160 Miles Northwest of Lansing

160 miles northwest of Lansing: That's where Jeff Zaslow was when he died. He was travelling alone to do a reading about his latest book when he lost control of his car, slid into the path of a semi and was instantly killed.

His wife and three daughters buried him on Monday. Those of us who knew him from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists were hoping that the eulogy by Sully Sullenburger would be videotaped. It wasn't. We felt connected to him. He came to all the conferences. I remember him speaking at the 2006 NSNC Conference in Boston that Suzette Martinez Standring and I co-chaired, where Arianna Huffington also spoke, and we visited the home of John and Abigail Adams and their son John Quincy.

It seems only a minute ago now, 2006. Jeff's career was just taking off: under his belt already were his winning the nationwide competition to replace Ann Landers and also his regular gig with the Wall Street Journal. Still ahead: his writing of The Last Lecture, about the beloved Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Also The Girls of Ames, and the book about Sully Sullenberger; the book he did with Gabby Gifford and this latest one about fathers and how they do love their daughters. (They are all here. And here is his wonderful face as he stood with Randy in 2007.

The Magic Room: that's the book he was promoting when he skidded on that snowy rode in northern Michigan. The email entitled "Our friend Jeff Zaslow has died" appeared in my inbox Saturday morning and I felt the air rush from my lungs. It came from the folks in the NSNC member, the same people I was with when word came of Michael Jackson's death. The same people I was with in '94 as a fugitive OJ Simpson attempted to outrun law enforcement.

But this felt different. This felt personal, and not just because I knew him to be the kindest most gracious man, who wore his success so lightly. It felt personal to me because I identified with Jeff: the way both of us did book after book, then drove all over the map through snow and darkness to meet with 12 or 15 strangers and talk a while of what matters most in life. Sure there were differences. He had a real publisher doing his books and he made real money. I published my stuff through my own imprint and basically lost money. Still I read this story of his final minutes and I thought that could be me.

I think how close I came to dying that time on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when a legendary November blizzard blew in and I still tried crossing from Erie to State College to Allentown in it, the whole breadth of that big long cow of a state. The long-haul truckers were the only other vehicles on the road in that blinding snowstorm.

I think how close I came the time I almost smashed into the guardrail of the Sunshine Skyway just south of St. Petersburg going 60 miles an hour before I woke and saw where the car was veering.

I read back to all my laments here about doing too much and then having sleep elude me and a cold chill runs through my body. I haven't died yet from some crazy self-inflicted moonshine of a mission but it’s not too late, it is surely not too late.

Jeff did die and how the world will miss him and those three daughters especially whose hearts will never again be young.

Remembering about him these last days I came upon a post I wrote when Michael Jackson died and we were together in Ventura. What's eerie is that Jeff is in it too, in the sense that I named him as the author of The Last Lecture and then posted the video of Randy Pausch, weakened by the cancer that claimed him so young, taking the podium at the last commencement he would attend at his beloved Carnegie Mellon, thinner and fainter of voice than he had been but still so full of life.

We live until we die, they say and the emphasis is on the word ‘live’. We're meant to live each day to the fullest. We owe at least that much to God, who I always imagine standing to one side watching us, and just sort of shyly hoping that we liked it well enough here, and noticed everything, and felt happy and joyful as often as we could.

Now here is the post from June of '08 with Michael, and Randy, and Jeff in it that, eerily, enough is about how it is for children to lose their father young, and here below is Randy Pausch on YouTube in a video that more than 14 million people have looked at.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo]

Day of Rest

It's late morning here and I'm still exhausted, both from an event that I worked seven months on and also two deaths.The deaths have me hollowed right out, one the death of Jess Zaslow by car accident as he drove to promote the latest of his wonderful books and,  I'll readily admit, Whitney’s death too.I don’t pray in a way that might be recognizable to the fathers of the faith I was born in, but I do pray in my own haphazard way; never for myself but for others. I’ve been praying for years for Whitney. I prayed for her and for Michael Jackson because both seemed so lost: one mired in a self-hatred that made him turn to scalpels to alter the man in the mirror and the other because - well, because she has looked so sad and fragile for so long now. I just watched some YouTube video her trying to get through the shows on her latest tour and really you have to press 'Stop". You just can’t bear to watch.It was yesterday that I heard of these two deaths and also yesterday that the Multicultural Network of our town put on this amazing event to bring people together. I want to write about Jeff and about the event but I think I’d best wait. I got home at 5 last night; fixed two plates of  food for us and then slept clear through the latest spine-tingling episode of Justified and HBOs’ Saturday night premiere of Something Borrowed and the ten o’clock news, Then I turned out the light  and slept 8 more hours.Prayers work sometimes and sometimes not: that could be one conclusion here. Another could be that you’re in no position to be fussing over somebody else's well-being until you start taking care of yourself.I’ve been sitting in my nightie writing for the last four hours (though none of it was for Exit Only here – this post took five minutes.)I just looked at the clock. It’s after 11:00. High time for coffee and breakfast.But God bless the dead. God bless them; they rest from their labors.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xtZHMPcS9I]

Man in the Mirror

Here at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists I’ve just heard a talk by Jeff Zaslow, author of The Last Lecture on Professor Randy Pausch’s amazing final talk before his death from pancreatic cancer and the sound of gulped-back tears filled the room.Randy left behind three small children even younger than the three left by Michael Jackson, God rest his troubled soul.These children of Randy's won’t remember their dad and he knew that. It is the cruelest and yet the kindest thing that happens to you as the sorrowing left–behind one, the way your spider of a heart wraps the time immediately following the death in such thick numb bunting you can’t recall them.When, at 45, my sister Nan lost her young husband Tom to death on the tennis court, she blundered blindly through the whole following year. Then one night she 'saw' him as she lay in their bed. He stood at their bedroom door in the tennis outfit he had died in. “I want to come back,” he said plaintively. “You can’t!” she exclaimed through fresh tears.  “Your friend took your job and I gave away your clothes!”Was it a dream or did Tom really come to her that night? And if so, did he repent the pack-a day cigarette habit, the six-hard-boiled-eggs-and–six hot-dogs suppers chased down by whole pints of ice cream?  Does Michael repent the fact that he exhausted his frail and pain-wracked body in preparing for the superhuman task of a 50- show tour? We can’t know. But if we could speak with our dead just one time more I think they would have us take a long look in the mirror and resolve from here on out to spend our own remaining days loving all those of whatever age who shelter in our care and nurture. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA]