the move to los angeles has been good for me because it has forced me to focus on "me."
work here is wildly different than work at cutwater, but i am finding my way. the one thing that i miss the most about cutwater is the people. i have great affection for them. it is an affection that is borne from being in the trenches together.
2007 is still a blur to me. in that year, immediately after losing mummy, we had the ride of our lives at work.
to use one of chuck mcbride's sports metaphors, i left it all on the field.
i remember saying to someone once that i didn't want to wake up one day and realize that i had made everyone else's dreams come true without pursuing my own. hence my departure.
while i was there, i recruited and hired some amazing people. i strongly believe that every hire is an opportunity to shape a culture and i made choices and recommended people that are as kind as they are talented.
a few weeks ago, tragedy struck william, one of our art directors. his beautiful glenda died. she was too young and it was too sudden. william and glenda met in high school here in los angeles. they have been together ever since. it was clear, when you saw them together, that they had something magical.
the wake and the funeral were down here in l.a.
when i drove up to the wake, the first face i saw was peter's. peter is a studio artist at cutwater. he had come all the way down from san francisco. and then i saw josh, one of our copywriters. the wake was beautiful. glenda's artwork hung from the wall, william's uncle sang and will and glenda's families served fresh bread and mexican hot chocolate.
the funeral and burial were even sweeter. when i walked into the church i saw that marty and eric (also from cutwater's creative department) were sitting next to josh and peter in the pew.
the mass was almost entirely in spanish, but i was able to follow along. william spoke about glenda and i was so incredibly moved (as i was the night before) by his strength and his eloquence.
at the cemetery there was a moment, when william was standing at the head of the casket and the pall bearers were lined up on either side, when i saw a little girl (who i think was glenda's niece) spinning around in the grass behind him so she could make her skirt twirl. it was a breathtaking sight.
then, i saw something i had never seen before. they actually buried glenda while we were all still standing there. they used a bulldozer-like machine. at first, it seemed rather industrial, but it brought me back to the moment when i had to walk away from mummy's casket while it was still on the risers abover her burial vault. and i envied william. because walking away from mummy like that seemed so wrong, but no one would leave while we were still standing there, so we left her there.
william saw glenda through the whole thing and it was a gift to be able to share that moment with him and with their families.
that night, as i was thinking about how remarkable the day had been, i felt such incredible pride in my friends from cutwater. this disparate group of people that i assembled is so kind and loving and connected to each other. i still count the friends i made in early days of chiat among my dearest. i can already see that some of my cutwater friends feel that same kind of connection to each other.
so now, i am here without them. pursuing my own dreams. but now that i have emerged from the blur i am able to see clearly that what i did there had value beyond measure. beyond advertising. i am deeply warmed as i realize, now that i finally have some clarity, my blurry year was definitely not wasted time. (in retrospect, helping to make other peoples' dreams come true was really quite nice.)
please keep william and glenda and their families in your prayers. now that the ceremonies are over, the truly hard part begins.
glenda and william
