Her absence
Vol. 3, Issue 9
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” --C.S. Lewis, “A Grief Observed”
NEWS & NOTES
The ash bandits
When burglars broke into a California veterinary hospital in December, they were after the facility’s petty cash. Yet for some reason, they stole something that can’t be pawned.
According to the Brentwood Police Department, two masked persons broke the glass door and gained access to the Central Boulevard Veterinary Hospital around 6 a.m. on Dec. 6. The suspects tried to open the cash register, but after failing to do so, they “took specially made bags containing urns with pet ashes” and fled through the same broken glass door.
Cleo and Spice, the hospital’s two office cats, were not harmed during the break-in, The Press reported.
The hospital later released video footage taken by security cameras in hopes that the public would recognize the burglars or know the whereabouts of the ashes.
“If anyone finds any pet ashes, urns, paw prints, or containers discarded anywhere in Brentwood or the surrounding areas, please contact us immediately,” the hospital stated on Facebook. “We are not concerned about anything else that was taken — we just want to return these pets to their homes. No family should have to experience this level of grief again.”
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Espresso yourself here
Are you familiar with the concept of “third places”?
Ray Oldenburg, sociologist and author of “The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community,” coined the term, which he defined as “a generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”
Basically, if home is your “first place” and work is your “second place,” Oldenburg believes people should have a third place to enjoy the company of others.
But where do you go while in mourning? Hanging out in a pub could be both depressing and deleterious to your health. Bingo and pool halls may be places for fun and camaraderie, but you need to be in the right mood for such games. And, it’s hard to join a book group or play a sport when your mind can’t focus and/or your heart just isn’t into it.
For people in Long Beach, Calif., there’s now a third place that welcomes those who’ve suffered a loss. It’s called Reinne’s Place, and it was started by barista Tommy Le to honor his late girlfriend.
Reinne Lim, a 22-year-old nursing student, was known for being kind, warm and nonjudgmental. In 2022, a drunk driver who was traveling in the wrong direction on the freeway struck Le and Lim’s car hit head-on, CBS News reported. She died in his arms.
Le suffered numerous broken bones and had to be placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks. Once Le returned to consciousness, he would spend months undergoing surgeries and physical therapy -- all while trying to process the fact that he had just lost his partner.
Three years later, with the help of investors, supporters and people he had served as a barista before the crash, Le has channeled his grief into building a coffee shop that will serve as a living tribute to Lim, honoring her spirit of compassion and generosity. While the coffee shop is under construction, Le has opened a pop-up version in the corner of an art gallery.
Reinne’s Place serves Vietnamese and Filipino-inspired coffee drinks and provides a space for the community to share their experiences of loss, the Los Angeles Times reported. Tears are common, but so is connection. Here, even the baristas are willing to listen.
“Coffee baristas are therapists who serve people coffee,” Le often says.
Customers are encouraged to take a “Reinne Check,” a piece of paper resembling an old diner guest check, and write notes to deceased loved ones, old exes, even their past selves. These hand-written messages are then posted on the wall, where other patrons can read them and see that they’re not the only ones in pain.
“It’s kind of an opportunity for people to realize that we all have a lot more in common than we think we do,” Le said.
Le has also created a “Reinne-y Day Fund,” which takes a portion of every drink sale and donates it to a charitable cause.
The permanent location for Reinne’s Place is expected to open this spring.
“Reinnes isn’t just a coffee shop. it’s a space built out of love, loss, healing, and hope. it’s the kind of place i wish i had when i didn’t know where to go. somewhere that reminds you you’re not alone,” Le wrote on Instagram.
FMI: Click here.
