who died in a car crash when we were around ten, I think, Mathilde Smith, but we weren't friends, so to me it was just as if she went to a different school.

There was Fred Goodman, an actor with the Megaw Theatre in LA, who was a dear friend of me and my folks, he had cancer and died around 1980 or so--I find it almost impossible to believe that I haven't seen Fred in 20 years, but I haven't seen anyone from the Megaw in nearly that long, since it burned down and Syd and Elaine, the women who ran it, decided not to rebuild.

There was Alan Goldstein, my father's agent and a family friend, who died sometime when I was in college or high school. High school I think, actually. He was sick for a long long time, and it was right when AIDS was coming to the fore, so everyone thought that he was lying about the cancer, but it really was cancer, because he had had it a few years before and had gone into remission. I did like Alan alot.

There was Kent Morgan from high school who played Jesus when we did Godspell--he died when I was in college, of throat cancer. That one rocked me, a bit, because who isn't immortal if not your high school friends?

I know there were other people, mostly friends of my parents that I grew up knowing, like my godfather, Uncle Billy, Bill Quinn. He was the father of Bob Newhart's wife, which is one of the reasons that we have been getting Christmas cards from the Newharts for forty years. But basically, the deaths, the real deaths, didn't begin until the 90's.

The first big, real death was my Uncle Bob in 1993 (I think). Yes, it was 13 Feb 1993, the day before Valentine's Day.

Uncle Bob was not my uncle, he was our neighbour across the street, Bob Suggs, and I always called him Uncle Bob. Actually, Mom and Daddy called him Uncle Bob as well, even though my father was older than he was, it just turned into his name. He lived alone, and he always came over for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, bringing with him a tin of nuts, and he always gave me a check for $25. When I was a kid, it was $10, but I think it may have ended up being $30 by the time he died.

He had cancer, I think, because everyone dies of cancer. He was the first constant presence in my life to leave, I still find it somewhat startling that there are these people who are living in his house now. He left me $30,000, which was 5% of the estate, he left the other neighbourhood kids 3% each, which I think is a lovely thing, and not just because I ended up with $30,000.

He was a real neighbourhood guy, he knew everyone and would sit on the front porch waving at cars when they went by. I remember him once getting angry at me for playing a record (could it really have been a Cheech and Chong album?) too loud and calling to tell me to turn it down. That is the only time I remember him ever being mad at me. I miss him alot.

The next death was my mother's friend Monique Glenister, she died in 1996.

I loved Monique with all of my heart, even though I only met her a few times in my life, she goes into the big death category, not the marginal death. No-one could be around Monique for even a short time without not only loving her, but loving her as a member of the family. She and Mom were childhood friends in Belgium, and while my Mom moved to the US when she grew up and became an actress and married my father and had me, Monique moved to England and married Tony and had four boys. It was very interesting hearing her talk, because she sounded just like my mother, only speaking a British-styled English rather than my mother's American-style.

I first met Monique when I was ten and Mom and I went to Europe for the summer. We visited her and Tony and the boys at their house in Kent, in a town that still to me is a quintessential dreamlike small town, not the ordinary suburban commuter berg that it really is. Her boys are all older than me, so I was shy, but I did get a crush on the youngest, Ian, who was about 16 to my 10.

Mostly whenever I went to England, I would visit her and the family. The last time I was there, in '95, I developed a huge crush on the oldest son, Bill, who was living at the house at the time, he was lovely. I think that what I really wanted was to have Monique as my mother-in-law, as she would have been the perfect one, I always wanted to be part of her family.

Then in '96, she started smelling a bad smell, like excrement, and she was moody and odd, then she went to the doctor and it turned out that she had a huge brain tumor. She was dead incredibly quickly after that. Her husband was a doctor, I cannot even imagine the guilt he went through when he found out that she was sick and he couldn't help her.

I have been to England since, but I haven't been back to that house, even though I would love to see Tony and Bill again, but I cannot bear the thought of her not being there.

The third was my father, in '97. Of course, I have discussed this at length. Nothing will ever be worse than that.

The fourth was Diane Hoblit, just a couple of months after Daddy. I wrote about it here (I talked about her memorial service here).

That one was a complete shock, came out of nowhere. I think I met Diane in the third or so show that I did with Love Creek back in '89, a real piece of crap called Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. She was really tiny, like a sparrow, so we made quite a sight-gag onstage together. Diane was a terrific actress, hilarious and moving and wonderful, she was a joy to watch onstage. She originated Gemma's role in Where the Snowflakes Bloom, my current show, and though I like Gemma's work in the show, I would give almost anything to be doing it with Diane.

Or anything, for that matter. Any show, no matter how bad, even the appalling Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

The fifth death was Bill Swartz, almost a year to the day from when Diane died, see here, and the memorial service here.

Bill was another Love Creek stalwart, another one of the people that held the company together. It's amazing that the whole thing didn't fall apart without them, and without Cynthia and Kirsten coming up to the plate, it would have.

Bill was a pain in the fucking ass, and almost a complete mess as an adult, a drunk with no money or credit living in a flea bag hotel, but Love Creek was his family as it was and is mine, and therefor he was my brother. Or uncle or something.

He directed me, I acted with him, this was never a treat, but none of it mattered in the pinch. I understand now what people with big families go through--you don't like everyone in your family, and you spend plenty of time complaining about them, but nobody outside the family better say a fucking word about them.

That was Bill to me. I didn't always like him, but I loved him, and it broke my heart when he died.

So those are my five deaths. And there will only be more as my life goes on, the list of loved ones that I will never see again will become so long that I will be unable to list them like this, I won't even remember the order.

There are two ways to look at this, one is to focus on the loss. That these five people will never be in my presence again, that I will never be able to talk to them or see them, and soon there will be more and more that I will never see, until maybe I am cursed with being the one who lives the longest. The one who no-one remembers being anything but old, because everyone else has died before me. There can be nothing more lonely than being the last one to go.

The other way of looking at it, is to focus on the cycle of life. That death is an inevitable part of life, no more to be feared or dreaded than birth, that the dead watch over me and that their love of me and mine of them will never die. That by being the one who lives, I get to make sure that these amazing, unique people are not forgotten.

Today's horoscope:
You know more than you tell. Protect your own security and that of other people. Keep everything looking smooth and easy.

One year ago today:
I also was struck anew by just exactly how much I want to sleep with Russell Crowe and David Morse. Hey, I never claimed not to be shallow.

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