He woke me from a dream and dragged me to the living room as if he had every right to. I hadn’t slept much the past few weeks, what with him dying and the kids’ wedding and work. I also haven’t written much lately but hey, I’ve been kind of busy, Dad.

So I got up here at 245am, apparently at your request, and I’m sitting in front of my laptop asking for a little help. Yes, I took off work today to help with the family’s plans for your memorial service tomorrow morning and except for the ding of the coffee maker just now, there are no bells going off on what was so urgent that you had to call me from what might have otherwise been a good night’s sleep.

Angels don’t sleep, do they? Actually, that wasn’t really a question, but rather more of a statement. I know, because you’ve been all around me day and night since you died, Dad. I haven’t said much to anyone about it because I didn’t think they would believe me and just write it off to some crazy bereavement psychosis. After all, it’s not even been two weeks since you’ve been gone and I still cry when I close the car door a certain way and when I breathe air.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me until you. I’d read all the crazy accounts of people saying they continue to feel the presence of those they loved at the strangest moments, sometimes always. And either I’m just experiencing the newness of grief or this shit is real.

Last week when I was up at 245am writing my father of the bride toast for the wedding, you recall I felt something and looked behind me as I was thinking what to write next. I turned back to the laptop and wrote the funniest line of the toast. You should have seen the room laughing at the reception, Dad. But you’ve always been my inspiration to be funny and I’m sure you saw the whole thing and were proud. After all, it was a line only you would have written.

I heard you laugh yesterday. I was napping on the sofa and it woke me up. I probably should have laughed right along with you but the tears wouldn’t let me.

So now I’m a believer in spirit guides, Dad. Isn’t that crazy? I mean even you, when you were alive, laughed stuff like that off as nuts. So now that makes two of us as converts I guess.

I think of you and feel you when I’m driving, when I’m making even the most routine decisions, in meetings at work and when I’m watching TV. You’re a still small voice…a second conscience of sorts….at least that’s the best way to describe it from this side. And I always see your face when it happens, which looks remarkably like my own these days.

So now percolating on my third cup of coffee with no turning back to bed for the day, I ask you: Is this what you wanted me to write? Is this why you woke me up and dragged my ass to the living room at this silent hour? Did you want me to write and tell people that this stuff really is real?

There’s your face again.
I think they actually might believe me.

Thanks Pop. You make me cry as much as you make me laugh. Tomorrow’s memorial is gonna be great and we saved the best seat in the house for you.

After a long battle with cancer, dad has gone fishing.
He passed in his sleep but kept us laughing every time he was awake. Cancer didn’t take his life, it took his body. He’s still very much alive and enjoying the start of his eternity. We will celebrate his colorful life at a memorial service to be held at The Crossing, A Christian Church, 7950 West Windmill Road, in Las Vegas. Watch for date and time.

I’ve been celibate since 2011, and the further I get, the better I see.

It was a choice I made when I got off drugs and a choice I make still today.

Not much is written about celibacy.  In today’s sexually-slathered world, it’s not a popular subject.  It alienates, labels and renders one less than desirable to many who still regard sex as a plaything and an inalienable right to exercise freely, openly and without much regard for its significance or consequence beyond it being a driven, primal, self-indulgent pleasure.

To be honest, I’ve had more sexual partners in my lifetime than I care to remember. Many I choose not to, most I can’t, and all in hindsight I regret except for the union of love that produced my three wonderful children.  And that was many, many years ago.

There is a huge difference between mere resistance to sexual temptation and a conscious choice of celibacy.

The first one spends too many hours fending off attacks while the other refuses to wage the war.  One is a choice to be in a constant driven turmoil while the other is a constant choice of dignity and self preservation.  No engagement. No bloodshed. No preoccupation with momentary pleasures.

Most men find it an incomprehensible option to be celibate.  Culture has made great strides over the years not only to make open sexuality the “normal” way of life but also to banish or render odd those who believe or choose differently.

Imagine, if you can, the amount of sitcom time spent on the subject of sex.  Imagine the number of stories and exposes about the sexual foibles of otherwise good men and women.  Imagine the volume of time, the countless pages, the vastness of entire industries spent on sexual pursuits and libido-lifting messages, telling us it’s just as healthy a way to stay in shape as aerobic exercise.  No, it’s not your imagination.

Truth is, sex has become the replacement of an important need by an urgent one.

I don’t watch much TV, largely because of its stupidifying effect on the masses.  I do watch movies though. Lots of movies.  And even there, I see how unentertaining most plot lines would be without the sex factor.  The general malaise about, and the lack of creativity within media is largely due to the potency of the sex factor to arouse and stimulate single-minded misled people into applause for an on screen violation of what might otherwise be a potentially creative story.  But with sex shoved down the throats of the masses (pun partially intended) as if we were all malnourished hookers, we’ve learned to hunger for it like the rush of a smoking bowl of meth.

