A Candle for Katie

Our life stories could break our hearts if we only let them. A work in progress...When film director Claude Lelouche was asked why his Paris apartment was always in a state of upheaval, he exclaimed: "It is like life... a work in progress. When it is finished, it's over!" We've spent a lifetime apart and I look at where we've been and with whom. For my own peace of mind, I stop short of asking myself the reasons why.

Soon after I left Lehman Brothers, I leased an office space two blocks down the same street on Kearny at the base of Nob Hill. Right around the corner and up a block on California was the Old Saint Mary's Catholic Church. It stood like a missionary sentinel in the midst of Chinatown. Rising from the crowded throngs on the corners of California and Grant Streets, its red brick facade was streaked in dark gray stains making it resemble a widow in mourning. Its diminutive silhouette was draped in the long afternoon shadows from a sea of lifeless skyscrapers. Across the clickety clack sounds of cable car tracks was a McDonalds filled with tourists.

I used to go up on the roof of my building to escape reality -- sometimes I'd smoke a little grass. I'd watch the pigeons fly in sweeping formations around the steeple of the old brick church...the late afternoon sun would reflect off its spire. The clock hands never moved. I lived not too faraway up several steep flights of stairways ascending the southern slope of Telegraph Hill.

Sometimes on the way home -- if it was early enough -- I'd stop into the gift shop of the church. They had an amazing collection of not just Catholic articles of faith, but ecumenical items from around the world. Anyway, my questing led me to browse various spiritual readings. I bought my first Coptic cross there. I wore it around my neck on a rawhide string for a few years.The day I broke my neck was the last time I wore it. Something was lost -- my innocence, perhaps -- and with it, the kismet had vanished... our connection was gone. Somewhere in a long forgotten jewelry box lies a cold piece of tarnished pot metal that used to carry the heat from my body...

Yes... I remember Old Saint Mary's...The next time in the old neighborhood, I'll stop in and light a candle for Katie and say a little prayer for what is to become of us...