March 29

Today at 12:25 am, after 11 years of fighting cancer, my lovely,
loving and beloved wife of 23 years, Tia, passed away. She died as she
had lived - with dignity and grace and on her own time schedule. And,
as in life, she died on her own terms - at home surrounded by her 4
daughters, family and friends.

She woke for a little while on Monday and we arm wrestled, as we had
in the past. In all the years we've been together I never won.
Usually it was because she was stronger, but other times I just let
her win. She still had strength and won the first bout. She then
grabbed my hand again for a re-match and pulled my arm so I would win.
She then took her fingers and with a significant amount of effort,
she signaled OK. I could read everything in to that gesture or
nothing, I choose to read everything. We had a unique relationship,
unconventional for sure but it was a true love story.

She was an amazing person and everyone she touched is the better
person for meeting her. We will all miss her and we will be sad for
her not being in our lives, but at the same time we need to honor her
memory and her struggle to stay with us over the last 11 years. She
was determined to see her daughters become young women and no mother
could have been prouder of her children then Tia was of Zoe, Rae, Ede
and Ava. No matter how much she loved me, her family or friends (or
even her cats), we all took a backseat by a far margin to her love for
our daughters.

Over the last few months, her family flew in from all over the country
and they were a source of not only comfort but strength to her. She
appreciated each and every visit and always asked me after her
siblings had left about how soon they could return, as she began to
miss them even as they were driving away.

We were fortunate to have my brother and his family so close by. Tia
loved the fact that every Tuesday and Thursday our "fifth child" would
be in the house for dinner and homework and on our equivalent to
Shabbat dinner (lobsterfest Friday) we had the added benefit of Kate
coming over. In addition, I don't know what I would have done without
my brother to lean on during the last year.

And then there are her friends. Too many to count and their love was
limitless. She loved, admired, respected and just had a good time
with her girlfriends. Whether they were her childhood friends from
back east, her girls from the hood, her village school moms, her
golden door friends, her phase one friends, her photo shop friends or
just her "shop" friends, she loved you all. She had more categories of
friends than I have friends. I would come home from work and
invariably some girlfriend was over visiting. They could be in the
kitchen cooking, in the gym stretching, in the media room for movie
afternoons, in her office laying out some photo design, in the back
yard just enjoying the ocean or when she got sick, even laying on my
side of the bed planning phase one events. Our home will be empty
without her presence.

Tia had two basic speeds/moods during her life - happy and pissed off.
She was rarely just sad. If something upset her, she got angry and
did something about it. She wasn't one to just sit back and let the
sadness wallow over her. She was a woman of action.

More often than not, though, she was happy. And her happiness was
infectious. It is with this thought in mind that her family will
remember her.

We are having a private family service this afternoon.

We will be sitting Shiva at 201 Alma Real Drive, Pacific Palisades on
Thursday and Friday evening from 5 to 8pm with Kaddish being said each
night at 7pm.

As most of you know, on top of everything else, Tia was heavily
involved in Phase One. This is a wonderful organization and through
their good efforts, one day we might have a cure for the cancer that
took Tia from us at much too young an age. In lieu of food or
flowers, Tia has requested that donations be made to Phase One at
www.phaseonefoundation.org or call Lissa Zanville at 310-458-7715 or
email her at lzanville@aol.com. (Truth be told, Tia also loved flowers
so she was waffling on the "in lieu of" and probably was going to have
it replaced with a request of "in addition to flowers". )

The world was better off for knowing Tia.

I love you so much

Jess

Sent from my iPad