It isn't the person dying who finds it hardest to live.
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The novella 'Coming to Los Angeles: How I learned to stop worrying, and love this city' continues as a serial this week.

MY FRIEND Kimberley Melin's automobile accident and the resulting coma transformed me. As August 2000 rolled into September, I slowly began to realize that my world had changed.

For the first time since childhood, I began to feel the emotions of those I loved. And to my surprise, I felt a rush of power within my teaching and directing. It began to unleash within me a burning need to write.

I BEGAN TO see the world differently. As drama director, yearbook adviser, and English teacher at Hoover, I interacted with many students daily. I saw that the choir and drama students were especially hurt. Their distress needed an outlet. They wanted to do something to help.

So after talking to my assistant director, I announced that the drama club would produce the show It's a Wonderful Life. Any profits made or monies donated would go into a special fund for Mrs. Melin.

The grief I had experienced had forced me into a realization that my faith was an integral part of who I was. I didn't understand that faith, of course. In the years since I had left my community, all I could see was the baggage surrounding my faith.

But now in the aftermath of Kim's accident, for the first time as a director, my artistic work began to manifest my faith. One of the most powerful moments for me occurred as I staged the funeral scene for Mr. Bailey.

As the mourners treaded the stage, carrying the casket, I placed Shannon Howard (Mary Bailey) downstage left. I had her sing a hymn, her voice unadorned.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see.

It had taken me years to realize the truth. All religions -- Christian, Muslim, Jewish -- are institutions designed with control elements that weaken the individual. Faith, on the other hand, is a mystical force that empowers people instead of controlling them.

My faith was different than my childhood community's -- but still very real to me. Kim's accident had separated out the strands of my faith from the structure of my childhood religion. And with this sudden burst of freedom, my faith finally began to synch with my artistic passion.

I DECIDED TO FIND a church that served people who were living in the real world, rather than the surreal world of pietistic morality. I needed a church that cared about people without needing to control them. And so I began attending Faith United Methodist Church in North Canton, Ohio, a place where many of my students and their parents also attended.

The pastor was Dr. Alan Kimber -- a storyteller with a South African accent. In all of his sermons, Alan attempted to make the gospel relevant. He gained his insights by looking beneath the text -- rather than approaching it literally.

Rumor had it he had worked with Nelson Mandela in South Africa during the days of apartheid. Alan's focus on peace and justice resonated with me.

"MR. DENLINGER?"

I looked up from where I was seated at my desk. It was a late Thursday afternoon in September, about a month after Kim's accident.

Carly Ensley, 14, appealing face, curly brown hair that I knew was a wig, was standing at the entrance to my classroom, smiling as always. Such a sweet spirit, I thought. Where does it come from?

Carly's mother, late 30s, dark hair, tired smile, stood beside her daughter. Her polished beauty seemed worn along the edges. I had heard about the Ensley family -- and the opportunities they had provided their two daughters, flying the world in their own private plane. Their swimming pool was the center of teenage cool in North Canton.

I felt the intensity of her pain flood the space between us, surrounding her daughter, as if searching for the monster that roamed her daughter's body, conquering one blood cell after another.

How did she manage to hold it all together? I thought.

NO MOTHER SHOULD see her child die- - yet Mrs. Ensley could only watch now as the effects of liver cancer walloped her daughter. Diagnosed a year before in November 1999, Carly had faced her disease with careless grace, worried only about those who loved her.

Her parents had fought the inevitable -- risking their fortunes and business as they searched for a way to save her. But not even the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York could help Carly -- they told her parents that "nothing could be done."

I had heard about Carly's tragedy while directing her older sister Maggie in the 1999 fall play. On her cell phone during a rehearsal, Maggie took the call. Speechless, she froze, her closest friends huddled around her.

And then the finality of Carly's prognosis rippled in crying jags through the cast, tearing furrows in the school's emotional landscape.

DRAINED OF HOPE as she tried to make her daughter's last few months the best they could be, Mrs. Ensley had come to me.

Would it be possible for Carly to be in the fall show? They had talked to her guidance counselor. Normally students couldn't come to rehearsals or a show if they missed school that day -- as Carly would undoubtedly do for chemo.

I thought for a moment. If the girl before me didn't survive to the show - what would that do to a cast already shaken by Kim's disappearance?

Then Carly smiled at me. "It doesn't need to be a big part," she said. "I just want to be part of the cast, your family."

I saw Carly's mother turn to examine the yearbook's stupid award plaques on the wall. I avoided Carly's questioning face. Doesn't she realize? I thought. It's death, goddamn it!

I tried to clear my throat. I thought of the druggist saved from accidental murder by Young George. Because so many girls had auditioned, I had turned the character of Mr. Gower into a woman.

"Could you play Mrs. Gower?" I said. Carly's face lit up.

"Oh, that should be fun," she said. She looked up at her mother, encouragingly.

It isn't the person dying who finds it hardest to live, I realized.

CARLY COULDN'T COME to every rehearsal, but she attended enough. I watched her bow to a grateful audience during a curtain call. So young, I thought, so young.

And then several months after the play closed, I went dressed up and empty to Carly's viewing -- getting out of my car in the raw sunlight of a February day and making my way through clumps of girls and boys gathered in the kitchen, the living room, the stairs, the hallway, the bedroom itself of that spacious house.

I saw Carly's wrenched body lying on her own bed -- a sight that thrust me off kilter. She had died in her mother's arms at home on February 21, 2001, at 10:30 AM.

I have never seen so many teens in the house of death.

AFTER THAT NOVEMBER PRODUCTION, Kim returned to life. I heard a child's voice that I didn't recognize on my answering machine. Then I did, and I called her back. We spoke, separated by months of time and space.

Just before Christmas on a cold night, Kim and Mike met with my drama club officers at The Olive Garden in Montrose in West Akron. Kim came in a wheelchair attended by her solicitous husband. One of the students delivered Kim's Christmas gift to her -- a check for the profits of their show, along with the community's donations.

Afterwards, the students presented Kim and Mike with the Christmas tree from the fall show. Attached were wallet-sized photos of her students with notes written on the back of each picture.

Kim seemed devastated by our attention, unable to respond adequately, made vulnerable by her injuries. I wondered if we would ever recover the blazing artist now trapped inside a body that didn't work in the same way. No one could have predicted then that Kim would earn a master's degree in conducting from Akron University within three years. It wouldn't have mattered. We were just happy that she was alive.

Kim's condition had torn Mike's emotions to shreds, landing him in the hospital one weekend himself as he felt the effects of persistent anxiety. I felt his worry, now. In sickness and in death, I thought as I watched Mike wheel Kim into the house afterwards. And later that evening, Mike thanked me, no emotion visible, just honest gratitude.

"It was a penny-pinching kind of time for us out of paranoia," Mike said, speaking of that time now, years later. "I didn't know if she'd ever work again. That money helped keep us medically insured and pay the medical bills." It also helped fund Kim's graduate degree in conducting as she recovered over the next three years.

IT IS DIFFICULT to view my friendship with Kim and Mike without mentioning another friendship that became the emotional center of my world. Ironically, the friendship began with a dance.

Six years before Kim's accident in the fall of 1994 - when I had first returned home to the North Canton area - I had auditioned at Malone College for a new show, Along Came a Frenchman. The show required me to dance. Yes, in front of an audience. I much preferred delivering the tedious monologue that opened the show.

To put it mildly, dancing has never been my forte - especially on the stage. My discomfort with the art form might have to do with the fact that I'm male - or perhaps it comes with my genetic heritage: my friend John Fohner claims that conservative Mennonites breed dancing out of their young.

Or maybe the old joke explains it best:

Question: Why don't Mennonites have sex standing up?
Answer: It might lead to dancing.

MY BUTTER-SMOOTH MOVES on stage were spotted by the quick eyes of Ami Wagner, 6'0", a broad-shouldered woman with short, dark hair. She stopped to observe me - a human tin man who needed oiling.

After she recovered from laughing, Ami and her friend Jennifer Bartkowiak offered to help me master the steps. I resisted their efforts. They conspired to rescue me anyway. I realized that the entire cast was on their side - something to do with the way my butter-smooth performance was upstaging them.

Other women have offered to teach me how to dance, but so far, no one has succeeded - including Ami. When the show ended, my dance steps still hadn't clicked in, but something else had. It took me awhile to figure out what that was as I blocked every effort by Ami to dissolve my pompous exterior. Her methods involved a lot of subtle teasing. Our sparring was hilarious to everyone but me. And during the cast party, Ami awarded me a certificate for being the "Biggest Snot."

One afternoon shortly after the show, Ami called me to declare a truce. She told me that I was a pompous ass, but she was on spring break from college, and thus, I could have the privilege of meeting her at the Palace Theater in downtown Canton to see The Ten Commandments: she had heard that Charlton Heston would put in an appearance (without his guns).

Other than Charlton Heston, we were the only two people in the theatre. Before that April afternoon, I had never realized that The Ten Commandments was a comedy, or that Heston was a comedian. But at some point during the film, Ami and I discovered that we had always been friends.

In the following weeks and years, Ami attempted to teach me how to play poker over endless cups of coffee at Perkins in Belden Village, but gave it up as another useless battle against my heritage - I simply couldn't count cards fast enough. But we still won most of the time when taking on our friends, signaling trump to each other by talking about puppy paws, graveyard shovels - subtle hints like that.

When Hoover's choral director offered me the chance to direct in the fall of 1997, I invited Ami to come aboard as my technical director. Over the years, I began to depend upon her as my assistant director and dramaturge, as well.

AMI WAS BESIDE me the entire time throughout Kim's tragedy as my most supportive friend. In fact, it is fair to say that Ami saved my life during the years I spent in North Canton.

A committed Christian with a razor-sharp intellect, Ami understood the dark conflict between my faith and childhood community. Her approach to faith was a blend of mysticism and the service-based orthodoxy of the United Methodist Church.

Ami was the only Christian I had met until then who could also swear like Popeye's degenerate father - perhaps it was the thespian in her. She approached everyone she met with overflowing warmth and a booming laugh, her feet planted firmly on solid ground. She is still the most gifted youth leader I have ever known.

Intensely loyal, Ami gave freely of herself. When bullies threatened those she loved, I saw Ami eviscerate them. She scrupulously followed Christ's command to love her enemies - but only after she had kicked their asses.

Ami accepted me for who I was - a Christian whose mystical, gypsy faith wouldn't fit into any of the religious boxes I had known in the past. With her, I didn't need to defend myself.

DURING THE SUMMER of 1999, Ami emailed me while I was studying at Oxford - she needed to talk about something. I called her from one of Oxford's red phone booths.

Ami seemed torn, her voice girlish. Nate Woodrum had asked her to marry him. What should she do?

I stood there, thinking. I had watched Ami grow to love her tall, laid-back boyfriend over the last year. She fought him madly, loved ferociously. Nate accepted me as an older brother. He's right for her, I thought.

And so in the summer of 2000, I attended their wedding. As Nate kissed his bride, making her Mrs. Ami Woodrum-Wagner, we heard strains of a familiar theme song. The pastor turned and shrugged, and I got it. It was the only choice Ami could have made.

Star Wars.

ONE SUNDAY MORNING at church, shortly after Christmas 2000, a church leader approached me and asked me if I would be willing to direct drama for the youth group. When I proposed that we write our own pieces, she agreed. So I organized a drama troupe, turning to Ami for help.

Half of the troupe was also at Hoover, so we communicated well and worked rapidly. Actress Shannon Howard agreed to co-write the first piece with me loosely based on one of the parables of Jesus. Several months later, I wrote the second piece. The audiences responded to these modern interpretations.

As I began writing regularly for the drama troupe, and found success, I tried to decide whether it was the time to move to either New York City or Los Angeles.

However, I now confronted an impossible barrier - one which I had erected myself. Although my house was an important step towards independence, it had become a trap when I took out a second mortgage - after paying off my credit cards, I had just maxed them out again. Now I couldn't cash out the double mortgage, even if I were to sell the house.

About this time, I received an email from California. Genevieve, my Orlando buddy, wrote to tell me that a position might be opening at her school. The drama director would be returning to Texas. Would I send Genevieve my resume? I considered it. Directing drama would provide me a job while I broke into the movie industry.

So I updated my resume and mailed it to Genevieve. While I waited, I also applied with a teacher's agency - and was interviewed by phone with another Los Angeles school, which didn't go anywhere. Then I got another email from Genevieve. The drama director had decided to stay. About this time, my principal also approved my request to turn the yearbook program over to another teacher, freeing me up to focus on drama.

The time wasn't right for me to move, I thought. And anyway, I needed to show fiscal responsibility before taking the risk of moving to Los Angeles. I did not yet realize that my real debt problem lived inside my head.

So I spent the summer preparing for another year of teaching at Hoover. By the middle of the summer, I had finished preparing the script for the fall play - I would be setting A Midsummer Night's Dream in New York City (forest) and in the Hamptons (town). Puck would be a punk rock star performing '80s music. As I finished my preparations, I received a call from my boyhood friend, Marlin Miller, who was working as a tenor at the Gratz Opera House in Austria. During a series of phone calls, we caught up on each other's lives.

I HAD BECOME friends with Marlin - athletic, focused, easy going - during our freshman year at Hartville Christian High School, the parochial institution where we both attended. He and two other guys burst into the publishing lab one morning where I was working on a typing assignment. They needed a first tenor for a quartet that was going to sing 20 minutes later in chapel.

I had known Marlin for years - he was actually my cousin, twice removed. My first distinct memory of him was when he and a pack of bullies had tormented me in the parking lot of Hartville Conservative Mennonite Church. I was five years old at the time.

We started first grade together - I was always the kid chosen last at recess, while Marlin was the star of every team. We didn't have a lot in common. Throughout our elementary and middle school years, Marlin defined popularity, while I buried myself in my books and only went out to play when I had to at recess. My friends consisted of my younger brothers and the rest of our neighborhood gang - with them I could be myself, create huts in the woods, dress up as Zorro. I could fall off the roof.

But that morning in the fall of 1977 changed everything. After we four freshman stumbled through a hymn -

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire

- our principal, Roman J. Miller, announced to the entire high school that as a quartet, our blend was unusual. We should continue singing together - and he invited us to perform at another event where he was speaking. That afternoon, we met and accepted his offer.

Our quartet stuck together through high school, becoming known as The School Quartet - we performed wherever we were invited to sing - chorale tours, church services, youth conferences. My new friends drew me into the social life of those who shaped trends in our youth group. I was thrust into leadership roles.

There were certain social barriers I had to overcome. As a freshman, I was the shortest guy in my class, about 4'11," 95 pounds, and a sloppy dresser. That changed. Influenced by my more athletic friends, I left my father's auto-body repair business and took a job with a local concrete crew. The hard labor built me physically. The self-discipline improved my self-respect. I gained the respect of my peers.

By the time we had graduated from high school, I measured just over 5'10" and weighed about 160 lbs. Marlin and I led the youth group, hunted deer together, struggled to figure out how we could give our lives meaning. I suspect we would have become drinking and smoking buddies - except that neither of us drank or smoked. Yet.

After high school, we created a name for our quartet: The Harvesters. Marlin began college as a Music major, and our repertoire advanced as we performed everything from classical ballads to black spirituals. We recorded our first album, which we released in cassette form: Army of the Lord. We began giving evening concerts in churches ranging from Baptist to Methodist. By the time we were both going to college - he at 19 and I at 21 - I had beaten him at arm wrestling, and he had shown me how to charm women.

Meanwhile, The Harvesters expanded to nine men, for which we produced our second album, Go in Peace. We finished college and left the conservative Mennonite community - our activities in theatre and opera ostensibly forcing our exit.

In 1994, I was best man to Marlin as he married Lori-Kaye Miller, a promising mezzo-soprano diva, and the two of them moved to Binghamton, New York. They worked there with the Central City Opera company. Then the marriage ended. They separated and worked on different continents, continuing to advance in their professional and personal lives.

NOW IN THE SUMMER of 2001, Marlin informed me that he was seeing Buffy Baggott, blonde, mezzo-soprano, strong-minded. They had met while they were both working with the Chicago Lyric Opera. Marlin was thinking about going with her to San Francisco - he had some free time, and she was playing the leading role of Bizet's Carmen at Festival Opera in August.

We decided that I would meet them in Chicago, and the three of us could fly to California. I had never seen Carmen, nor had I been to San Francisco. It would make a good vacation. The last year had been life-changing for both of us, and we needed to sort out our lives, find its meaning.

We talked about the logistics of being there. I was just beginning a long-distance relationship with a girl from Vienna. When Buffy was free, I would use the time to catch up on email and on my reading. When Buffy was in rehearsal, Marlin and I could hang out, talk, explore the city.

AMI OFFERED TO drive me to Chicago to meet Marlin. She worshipped talent and would drive anywhere to spend time with my best friend. On the way there, Ami and I could brainstorm ideas for the coming year, act like kids again.

In Chicago, Ami and I joined Marlin and Buffy, who knew the city well. Before we left for San Francisco, their friends threw a party. It gave me a chance to meet Marlin's compatriots from the past few years. The party ended with us exchanging stories while sitting around a fire in the backyard.