Daffodils of the dead
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NOTABLE OBITS
* Two-time WNBA champion Kara Braxton died. She was 43. Born in Michigan, Braxton moved to Portland, Ore., in her freshman year of high school and became a basketball star. The 6-foot-6 power forward, who was known as an interior scorer and rebounder, played college ball at Georgia for two-and-a-half seasons before she was dismissed for violating team rules. In 2005, Braxton was the No. 7 overall pick in the WNBA draft by the Detroit Shock. Turned out to be a good decision, too, as she would help the team win championships in 2006 and 2008. During her 10 seasons in the WNBA, Braxton also played for the Tulsa Shock, Phoenix Mercury and New York Liberty. (Heather Burns, Detroit Free Press and Zach Powell, The Athletic)
* Actor Robert Carradine, 71, who starred in the 1984 college comedy film “Revenge of the Nerds,” has died. Born into a Hollywood clan, Robert was the youngest son of actors John Carradine and Sonia Sorel, and a sibling to actors David Carradine, Keith Carradine and Disney imagineer Christopher Carradine. He joined the family business in 1972, appearing in the John Wayne film “The Cowboys” and then playing the same character again in the TV series. Carradine continued to land roles in films during the ‘70s and ‘80s, but he found fame playing the head nerd, Lewis Skolnick, in “Revenge of the Nerds” and its three sequels. Over the next four decades, he would act in dozens of films and TV shows, including “Lizzie McGuire,” “Escape From L.A.” and “Django Unchained.” (Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter and Jack Dunn, Variety)
* Ann Godoff, president and editor-in-chief of Penguin Press, died at 76. The New York native broke into publishing on the ground floor, typing mailing labels for editor Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster. She climbed the ladder at S&S, reaching the rank of senior editor, then spent six years as editor-in-chief of Atlantic Monthly Press. Godoff joined Random House in 1991, first as executive editor and later as president, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Random House Trade Group. When the company underwent a reorganization in 2003 and shocked the industry by dismissing her, she was unemployed for less than two weeks before Penguin came knocking and offered Godoff her own imprint. She founded Penguin Press, hired Scott Moyers (now the publisher), and signed 40 writers in the imprint’s first year, including many authors who left Random House just to work with her. Godoff’s stable of writers featured literary giants and commercial superstars, including John Berendt, Tom Brokaw, Caleb Carr, Ron Chernow, E.L. Doctorow, Michael Pollan, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Alice Waters and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. (Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly and Sam Roberts, The New York Times)
* Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz, 89, who led Notre Dame’s football team to a national championship, died. Holtz was raised in Ohio and played two seasons as a linebacker at Kent State before turning to coaching. Over the course of his 33-year head-coaching career, he worked at William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota and South Carolina. But it was during his 11 seasons on the Irish sideline (1986-1996) where Holtz built a reputation for motivating his players, berating officials and setting a 100-30-2 record with a winning percentage of .765. The Irish won five New Year’s Six bowl games under Holtz and would not win another for more than three decades. (Mike Berardino, South Bend Tribune)
* Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died at 86. Khamenei studied in the holy city of Qom and joined the movement that eventually overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1979 revolution. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran, Khamenei was appointed to the Revolutionary Council. In 1981, Khamenei was elected as Iran’s third president; he would survive an assassination attempt that same year, which left him with one hand paralyzed. Khamenei was named Iran’s second supreme leader after Khomeini’s death in 1989 and was immediately elevated to grand ayatollah. Since then, he has turned Iran into a regional powerhouse by expanding the Shiite clerical class, empowering the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, supporting militant groups in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, and building the country’s nuclear program. Khamenei also ruled the Iranian people with an iron fist; whenever citizens held protests calling for a better economy, fewer social restrictions or even the most modest of reforms, he would repress that dissent with arrests, torture and executions. His most recent crackdown on demonstrators saw security forces firing on crowds of civilians and killing thousands. Due to his actions and antagonism to the West, Iran became an international pariah, one that was often crippled by economic sanctions. (Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press and Alan Cowell and Farnaz Fassihi, The New York Times)
