I was saddened if not 100% shocked by the news of Whitney Houston’s sudden death in her room at the Beverly Hilton last night. The last I had seen of her was a glimpse of her performing in Central Park on Good Morning America in 2009, where she appeared torn and frayed after yet another comeback album. (“I’m gonna try and do this,” she said, before making a hash of the number.) She had been seen previously, gaunt and unrecognizable, in the reality TV show, Being Bobby Brown, and I remember thinking there was no rung below the celebrity rehab show. But there’s always another rung.

I had interviewed Houston in 1995 for Harper’s Bazaar. She was finishing her soundtrack for the film version of Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale and was gearing up for The Preacher’s Wife, a gospel remake of an old Cary Grant-Loretta Young vehicle, The Bishop’s Wife. I remember reading McMillan’s book (a best-seller with a huge following among African American women) and watching The Bodyguard in preparation for my interview with her. But the more salient stories on my mind had nothing to do with her projects.

For the rumors already abounded: She was smoking crack cocaine; her marriage to Brown was a sham; she was an unstable and unpredictable talent on the best of days. None of these were the kinds of things one could talk about, of course: I can’t remember if her publicist had expressly forbidden such forays but I was supposed to write a soft and supportive story – she would “wear clothes,” as they said in the fashion mags, and grace the cover. No dirty laundry need be aired.

I was newly sober myself, counting days as they say in AA. I had found a number of interesting meetings in LA, filled with movie stars and crack whores, sometimes in the same place, and I was literally taking things one day at a time while preparing to talk to this woman who was supposedly deep in denial about her own addictions. I was more nervous than usual before meeting her (and frankly I always felt sort of sick before interviewing any celebrity, even though that was how I earned my bread and butter then) – an ex publicist of hers had already told me stories, off the record, about what a handful Houston could be.

I was allowed to sit in at a recording studio where she was working with Babyface and Cece Winans, and I tried to act like a fly on the wall (albeit one with a notebook) while the three of them went over something she had already recorded. She was doing a bit of overdubbing while I hung out with Winans and “Face,” as his friends call him. It was only after she had run through a few octaves and returned to chat with her friends that things got weird.

The topic was a country singer who had just sung, and sort of mangled, “The Star Spangled Banner” on Monday Night Football that week. It was not a big diss, as I recall; not many people can sing that song, and quite a few, pros included, have publicly died trying. But Houston had famously knocked it out of the park at the 1991 Super Bowl, and in the wake of the first Gulf War her cover sold millions. Maybe she thought, in light of her success, that she would appear petty making fun of someone else’s effort.

Seeing me in the corner, jotting down notes while the three of them joked, Houston suddenly rushed over and proceeded to push me out the door. Literally. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave now,” she said and within minutes I was out on the street thinking I had been thrown out of better places than that, but not while sober. Her new publicist joined me before I could head back to my hotel, assuring me that the diva was just a little tightly wrapped right now and that I shouldn’t read anything into it.

The next day I had lunch with Houston at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was on time and immediately apologized for her behavior the day before. I didn’t care; I knew it would make for interesting copy, which was always a challenge when writing what too often became puff pieces. I remember her being clear and present for the interview, defending Bobby Brown (who had just been accused, again, of punching out someone in a hotel) and extolling the virtues of Denzel Washington, who was going to play the Cary Grant role in The Preacher’s Wife. She seemed authentically curious about what I thought of McMillan’s book and if she looked a little pockmarked underneath the makeup, what business of it was mine? She had already made my job easier when she threw me out of the studio: She had given me my lede.

I didn’t know how to observe the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center this morning, and the idea of listening to bagpipes and speeches filled me with ennui. Maybe it’s being half-Irish but the whole “Never forget” impulse, no matter what your religion or the wrongs done to you in another’s name, makes me want to run from history screaming. As if from a burning building…

But the good I remember from that time was the sense of communion you got from New Yorkers that had nothing to do with politics or religion, certainly not at first. I remember hearing that there weren’t enough mourners to attend the masses of all the firemen and other first responders who died that day, and Giuliani and the fire chief asked if people could attend services for people they didn’t know. I went to one for a fireman at a small Catholic church at Pacific and Flatbush, a church I had not not been in before or since — I’m not even Catholic — crying with a few other strangers.

And I remember going to the Barnes and Noble on Court Street in the following weeks and visiting the shelves that had once held the books on the Middle East and Islam and finding them empty, cleaned out by people trying to understand. Before we as a nation went back to sleep. (Or as my favorite Irish writer said, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”)

And I remember the actual day of 9.11, wearing a suit because I was attending a hearing for Adam who had not been diagnosed with Aspergers yet but who could not be mainstreamed in public schools, and the city didn’t have special schools that worked with kids with learning difficulties and emotional problems, so you had to threaten to sue them to get them to pay for private schools. We were thrown out of the tall building next to the Marriott where the NY Dept of Education held its hearings, my lawyer complaining that we should have gone ahead with things anyway (unaware of the body count, the full horror of what had happened) and the silent baleful looks those who knew more gave him in the elevator.

And I remember going past my daughter’s school, where the then new head was literally running around in front of the building uncertain whether to send the kids home. (They didn’t at first, and then they did.) And I remember walking up the hill to Fort Greene, seeing the first people coming back from walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, their hair filled with ash. And I remember seeing one man with ash on his shoulders fall to his knees on DeKalb, across from the park, overcome no doubt by the memories of what he had seen.

Another couple stood not far from him and only watched as I did — all of frozen for a moment in fear and confusion, uncertain how to respond to another in pain. And then the man got up and moved on but the fact I did not even say a word or reach out a hand right then haunted me for a long time afterwards, and does now.

I offer you this wafer of a memory, flavored with the salt of my tears.

Adam turns 27 today. Thinking back to our conversation at Chava’s I remember him saying, “I thought cancer was supposed to be this big life-changing event. And instead everything still feels the same.”

I told him how much I liked what he said after this meditation class we went to the last time I was here. It’s a regular Monday night group that meets at the SF Zen Center, and it’s really for people in recovery. (I knew that going in but didn’t tell him, though I don’t think drugs and alcohol are his problem now, just further impediments.) The fellow who ran the group gave a good introduction to the Buddhist precepts, kind of Zen 101, and then invited the (very crowded) room to introduce themselves, saying what their affliction/affiliation was as they went.

Being SF, almost everyone was more than one thing – “Hi, I’m Joe and I’m alcoholic, addict, Al-Anon member etc.” and by the time it got to Adam, who was literally the last person in the circle, sitting by the door, he said, “Adam, stand-up comic.” I could see people looking at each other – do you need a recovery group for that? Can I get in on that?

Later that evening I told him I thought that was funny and he said, “Yeah, but I thought about it and wish I’d said, ‘Adam, Aspergers, cancer-survivor and stand-up comic.”

That’s the key, I think: Identifying with the people who survive, the ones who are still here, who look at each other with some sort of recognition. If nothing else, being in close quarters with him for the last week has convinced me he is not self destructive, that he is not headed down the dark path my father took.

He is fascinated with Dad’s story, at times; he even said something to the oncologist about how my father killed himself because of his cancer diagnosis. No, I told him later: he killed himself because he was a miserable person who compounded his fear and hatred of other people with alcohol and isolation, crippling, near-total isolation.

One night while I was here I awoke and remembered sharply, as if in a dream, a trip I took to see Dad and Marion in Mackey, Idaho. I wasn’t 30 – Bonnie and I weren’t married (though she was with me on the trip) and Dad and I were friendly enough to have got invited to Idaho, where he and Marion had bought a bar in the god-forsaken little cattle town of Mackey, 30 miles from Nowhere.

