Someone You love may be crossing

It was an evening business meeting at Hollys house, our Broadway producer, our Hollywood producer, potential investors and guacamole. A woman from next door walked in through the garden doors that hung open with weight of night blooming Jasmine, smartly East Coast and fixed on reaching the couch with no detours or small talk. She was a friend of the New York guy.

I liked her immediately, I introduced myself and sat down next her. She told me how her thirteen year old daughter had recently been killed as she stepped off the curb on their corner. The school bus driver signaled to the anxious teenager that it was safe to cross, and as her mother watched from the driver’s seat of her own car, a fast moving vehicle hit her daughter.

Jody Seigler had driven her daughter to the corner that morning because her husband said it would be safer for their daughter, Julia, as cars whizzed along the curves of Sunset so deafly, and blindly, as if pedestrians are an archaic idea, or just an inconvenience. Can you imagine being Julia’s parents? Can you imagine covering your dying daughter with your coat on the unforgiving tar of a relentless road that took your child away in an instant. I can’t, and I am still, months and months later in agony for Jody and Scott.

When Jody left the group of us that night, I stood at the precipice of unconsolable grief, the abyss of which was revealed by the beautiful woman who dispersed into the underworld. Holly said, “someone you love may be crossing”. I grasped that phrase like a bar that keeps you from falling into the canyon. Here is a simple demo of the song I wrote for Jody, and even more awfully, the car that killed Julia was driven by a teenager dropping his sister off at school.

I believe there is a charity for Julia called “Julia’s lights”, and I will get to that via Jody later.