by Allison Moore | Aug 30, 2016 | Day by Day |
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” Leonard Bernstein
It’s very important to me to mark the ten-year milestone of our marriage. After all, we ALMOST made it. It felt longer than ten years anyway, so I think we deserve the credit. (For some reason, a ten year anniversary was something I used to look forward to and make lavish imaginary plans around.)
So instead of a proper memorial this weekend, I’m having an ‘anniversary party’/memorial with family and a few close friends. This is for me. This is for us. We’ll celebrate the life of our Vernon as we celebrate our very full decade of marriage.
We will also have a proper memorial service for Vernon the following Sunday. I’m looking forward to that one just as much. But this will have the space to be open to anyone who would like to pay their respects to Vernon. This is for him. I’m starting to plan the music and talk to the staff at the church about what comes next. I have never planned a funeral before, and fortunately, I haven’t attended many of them, so I don’t know what to expect yet. But I know it will be beautiful…and full of love.
All are invited. 🙂
MEMORIAL FOR VERNON ADAMS (1967-2016)
Sunday, September 11th, 1:30pm
Heritage Christian Fellowship
190 Avenida La Pata, San Clemente, CA 92673
(949) 361-1022
Reception to follow.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to SansOxygen.
by Allison Moore | Aug 29, 2016 | Day by Day |
My dad wrote a great blog-post of his own today about Vernon’s professional life. I invite you to take a look at it here, it might help explain a few things. Typography is very specialized field, so it’s been nice to get response from some of his colleagues in these past days. I see his work everywhere, especially lately, and its nice to know that the designs he made for Google several years ago are still popular, maybe even more so. He was contracted to make these fonts, and paid at the time, but never received royalties because they were made available to the public for free download. It was controversial at the time, but he and his web-font colleagues were ahead of the curve, as now these pieces of him are all over the world. For us as a family, its been a wonderful reminder of our person, still speaking with his alphabets, popping up in the most unexpected places, sometimes several times a week…on the web, in shop windows, and even clothing. We never got rich in money, but we are rich in the legacy of his work…which seems especially valuable now that he is no longer human. His work is as prevalent at the moment as pigeons.
I’d like to share some of the tribute posts and letters I’ve received from his colleagues lately.
This is from Richard Fink, a type designer that I recently met online, one of Vernon’s pals:
“A guy I’ll always remember fondly named Vernon Adams passed away last night at the age of 49. He had been severely injured in a traffic accident a little over two years ago, the kind of life altering tragedy that my family knows more than a bit about, unfortunately. Vernon never recovered and has been in hospice care for the past few weeks. He leaves behind an adorable daughter and a son in his early teens. His wife, Allison Moore Adams has been incredible throughout. I met Vernon, through our mutual friend, Dave Crossland. Vernon was a prolific contributor to Google Fonts since it’s early days. His font designs remain very popular and if you take the sheer number of human eyes using Vernon’s fonts to read, comprehend, and receive a little something extra because of the expressive power of the designs alone, then Vernon Adams is one of the most effective and influential font creators who ever lived. His talent and his giving spirit combined and was carried forward by the technology of the web with a power never before applied to typefaces. Rest in peace, brother, and know how grateful we will always remain.”
Richard wrote me the other day about mentioning Vernon in a talk at this weeks TypeCon conference in Seattle. I believe Dave paid tribute to him as well. It’s all very moving.
Dave, whom I’ve written about here before wrote:
“Vernon meant a lot to me. We shared a vision of the future. He got what I am trying to do better than anyone. He was willing to take artistic risks and to explore the unbroken ground and sieze the possibilities of a new medium. You can’t go far on the web today (or out in the world) seeing his creativity. I feel fulfilled that I got to talk with him one last time, and he said two things about his work. The hundreds of billions of views his work has been seen is good, but he said it isn’t enough. And I need to figure out a way for his legacy to pay dividends for you and the family. I will see what I can do with his vision of the future 
”
Just this morning, I got a message from a friend of his as far back as (pre-university level) art college in Bournemouth, when he must have been a teenager still:
“Hi. You won’t know me, but I knew Vernon. We were at Shelley Park together and I was always fond of him. We shared a sense of humour and would make sly jokes at the expense of some of the more pretentious students. He was always very stylish with his giant flick of dark hair and chelsea boots. He certainly left an impression on me. WE became friends on Facebook a while back and it’s good to be able to see how people lives turned out. I wasn’t surprised to see that he’s moved in typography, because even back in 85/86 he had a pop art sensibility. I’ve been following the events since his crash and the video of him singing along with homeward bound had me in tears. I’ve also witnessed your strength and love from afar and when I came on here today and saw that Vernon has died I felt I had to just make contact and let you know that he is in the hearts of people you may not ever meet. I’m so sorry for your loss, my love goes out to you and your kids. One day back in 1986 Vernon was working on one his odd blank canvasses where he stitched various squares of canvas together on a canvas. I was watching him as he stood on a little red chair busying about at his task and I told him that from where I was he looked like part of his picture. So I quickly painted him to show him. This morning I dug it out. I was never sure why I kept it other than as a reminder of Vernon and that moment (it’s not the greatest painting). But as I have nothing else to offer I thought I’d share it with you. All the best, Allison. My condolences Rob x”
I can tell it’s him, even from here. Thank you for saving and also for sharing this, Rob.