Except when we arrived at the airport in Pocatello and called them, Marion answered and was very alarmed to hear we were there. This wasn’t a good time, she said – health concerns, your father had a “little stroke.” But after some whining on my part she told us to come on over.

It was a weird weekend. I remember despite Dad having had a “stroke” (of which there was no physical evidence) he was up at seven am, chopping wood outside our window. I think they were both wishing we would go away, and one afternoon Bon and I went into the moonscape hills outside of town and took mushrooms. I remember driving back and through a herd of cattle, a cowboy on a motorcycle waving us through.

Sitting in the bar that night I saw Dad behind the bar, not a position he was not born to. He didn’t like most people, and his customers were few and sullen. (I remember one old cowboy asking me what I did in San Francisco, and when I told him I worked in a bookstore he looked at me like I’d said I molested small children.)

We left, finally, the next day. Dad took us to the airport and remember a testy time in the airport lounge, waiting for the plane. B said something about how, for being a writer, I never spent much time actually writing, and I remember flipping her the bird. My father was shocked – gentlemen did not do that to ladies, I guess. “Why don’t you have a drink?” he said. “That might cheer you up.”

And look how well that worked for him!

But why was I remembering all this now, in vibrant color and detail? I think because I understood, all these years later, that he had not had a stroke at all but had made an attempt on his life, or was certainly headed that way. “I’m in the slough of despond,” was the most he ever said about it, and Marion was under strict orders to not speak of such matters. But I think, in old-fashioned terms, he was having a nervous breakdown: He had left his job teaching, sold his house, sunk what money had into running a business he was completely unprepared for in a town that didn’t want him in a land that looked like a bombing field. And he didn’t see any way out.

Adam and I are starting to think he may have dodged a bullet or two with his chemo; aside from some nausea and tiredness throughout the week, the worst of the side effects seem to have missed him. So much so that when I returned from Sprit Rock, where I went for a daylong retreat with Jack Kornfield, he asked me to pick him up at his apartment. He’d gone there to get his running shoes, planning on getting in a jog in this neighborhood, not far from where he lived at the Hotel Mirabelle for a spell.

He seemed okay when I got him, smelled a bit of cigarettes (so smart when getting over cancer) but nothing more. Said he had seen a friend of his who wanted Adam to be in a band he was forming to play bass. Except neither of them had a bass guitar.

We went to dinner at Chava’s for old times sake (I was jonesing for a burrito from San Jose Tacqueria across the street but he wanted more variety in his offerings, I think; he probably eats lots of burritos on my dime). Chava’s hasn’t changed much – same Diego Rivera knock-offs, same fine fare (though my portion of chilequiles seemed smaller than I remembered it). While waiting for our food I asked him how he was feeling in general with a birthday around the corner.

“Okay, I guess,” he said, “though I wish I had a job and a girlfriend.” Points taken. I talked a little about my hopes for the Diablo center in Danville, that they might help with direction toward getting adults with Aspergers meaningful work. Or work they could handle, depending where on the spectrum they were. And the girlfriend, well, I told him being in a band was a time-tested way to meet chicks. Being able to actually play the bass was not even a prerequisite.

I asked if he had been in touch with any of these Aspy groups, Geek to Geek etc. and if he’d been to any of their functions. “Yeah, and they’re pretty depressing: A bunch of people sitting around talking about how annoying normal people are. And they all have Aspergers so there’s not a lot of social interaction. Mostly people stare at their hands.”

But after a day of fretting about him and his prospects it was nice to hear a somewhat realistic appraisal of his situation, or that his concerns mirrored mine. The retreat at Spirit Rock (where the road sign entering says “Yield to the Present”) was filled with sitting and walking meditations, broken up by Jack’s often profound and funny dharma talks. During the first walking exercise, when he sent the more experienced practitioners out to do walking meditation before the newbies, I found myself headed up a hill, leaving all the others in the parking lot and grounds around the meditation hall where we’d been.

