Dylan Stafford

God, please be with the people affected by the tsunami.

My tsunami warning was a 4:16am call today on our home phone. My father was calling from Texas, letting us know that the terrible tsunami had happened in Japan, and making sure we were aware of it. My sleepy brain calculated, “50 foot waves. We live a mile from the ocean. We’re at 85 feet above sea level. Japan is a long way from here. The waves won’t hit Culver City. I can stay asleep.”

My wife didn’t calculate the same way. She got up. Watched the news. Called my father, twice. Called other friends and family before finally coming back to bed about 6:00am and falling back asleep.

I sat at a memorial service yesterday afternoon at 4pm, high in the hills above Malibu, overlooking the same ocean, the so-named-because-calm Pacific, that today is sending us waves all the way from Japan. The memorial was for a man, Jean, I know who was accidentally killed when he pulled over on the side of the 101 a week ago and got hit by a driver swerving who didn’t see him.

Jean was younger than my father, I thought as I sat and listened to the reflections given of his life, staring at the dates of his birth and death on the cover of the bulletin. I looked at the dash between the dates–his life–amazed as I always am that it takes way more ink to write two dates, our birth and death dates, than it does to make a dash. Amazed that a dash represents all the days of our life.

Attending a memorial didn’t fit in my little hamster-wheel plans. To leave work early, to drive the Pacific Coast Highway traffic to and from Malibu, to attend a memorial for a man I’d only ever had coffee with once. It was all an interruption to being “productive”. 

What the heck is a tsunami to all the affected people in Japan and the Pacific? It’s an interruption of gigantic proportions. 

My thoughts and prayers this morning are with the tsunami victims and the survivors dealing with the aftermath, and they are with Jean and his family. How can I make today, this day, these next 12 hours my masterpiece? How can I live today like a tribute? Cherish it like it matters and it’s the only day I have to be a husband, a father and a person worthy of a dash?