As a social consolation, those who promote free sexuality have successfully fended off attacks by seasoning their appeals with “love, romance and intimacy”  as if to give added value to what they are really selling.  Eroticism is now much wider in its appeal, equating being sexual with someone or anyone for that matter, quite the “special” thing.  Special with this one, special with that one, and each special encounter so meaningful in its own way.

Sex is not the highest form of love. Not by a long shot.

Humanity’s lie has been to suggest that sexual union with another is the most intimate expression of love in the world.  As a celibate man, I believe nothing could be further from the truth.

To obey the greatest commandment to love one another is a far cry from having a passionate roll in the hay with them.  Loving acts have staying power while sex quickly goes…well…flaccid.

Celibacy creates a vacuum for important things.

The years I have spent without losing small pieces of my soul to random sexual partners has opened my eyes to greater forms of love than I might have otherwise never known existed.  When I stopped seeking pleasure, a vacuum was created inside of me and I began seeking to fill it with true love.  Not a person. Not another. Love.

Big difference.

Storge, philia, agape.  Go ahead. Look them up.  Affection, friendship, unconditional love. These alternate kinds of love always get the shaft from sex promoters, yet they are the kinds of love expressions that make you cry at commercials, weep at songs and experience the kind of joy of the spirit of a sports team with an incredibly moving back story.  They are the kinds of loves you remember over and over again, long after your meaningful casual fling left your bed for home.

Perhaps one day I will rediscover that eros kind of love again and my celibate days will be over.  But I have found that my freed mind is now capable of deep thought that births deeper movements of love and compassion and a preoccupation with things that last much longer than an orgasmic minute.  And when I do find it, I’ll have learned to respect it with much more dignity than I ever did before.

And if I never do, I will nonetheless have learned to love as a celibate man, and by then I should be a pretty good at it, because the further I get from sex, the better I understand love.

She was a poor high school girl who just needed a ride.  And if she’d never had the courage to speak up, I wouldn’t be here today.

Each morning, handsome young Mike Miller drove past her house on his way to North Hollywood High. He usually picked up a friend on the way.  Barbara, friends with his morning passenger,  asked her one day,  “Do you think Mike might pick me up also? I’m right on his way.” Her friend offered to ask on her behalf and returned the next day with his reply:

“He said if you want a ride that bad, you have to ask him yourself.”

What a jerk.  What a cocky, arrogant ass.

Swallowing her pride for a ride, Barbara caved.

She sat in the back seat, but not for long.

The chemistry between them became too much and she soon moved to the front where their molecules mingled and began the Miller Family in 1958…and by some counts, even sooner.

At the end of his long, successful life, the greatest story never told about my dad, Mike Miller, is the one that belongs to my mother.  She’d have no interest in telling it herself, but someone should speak of the woman who first just came along for the ride and ended up successfully navigating an entire generation.

Don’t mind if I do.

Barbara Ann or “Babs” as they sometimes called her, was the oldest of four in a not so great childhood where she was often the only present “parent. ” She learned at an early age how to care for people, to put them first, enjoy their achievements and take a backseat to their successes.   If  I’ve spoken of my dad’s remarkable humility in previous stories, Mom’s humility is truly incalculable.

Like Dad, Mom is also an artist, but of the family genre.  The co-author, co-illustrator and presence in every sky of every painting he ever did, she is as much in every canvas of Dad’s art as the paint put upon it.  And if you ask anyone, together, they created a family masterpiece. The full story of my dad’s life is immeasurably void and incomplete without her.  During Dad’s final year, I watched them in their side by side recliners holding hands as he slowly drifted off until the day he finally drifted off forever.  She wasn’t watching the television. She was watching the man who invited her to join him for this long ride that ended all too soon.

She’s the first to admit she had no formal education, but graduated from what she very proudly calls the School of Hard Knocks.  She was the bobbing buoy in the family storms–unless of course they were real storms, in which case she was crouched under the stairs with her fingers in her ears. But despite the joking, she learned to make peace with a relentlessly stubborn man and lead the family from the back seat while still letting him believe he was always behind the wheel.  We all knew better.

On many occasions, she could have given up, but always regarded the potential of the investment greater than its episodic highs and lows.  She appreciated dreams and always listened intently to mine as if they were her own.  I’ve always been a dreamer with a story to tell and many a pre-dawn morning, we sat together as I recited the most elaborate soliloquies of my night’s slumber and she always made me believe she starred in every one.  And for a little boy turned author, she was my first captive audience.