I passed a few people on the rise, each doing that zombie walk, as if looking for a lost contact lens. I was more purposeful, while trying to be mindful, climbing up the dusty trail, lizards scattering in my wake, summer sun above and sea breeze and a hint of fog below, smell of eucalyptus and Manzanita bushes. I was so alone I thought either I was a genius or I was doing this completely wrong – which is how I feel about half the time.

When I got to the top of the hill I finally saw another walker, but I think she was from the weekend retreat that was happening there and she paid me no mind. The trail seemed to run off over the hills to Eureka and I couldn’t tell from the crest of the hill if there was a loop back to the center. I didn’t want to go all the down in the wrong direction and find out there wasn’t and I dithered at first, going halfway down and then up again, thinking of invisible people laughing at me, until I took the plunge, headed off down the hill – and of course found a trail heading back to the center, one I couldn’t see from the top of the hill.

And I cried. Put my hands over my face and cried for maybe thirty seconds, realizing (of course) that this was how I felt about Adam – I have no idea if I will find a path that is right for him, but I did. “Trust in the uncertainty,” Jack said later that day. I’m gonna work on that.

The flight attendant whose apartment I’m subletting has an odd collection of coffee cups, including two from The Onion: “I Hate Whatever Today Is” and “I Wish I Were Dead.” Today I am drinking my second cup from I Wish I Were Dead, though I don’t really. I’m back on NY time, somehow – it must have been getting up with Peg before five yesterday to get her on the plane and going to sleep at 10:30 last night after reading three pages of Scott Spencer’s Ship Made of Paper – not sure I’m ready for a novel about a doomed love affair. May have to return to The Odyssey, which I read (again) in anticipation of the Humanities 101 class parents took at Reed last week.

Odysseus, there was a man with a tough road to hoe. But as Homer keeps saying, and sometimes O himself, “What good can come of grief?”

Adam was not feeling any side effects from the chemotherapy yesterday so after arising at the crack of noon I took him down to the Academy of Art where he enrolled in four classes for this coming semester. I later persuaded him to drop one, and only that did I agree to when I had word from the school that he could drop his classes before Sept 30^th, if he wasn’t feeling well, and get a refund. I’m still not sure how much of an advocate he is for himself; telling people you are having chemo usually gets you some slack (he cut his hair a half-inch short before I got here, in anticipation of it falling out, which reminded me of an episode of Desperate Housewives when one of the women shaved her kid’s head because of lice and then realized she could cut to the head of the yoga class when people thought the kid had cancer…).

In fact, the prognosis is good at this point, though he is sort of an anomaly and hence a favorite among the doctors at General. “Adam’s going to be with us for a long time,” the head of urology told me the first time he talked; the onset of the cancer, and the complications in care brought about by his Aspergers seems to have caught their attention. One of the reasons doctors like public hospitals like SFGH is that they get more anomalies than they do in nice rich hospitals where preventative treatment is more the norm, I think. When I met the doctor in person this week she told me about people coming in with tumors the size of melons, wondering what the problem was, and going to the pharmacy to get Adam’s anti-nausea medicine was like a scene from a Denis Johnson novel.

One of the things I hope to do while I’m here, waiting to see how A reacts to the chemo, is get him to a treatment center for adults with Aspergers in Danville. My hope is that they will help with getting him more self-dependent, because my fear, like any parent’s with a (grown) child with issues is that I will die (or so they say) and he will not be able to take care of himself…

Okay, I’ll stop. I have work to do anyway. This morning’s meditation came courtesy Jack Kornfield, again, who tells the story of some American parents who adopted a child from India only to discover she was born deaf – and had cerebral palsy. After a year they returned to the agency and said they wanted another one like her. “Imagine this for yourself,” he writes. “Imagine adopting a child and learning that he or she was deaf or crippled, and then imagine a response that answers back without self-pity or fear and says, ‘I have one child like this, now please send me another.’”