Moms Speech

Thank you all for coming and showing your love for Sammy.

I especially want to talk tonight to Sammy’s family and closest friends, Julia (both of you), the band, Julian (who is more like a brother than a friend)… But this goes for anyone who loved Sammy who is heartbroken and feeling lost without their Sam today…

Sammy’s father and sister and brother and Ayami and I have been talking the last two days about what Sammy would want. What would he want from us, and from you. What I know about my son is, he never wanted to hurt anyone, or make anyone sad. Sammy was a gleaming supernova force of nature. He stuck up for the underdog. He used his talents, charm, amazing good looks, to help and inspire people. He would have never wanted to throw cold water on your fire. He might have thrown gasoline on your fire and helped you light up the whole world. But he would never have held you back. Or tolerated you holding yourself back. He would be so mad if any of us for used his death as a reason to stop living, or to give up, or to give in.

His father, sister and brother talked about the best way to honor this larger than life human being. What would Sammy want?

Sammy would want to be the spirit that you carry inside you that was THE force that never let anything stand in your way. When you did something great, something you weren’t sure you could do, something so BIG it seemed impossible to do, but you did it anyway… he would want you to yell at the sky Fuck yeah! Sammy Power! He would want you to feel empowered by his fearlessness, his love, his boundless energy… to reach higher heights than you ever imagined.

Today, we are devastated, we are stricken with grief. For some of you, this is the first death that was close to you. For some of you it’s been a year of very difficult passings, a plague, deaths and heartache. For me, my son’s death is a nightmare I will never wake up from. In this one moment in my life, I could fall straight to the depths of hell. When I was signing Sammy’s death certificate today, I had the almost uncontrollable urge to go to the Morgue in Alameda County and just lay down as near as they would let me to my sons body and just stay with him. I don’t want my baby to be alone right now. I wanted to just stay as close to him as I was allowed until his remains are home with us. Even thinking of my son in a box is unfathomable to me. I love him so much. I could very easily fall off a cliff of pain and never return.

But I know Sammy would never want that for me. Some of the things Sammy loved the most about me is what a bad ass I am, how capable I am, how strong I am. If I let my spirit and fire die, and get stuck in the pain and the hell of his loss, how is that honoring my son’s life and everything special he was, and what I know he wants for me? I know he is with me, I can do even more than before with the Power of Sammy.

Please remember what in the days and weeks to come. When it seems unbearable. When it seems like the pain will never end. When you don’t want to get out of bed, and you just want to cry all day. Sammy would tell you to get your ass up and go forth and summon your Sammy Powers to conquer the world, be strong, be fearless, be loving, be a champion for good. That is how you will honor his fire and keep it burning. And if I can do that, the woman who gave birth to him and nursed him, and

loved him more than anything in the world… if I can promise Sammy I won’t get lost in the depths of my pain and that I will honor his life by living mine the way I know he would want me to, then so can all of you.

He would have said, “Let’s get together and remember love. Your new friends are waiting to know you.”