She has always been fastidious about things.  The kids, the house, holidays, Dad.  For all his life,  he was her project.  Few know that.  She could plant an idea and make him believe it was his seed. She could draw a picture of the future and he would paint it as an original. Set a course and he would route it as if he’d created the map.  Together, they have at times been the Laurel and Hardy, George and Gracie and Ricky and Lucy of their many friendship circles, and were always the admired ones.

Their youth was the last to speak fondly of the woman behind the man.  It was a post-depression era when young men and women enjoyed their mutually supportive roles with pride, producing what many now consider the last of the best families of the century. Their homeostatic coupling had no room for notions of pride and independence.  Marriage had a purpose that far outweighed anything they might achieve on their own.  Each acknowledged the other as a necessary complement, a symbiotic relationship which stayed the course and often defied societal odds and birthed a well-mannered generation of survivors.

Mom has given her three kids more stories of personal sacrifice, selflessness and principled living than we’ll ever live to tell.  During our early years, she was always the mark of the family.  Without her, we would have very few of our funniest stories.

Even now, 56 years later, she still drives us all crazy.  But crazy is as crazy does and now nearing the end of her days, just like Dad, neither would change a thing.

Mom has since taken the wheel, driving the last leg of their journey alone.  But they will end up at the same destination.  For she will join him in the skies he will continue to paint for her from afar with light and color and placid memories.

They will forever be those two young kids, still enjoying that first ride that lasted a lifetime. And we will all watch from below and gather from time to time to laugh and cry and be thankful that they were that couple who once shared a front seat and drove each other, and the rest of us, crazy.

Until her own time comes, she misses him each time she gazes into the painted skies he leaves on her lonely walls.

But I’m pretty sure as she continues to talk to him over coffee from her early morning patio, he may finally reveal to her who it was who changed the setting on the dryer.

And the Valentine lovers will have yet another good laugh.

Coincidences happen every day for those who believe in them.
You pull over with a flat tire and seconds later there’s a massive pileup at the next intersection. You find a $50 rebate check and an unexpected $50 invoice on the same trip to the mailbox. The difference lies in your perspective. Is it just chance or might some other force be at work on your behalf?

The simple minded view them as mere chance with no room for divine explanation. The former offers no chance to change the outlook on your day ahead while the latter gifts you hope and optimism that perhaps you’re not so alone in this world, and a better than even chance to begin your day with a distinct possibility there’s more to this life than meets the eye.

No matter how far you’ve traveled,
The distance you’ve placed between you and your past,
The amends and erasures,
The changes you’ve made which are now habits,
And the difference you’ve since become in this world…

In just the right place, at just the right time,
He caught my eye and called me.
“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.
He really needs somebody.”

He said “I kinda need some help.
I’m wondering what you got.
I haven’t much, but three days clean
But for me that’s quite a lot.”

I said, “What’s up, my name is Don,
I’ve been where you are too,
I should be gone to prison
But today I’ll stand with you.”

We spoke the language addicts do
And quickly made a bond
He asked me how I got this far
I said “No magic wand.”

New on the scene and over zealous
He was hardly apprehensive,
Wanting one more day, and of me jealous,
Scared and aptly pensive.

I said “Advice?” He said “For sure!”
So I went on to tell him
“For what you got, there ain’t no cure”
I had no line to sell him.

He listened to my story.
And feasted on each word.
He was ravenous and hungry
For all that he had heard.

I wished him well and shook his hand
He countered with a hug.
Then thanked me for my sincere words
Which spared him from the drug.

And at just the right place and at just the right time,
Years later, less in danger
That friend I’d met with a story of mine
Was asked to help a stranger.

I haven’t met you yet…

but I glow inside knowing you’re thinking of me right now.

Planning what we’ll do after work tonight and what you’ll make for dinner

because you’ll probably beat me home and you’re a great cook and

even better at surprises.

I haven’t met you yet…

but while my birthday is months away, you’re already making secret plans.

I haven’t peeked but I’ve noticed the little list you keep of things I like and

how it’s been a long time since I’ve been on an airplane.

I haven’t met you yet…

but I smell you sometimes in my clothes and my pillows and way down deep

under my sheets at night where only me and my dog have slept.

And he wouldn’t mind at all sharing  me and my bed with someone like you

at some point.

I haven’t met you yet…

but i’m sure you look incredibly sexy with your mind all caught up in a river

of thoughts running deep and wide and long about everything, everyone, and the kinds of

things that make a difference for you, me, us and the ways of this world.