In the various art schools he was in, people have fond memories. But he hardly saved any work. It seems he gave it away to his friends. If anyone has any pictures of previous work, I’d love to see them. Please send a note and a photo my way.
Here’s one last little one that Chris Adams posted yesterday. He’d found some old stamp samples that Vernon had designed as they were starting their little business together shortly before the accident. His cleverness still shines through.
“The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity.” Brené Brown
“So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?” Ecclesiastes 3:22
(Don’t forget to check out my dad’s blog. After all, he loved him too.)
by Allison Moore | Aug 28, 2016 | Day by Day |
Emotions come in waves. Waves that push me back gently to the shore, exhausted and waterlogged after going so far out with Vernon. If I make the mistake of stopping to think, I feel the sadness and confusion and start crying or else if I go go go, I’ll get tired and in a moment of weakness, feel angry and confused….and start crying. It only happens here and there. The champaign bubbles, as Sandy calls them, are released a little at a time so that bottle doesn’t break. The bottle is feeling a little brittle, and when my anxiety rises over little triggers here and there (mostly the planning for memorials and the creaky return to the land of the living), I can almost hear/feel the sound of shattering glass. The realization of what we just went through occurs to me, and my heart starts pounding. And then I might cry, talk it out with someone safe, and when I’m ready, I get back to my responsibilities, leaving a trail of tumbling sea glass behind me.
These sketches I made of Fornasetti plates this summer kind of sum my head up right now. It’s all over the place.
I have a wonderful therapist-friend that takes emergency calls from me. We had a talk about my sudden range of feelings. One thing she said was: “Everything you say and do right now doesn’t sound or look as bad as it sounds and looks in your head.” She told me that everything might feel a little off for a while. I lash out sometimes, I have to be careful not to be alone with chatty strangers when I go out in public. I recognize the crazy that comes out in me when suddenly my expectations are not met on the smallest details—this is what I felt often through the hospice experience, and it hasn’t left me entirely yet. I have spent the first days home, trying to reestablish a sense of security. I feel like a cat that goes around smelling the corners for her own scent, re-marking the territory. We have had our closest tribe around us these days, people who endured the last two or three weeks together with us. We are taken care of well. We don’t feel lonely yet.
I told her: “I thought the worse was over. Why do I feel so anxious and unsettled?”
“It’s just a different kind of worse,” she told me. We laughed and laughed over that phrase, it truly tickled me.
I took Justine to school and then picked her up again for the first time this school year. Here we are walking on the bridge home. I briefly met her teacher. All the important people at the kid’s schools know. Justine has started telling other people the news as she feels like it: “I told all the kids that sit near my desk,” she told me. She’s also been playing with the butterfly net quite a lot. They will move into the routines in their own way and in their own time, I expect. I must be careful not to micro-manage them as I return to Mom-role after being gone for awhile. Everything does feel different and slightly off.
Yesterday, I went on a walk with my friend Adrena. She lost her 13-year old shining son two months ago in an RV accident. She also lost a 13 year old nephew at the same time. I won’t go into all the details now, but it was good to connect with someone I already know pretty well who is going through something similar at the exact same time. I called her a week ago, while still tending to Vernon, just to cry together. She doesn’t live here but happened to be in town this week. We planned to walk, as we do each time she comes to town. It was pretty brutal, our conversation. I can imagine that if others were listening in, they would be shocked by the descriptions we were throwing around. But it felt good not to be alone in the extremes of our raw experiences, even though hers was quick and sudden with no preparation, and mine went on for what felt like too long. “It’s all brutal,” she said. “Just different kinds of brutal.” A different kind of worse.
Here are some words she had tattooed on her arm just this past week…a love note in her son’s handwriting.
And a Winston Churchill quote which she had found on a list of her nephew’s favorites. What an honor to us that she chose one of Vernon’s fonts.
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” (Nope, don’t want to stop there.)
But then…look how much beach glass we found. There are are clearly others who have come before.
I’m glad I wrote down so much of the magic of the past couple of weeks…it’s so good to remember those amazing, beautiful things. But right now, the shock is just beginning to wear off…and with it come new feels. Fortunately, so far, they only come in waves.
by Allison Moore | Aug 25, 2016 | Day by Day |
Over the past couple of weeks, as we approached the end of Vernon’s life, I kept thinking about the Ocean. Lets think of it the un-earthy world that it is—something vast and strange and powerful, the home to fantastic creatures without lungs. The final frontier. A place that humans enjoy playing on the edges and on the surface of. But though we are 60% water ourselves, and being near the sea calms us (as deep calls to deep and liquid calls to liquid) we can only dip our toes and bodies in the waves or sail around on boats. We are attracted to it, we marvel at it, but don’t belong in it. We don’t have gills. Even the best swimmers still need oxygen to survive.
