Lindsey's 15th Birthday...after thoughts...

While Ben went to a rival high school, Darci, Lindsey, and JP continued to perform in plays together. JP was a class ahead. The first high school play they did was the musical HMS Pinafore. Because of the work it takes to stage a musical school policy was to do one every two years. JP was such a talent that the decision was made to do a musical the next year. The result was a terrific performance of West Side Story.

Lindsey went on to college with a minor in theater. Eventually she got her Masters in theater education at New York University and a dream job working for the New Victory Theater with offices on 42nd Street in Manhattan.
Darci and Ben have both gone on to meaningful lives. Ben works in film animation and Darci using her many talents in more personal family oriented ways. It was always JP that was going to be on stage or in film. It was clear even at an early age that he had “it.” While there is always so much luck involved in that business there was a sense from all who knew him and those who saw him perform that he was special.
That made his death in an auto accident along with his mother a year after Lindsey’s and her mom’s accident even sadder.

JP died a few weeks before Christmas. His mother had made Christmas ornaments for her friends. Her husband delivered one to our house a few weeks after the double memorial. By then I had written a song for JP that I sang to him as we sat and cried beside the Christmas tree now holding one more unexpected gift.

You dazzled us we all agreed you were someone whose gonna lead
You were so young so we believed in time the world just had to see
Chorus
You were bound to be a star knew you were going far
Shining with such special light lighting up the night
Bridge
I remember when I heard the news you simply were too much to lose
I ran into the dark, dark night knew when I looked up in the sky
Chorus
You were bound to be a star in my heart I know you are
Shining with such special light lighting up the night

Twenty years later I cannot go to a play without thinking of JP.

The first song in this blog I’m singing. The words are an adaptation from a poem that Lindsey wrote as a young girl. Profound and amazing. “Just You and I” is Lindsey’s sister singing. An amazing gift. “This I Wish for You” is Lindsey’s mother. I still tear up when I listen to it. “We Are Family” is everyone.

Memories that have stayed over twenty years in a drawer alive again in song and spirit and story.