I haven’t met you yet…

but something about you makes me want to write with words I never use, like “amazing,”

and not really care so much that my grammar is perfect because you’re so ravenous

to read even my first drafts as if they were my final all because

you share my thoughts and you want to make me look perfect.

I haven’t met you yet but…

you make me cry, laugh and care in such extremes that it kind of hurts to stretch myself

that far. But you remind me that things like that are worth it.  And I know they are,

and I can trust you.

And if by chance we never will,

I want you to know how much I’ve enjoyed just dreaming that one day we might have.

And of the memories we would have.

And of the fun we could have

made together

since that one day we first saw each other and stared just for a moment,

wondering if it was really, finally,

You.

LMSM,

Don

When you lose someone, the remnant of memories can be difficult to reconstruct.

Photo albums, home movies, funny stories and touching recollections are usually the best and only ways of remembering.

But I am the fortunate one.

Growing up, our family lived in many homes.  On average, we never stayed in the same home but for a couple years or so before it was dolled up, decorated, built out and outlived for the ever clever, upwardly mobile and on the move Miller family.  Friday night through Sunday night, weekends were projects to improve, expand and create a home that was truly a piece of art eventually sold to the highest bidder, moving us on to the next residence and a flow of new ideas and projects.  As kids, we didn’t know any different. Weekends were made for maintaining our home and building things together. It was our fun.  Our way of building a family.

Built-ins, barbecues, patio covers, flower beds and a host of uniquely-designed creations usually began as a sketched design on dad’s easel.  His artistry went beyond the hundreds of canvasses to which he’d lay his brush nightly after a long day of work.  He could take any idea and give it life and dimension that inspired us all.  “Hey dad, I have an idea,” usually was a prompt for him to grab a pencil or marker and any writable surface nearby to join you in the adventure of making your own intangible a virtual reality.   It was a thrill that we all had taken for granted back then.  To sit with dad in one of these creative sessions at home or in the office was to learn a unique visual dialect in the language of his art.

School projects, science fair exhibits, scouting merit badge endeavors, homecoming floats…even campaign signs for our school politics…all were more than a few notches above the rest.  We always won and the accolades were commonplace.  Miller kids were the envy of the classroom project.  Everyone wanted to be on our teams.  But when you grow up with someone famous, you don’t know it.  It’s just normal.

Being the son of someone famous has never really sunk in.  Dad had private audiences with Elvis Presley on many an evening after his show to help him visualize some of his personal projects.  Political leaders, superstars and virtually every Las Vegas resort and entertainer has called upon my dad at some point in their careers. His art hangs in galleries and homes worldwide.  But I just knew him as dad and he never attempted to impress anyone.  Funny but only now as he is facing his exit from this world and into a much better place are people realizing how truly accomplished he has been. And that includes me.

He always taught us to bring our ideas to life.  Mine is done in words and prose.  I can only paint my pictures with a pen or keyboard.  My colors and textures are syntax and grammar with shades of wit and humor  meticulously framed in borders of hope and mattes of inspiration.  I create moods and lighting and beauty for others much like my dad did all his life. But even so, I will never be famous like my dad, but I will always be happy because of him and his fine art of being.

Many times as a young man I would watch him at his easel or table creating.  I’ve lost track of how many times I silently admired the flow.  His mind conceived an image which traveled down his arm, into his hand and out through his fingertips in one continuous movement of extraordinary creation and I always wondered if I might be blessed with such a gift.

But a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are mediums more powerful than my words could ever describe.  And to a little boy’s heart, an elaborate landscape of molded colored mountains and tunnels and trees and buildings for a toy train set is a prize I have often remembered.

In our family home, the walls would go up first and I always wanted certain pieces in plain view.  Some of his creations were the kinds into which I would stare for hours, scanning the sometimes hidden details he would include like the prize in a Cracker Jack box if you dug deep.  They would transport me to a time and place we once traveled or a stream we once fished or a past American era about which he’d studied and more than once dreamed of living.  During my rougher times even today, I can stare into a favorite piece and lose myself in his thoughts and dreams and again be at his side watching its creation as I did countless times as a boy. Those are moments that satisfy my soul yet have only recently come to fully appreciate.

We often think of fame as something afforded the stage, screen or simply, one who cleverly seeks it at the right time and place in history.  That is not fame, that is celebrity.  Fame’s roots necessarily run deeper with heart, meaning and lasting purpose.  While celebrity shines for a moment, fame, like art,  endures posthumously and forever influences.

So without brush or canvas, I hope to use my words and stories to bring joy, tranquility and light now and long after he is gone until we are reunited as a creative team once again.  Until then, it’s just me and a really tough standard to live up to.

But dad, I promise to try.

I love you so much.

LMSM,

Donnie