From the beginning of Vernon’s last visit to Hoag a few weeks ago, it felt like we were getting glimpses of heaven, getting closer to the edge of this other world beyond. I imagined the ocean. It felt at first like coming into a coastal area from inland: suddenly there is a marine mist in the air, your skin feels a bit different, and if the wind is right, you can smell the saltwater. As you get closer, you noticed people around you look a little different: they are tan and wear flip flops. You see surfboards on roof racks. You notice local cottages are decorated with gifts of the sea: driftwood, old fishing nets, shells, starfish. As you get to the beach itself, the water is startling cold and frightening…your nerves react to the saltwater sting, you can’t jump in, you can only flirt with the foam as it dances back and forth on the sand. The waves are too loud sometimes, and the color changes to something darker, not the idyllic jeweled blue and green it seemed from a distance. Close up, it looks a lot more endless than it did before.
In Vernon’s hospice season, it began to feel as if we were pushing him out on a boat that just wouldn’t leave the shore, but kept coming back with every wave. We stuck with him, surrounding him with support, getting wet ourselves, sputtering at times, exhausting our strength.
I remembered the painting Vernon did a few months back.
But finally he got it, and it wasn’t a boat that took him out. After a week of changing breath patterns, he learned how to un-breathe at last, and he was ready for this vast and magical new environment as someone who could survive there. He stopped breathing, the color drained from his face in seconds. It was not dramatic but peaceful. And I was there to see it happen in a moment. All that time and then a moment. One last gentle puff of air.
Vernon passed away at 8.50pm on Wednesday, August 24.
Finally, he is…sans oxygen.
by Allison Moore | Aug 24, 2016 | Day by Day |
A friend sent this screenshot to me this morning from Vernon’s Google Fonts page. It’s the sample phrase for Vernon’s ‘oxygen’ font So I decided to look at the other sample phrases on his page. I made my own screenshots and then wrote down the phrases as I’d saved them at random. I thought perhaps I could create a poem out of them, moving each phrase around to what felt best. But even as I wrote them down, I could see they were taking on a beautiful poem of their own. This is exactly as I copied them into my notebook. A poem from Vernon via Google Fonts. He is still speaking from the semi-beyond.
My two natures had memory in common.
Almost before we knew it, we had left the ground.
The face of the moon was in shadow.
Waves flung themselves the blue evening.
It was going to be a lonely trip back.
A shining crescent far beneath the flying vessel.
Silver mist suffused the deck of the ship.
All of their equipment and instruments are alive.
She stared through the window at the stars.
The spectacle before us was indeed sublime.
The sky was cloudless and of a deep dark blue.
A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a wing.
I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific.
Then came the night of the first falling star.
(Pictures found today on Vernon’s Google+ page.)
by Allison Moore | Aug 24, 2016 | Day by Day |
“He lives most life whoever breathes most air.” ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Even with the oxygen treatment being added to make Vernon more comfortable (his blood oxygen levels are running around 74%) his lungs are working hard. His breathing is so slow…but it has been for days. The thing that I’ve noticed more this morning than even last night is that every few breaths, it takes longer to get to the inhale. Suddenly I sit up: was that the last one? Is another coming? It’s not unlike listening to a sick baby’s breathing patterns: Wait—where is the next breath?! Every once in awhile, he’ll make a loud gasp as he exhales…of course that startles us all. It’s very hard to listen to. I shall have to come in and out of the room more frequently today, I expect.
We have to go in and out emotionally too. We cant’t be heavy all the time. It’s exhausting. Every time there is a sacred-feeling moment, and it seems like the end must be close, I feel so connected, so primed for the moment. It feels like the last goodbye….and then, he lingers and we have to pull ourselves out of the moment and take a break. I called my friend Andrea earlier to talk about it: “It’s so hard, his hanging on like this. It’s already 17 days since his last Dialysis. We expected it to be so much sooner. Is it just that he’s young and has strong working organs? I don’t think he has any unfinished business that I can think of.”
“He has been dying a long time, ” she said. “He should have died the night of the accident, but he didn’t. He kept coming back from the brink for over 2 years (and 3 months yesterday.) You have always made sure he has love and music around him, you visit him all the time, even now in hospice, you give him a lot to live for, a lot to stay for. His spirit may be saying…I’ve got forever to enjoy eternity, I just want a little longer with them here. What seems like too long to you may seem too short to him.”
That really helped my perspective this morning, even though it did make me cry. To see it from his possible point of view makes me relax a little, and think: the timing isn’t up to me. Like birth, its inevitable, but his timeline doesn’t belong to me. It’s still Vernon’s story. It’s still his life.