* Neil Sedaka, a legendary songwriter and pop star, died at 86. The Brooklyn native earned a piano scholarship to Juilliard’s children’s division when he was just 8 years old. Although Sedaka studied classical piano for several years, he loved writing and performing pop music. In his early teens, he met an aspiring lyricist named Howard Greenfield, and they became a songwriting team. The young pair had their first big hit when singer Connie Francis took the song “Stupid Cupid” into the Top 20 in 1958. That same year, Sedaka signed with RCA Records as a performer and released numerous hits of his own, including “The Diary,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” Sedaka’s performing career was hit hard by the Beatles and the British Invasion of the 1960s, yet he continued to work as a songwriter and tour overseas. Sedaka was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983. (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Los Angeles Times)
* Dan Simmons, an award-winning speculative fiction novelist who “defied literary norms,” died at 77. The Illinois native spent 18 years as an elementary school teacher and often delighted students with his storytelling. He left teaching for a full-time writing career soon after his debut novel, “Song of Kali,” won the 1986 World Fantasy Award. Over the next half-century, Simmons would write horror, science fiction, fantasy and thrillers, and publish more than 30 novels and short-story collections. He was best known for “Hyperion,” a science-fiction novel about seven pilgrims who embark on a voyage to seek the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Simmons would eventually win two World Fantasy Awards, a dozen Locus Awards, and several Bram Stoker Awards. His novel, “The Terror,” was nominated for a British Fantasy Award and adapted into a limited series for AMC in 2018. (Sian Cain, The Guardian and Legacy.com)
FAMOUS DEATHS IN HISTORY
On March 9, columnist/writer Charles Bukowski (73), Boston lead singer Brad Delp (55) and Israeli actor Topol (87)
On March 10, nurse/abolitionist Harriet Tubman (91), author Zelda Fitzgerald (47) and English/Australian singer Andy Gibb (Bee Gees) (30)
On March 11, German-American director/producer/screenwriter F.W. Murnau (42), German-American businessman/founder of processed meat firm Oscar F. Mayer (95) and inventor/TV pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth (64)
On March 12, entrepreneur/engineer George Westinghouse (67), Canadian fighter pilot William George Barker (35) and English fantasy author Terry Pratchett (66)
On March 13, actress Maureen Stapleton (80), boxer “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler (66) and actor William Hurt (71)
On March 14, German historian/revolutionary Karl Marx (64), tennis player Marion Jones Farquhar (85) and English composer/conductor Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (81)
On March 15, Canadian paleoanthropologist/doctor of anatomy Davidson Black (49), horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft (46) and pediatrician/writer Benjamin Spock (94)
On March 16, Swedish author/first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature Selma Lagerlöf (81), blues guitarist T-Bone Walker (64) and composer/musicologist/educator Roger Sessions (88)
RECOMMENDED SUBSTACK
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Last Entry — For God’s sake, look after our people.” --Robert Falcon Scott, final diary entry on the doomed Terra Nova Expedition
MOMENT OF GRATITUDE
Thanks to Atelierbyvineeth, Unsplash, NBC Bay Area, KTVU Fox 2, the Brentwood Police Department, Facebook, the Central Boulevard Veterinary Hospital, The Press, YouTube, the Project for Public Spaces, CBS News, Kickstarter, Tommy Le, Instagram, NBC4 Los Angeles, KTLA 5, Reinne’s Place, the Los Angeles Times, David Domoney, Hello Death: Conversations on Life and Death, A Bit of Good News, the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, Apple News, The Athletic, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, the South Bend Tribune, BBC News Africa, The Associated Press, The Guardian, Legacy.com, The Moonlight Reader Society, On This Day, Playback.FM, Britannica: This Day in History, Time and Date, Wikipedia, Soulspun Kitchen, All That’s Interesting, Canva and Deposit Photos for art and story suggestions. Note: Generative AI was not used during the ideation, creation or publication of this newsletter.
Also, congratulations to Kay P.! Her name was randomly selected in our monthly giveaway for paid subscribers. The March prize: The book “Life After Death” by Nigel Starck.
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