SAN FRANCISCO turned out to be a chance to recharge our friendship, discuss what life had thrown at us, think about our evolving lives.

We even attended one of Buffy's rehearsals in Walnut Creek. The rehearsal space was intimate, and Buffy played a sensual, intense Carmen. Marlin knew the show, became absorbed.

I was tired. I hadn't gotten much sleep. The musicians talked to each other, working out the musical nuances. Suddenly the stage manager was tapping me on the shoulder. She gestured me firmly towards the exit - my snoring was distracting the players.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I began to see the impression my fellow expatriate had made on his world. Everywhere we went, Marlin ran into people who claimed him as a friend - this one who had performed with him at Chicago Lyric, that one at Central City. Or was it Brevard?

Each of the opera stars we met greeted Marlin the same way - with respect for his talent, love for his easy personality. He was still real. His success hadn't changed who he was. People trusted and liked him, no matter what costume he wore, no matter where they came from.

Few people saw the pain he was feeling, I thought as I watched him. I knew his break from our community had been difficult.

DURING A TRIP TO wine country with Buffy and Marlin, I began to realize something. I was a short plane flight from Los Angeles - I could get a round trip ticket there and back for $35 each way.

I recalled the interview I had done by phone in the spring. Although the headmaster was interested, he refused to fly me in when he heard that I had never visited Los Angeles. Sorry, he said, but they had just flown in a teacher - only to have him decide he hated the city.

I talked it over with Marlin. I had the time - nothing to do back in Ohio - and my departure would allow him to spend more time with Buffy.

I called Genevieve Morgan and told her that I was thinking about visiting. She'd be glad to show me around the city, she said. She wanted me to meet her husband Nick and two daughters. Call when you purchase the tickets, she said. Let me know when you'll be arriving. We can't host you at our place - but I'll be glad to provide a ride to your hotel.

I was impressed with Genevieve's welcoming attitude. I didn't know that already the wheels had been set in motion to recruit me - using a system developed by independent schools. Officially, Genevieve was my contact - and she was introducing me to the familial warmth that these schools show to those who teach and move within its network. They know how to take you in.

WHEN I CALLED Genevieve from the Oakland airport, just before I boarded my flight, Genevieve had news. A position had just opened up at her school - they needed a seventh-grade English teacher. Would I be interested in interviewing for the position?

My mind flashed back to the first year I had taught school after I returned from London - a Mennonite school in Kidron, Ohio, grades 7-9. That had been a difficult year for me. I was undergoing culture shock after a year in London - and I certainly wasn't prepared to teach an age group that demands the most patient teachers in the business. I cleared my throat.

"I don't think so, Genevieve," I said. "I'm a high school teacher. This is just a scouting trip." I considered that year again. Of course, I was a more experienced teacher now, I thought.

Genevieve sensed my uncertainty. Perhaps I could consider it? I didn't say anything. She held up the bait. If I agreed to interview, Archer would cover the cost of one night's stay at my hotel.

I thought about it. Okay. It was just an interview, after all. I didn't need to take the job if they offered it. I laughed.

"Okay, Genevieve," I said. "I'll do it."

SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENED just before I left San Francisco. Marlin walked with me to the bus stop that would take me to the Oakland airport. There was a park nearby. We hung out on one of its benches, drinking coffee, waiting for the bus. Suddenly Marlin remembered. He needed cash.

I must have been feeling very good, because it's the only way I can explain what happened next. I should have just told Marlin to go to an ATM machine.

But here's what you need to know about my best friend. To withdraw money from his international bank account, he would have incurred a slight charge. And Marlin is a hardcore cheapskate, the kind of guy who drives an extra half-hour out of the way to save one penny per gallon on gasoline. It's the principle of the thing.

I happened to have $300 in cash on me - and Marlin happened to have his checkbook with him - so he pulled it out, balancing it on his knee. I could see the bus coming, pulling up to the bus stop - so I picked up my bags, waiting impatiently. Marlin signed the check, tore it out, and put it in my right hand.

MY DECISION TO fly to Los Angeles seemed arbitrary. I had met Genevieve in a random encounter at a conference. The trip to Los Angeles was a haphazard scouting trip - a chance to meet the city just in case I decided to move there.

But my decision to call Genevieve that day turned the direction of my life. As did the check I clutched in my hand as I ran towards the bus.

To be continued . . .

NEXT WEEK - Chapter 4: Bartering My Future

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