Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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Beltran: For Better or Worse

August 16, 2015

Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Carlos Betran was the hero of Games 1 and 2 of this weekend’s big series at Toronto and the goat of Game 3. (Well, not the goat exactly. There were many reasons the Yankees lost, but his misplay of the ball in right field certainly was entertaining.) His homers were thrilling and important and just what the team needed to climb back on top of the division in what promises to be a seesaw battle the rest of the way, not only with the Jays but throw in the Rays and O’s too, plus the Red Sox, who seem to be playing with understandable passion after the news that John Farrell has cancer.

Severino, while win-less since being called up to pitch in the majors, has proven he belongs. The kid’s good. And Tanaka was spectacular on Saturday, giving the bullpen a much-needed break by pitching his first complete game of the season. How his fragile arm will hold up after that outing is anyone’s guess. Evo, too, has been dependable, more each time he takes the mound.

I honestly don’t know where the Yankees will land by the end of September. Maybe they’ll peter out. Maybe they’ll go on a tear. Maybe, as I wrote above, they’ll continue to seesaw with the other teams. I really hope they hang in, because it makes this year’s pennant race truly exciting.

I’ll be there to cheer them on against the Twins tomorrow night. I’ll be wearing my purple Yankees cap to celebrate the great work of the Alzheimer’s Association and to honor my dear friend Peter Grad, who died suddenly two weeks ago. Peter and his wife Laurie co-chaired their annual “A Night at Sardi’s” benefit in LA for many years and raised millions for Alzheimer’s research and treatment. If anyone would like to make a donation in Peter’s name, go here.

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: A Night at Sardi's, Alzheimer's Association, Blue Jays, Carlos Beltran, Laurie Burrows Grad, Luis Severino, Peter Grad, Yankees

My Friend Died, and It Sucks

August 4, 2015

Laurie & Peter in SB

Michael and I were living in Florida, about to move to LA, when I got an email from a woman named Laurie Burrows Grad. She said she was chairing a Penn Women Author Event to commemorate 100 years of women at the University of Pennsylvania, where I attended the Annenberg School of Communications. She asked if I’d be willing to participate. I wrote back thanking her for thinking of me but explained that I was overwhelmed with my imminent move to Los Angeles. She wrote back that she lived in LA and that if I needed anything when I got there, I shouldn’t hesitate to call her. “And you’ll come for dinner and meet my husband Peter,” she added.

“How nice is that?” I said to Michael. “They don’t even know us.”

Laurie and I continued to email and we discovered we’d soon be neighbors, that the Beverly Hills duplex Michael and I had rented was only blocks away from her house. She offered yet again to have us over for dinner and we looked forward to it.

On our first night in our Beverly Hills rental, friendless and furniture-less, since our stuff was on a Mayflower van making its way across the country, Michael and I were surprised by a knock on the door. It was Laurie and Peter with shopping bags containing goodies to eat and drink and little battery-operated lights we could put on the floor by our air mattress until our lamps arrived.

“How nice is that?” I repeated to Michael.

Laurie was beautiful inside and out, I discovered, and Peter was hilarious with the ability to mock you in such an endearing way that you didn’t mind being mocked. (The first time he saw me, he nicknamed me “Bones.” Normally, when people joke that I’m skinny or scrawny or bony, it makes me mad, but Peter? I loved that he had a special name for me, just like he had special names for all his close pals, because he said it with such affection.)  Both he and Laurie had huge hearts, and the word “generous” didn’t begin to describe them. (And I’m not just talking about the fact that they’d raised millions of dollars for the Alzheimer’s Association as a result of their “A Night at Sardi’s” benefits.) Oh and one more thing: they adored each other. You could see it in their eyes, in the way they treated each other, in the way they touched each other. When you were around Laurie and Peter, you were thrilled to be in their orbit.

And we were definitely in their orbit. Laurie and I would talk on the phone forever and then email right after. Michael, who doesn’t make friends easily or often, couldn’t get enough of Peter. While Laurie and I would be in her kitchen kibbitzing, he and Peter would be downstairs watching porn channels on TV and laughing like idiot boys waiting for their mothers to scold them. We’d go out for dinner. We’d go to the movies. We’d spend New Year’s Eves together and Oscar night and all the rest. And when they said, “We’re staying at a friend’s on the beach in Santa Barbara for the weekend. Want to come?” we not only said yes but became so enamored of Santa Barbara that we moved there.

I was emailing and texting with Laurie this past weekend while she and Peter were on their annual trip to Vail. She was telling me what a good time they were having and I was telling her the latest about CT, where Michael and I had bought a house in April to spend more time with my mother. I missed the Grads now that I was on the East Coast again, but we’d recently had lunch with them when they came to NYC and we pledged to spend more time together when we flew back to CA over the winter.

Then came a terrible phone call on Sunday morning: Peter had died.

Just like that. While I was sleeping. While I was completely in the dark.

I woke up assuming they were enjoying their last day in Vail and instead Laurie was dealing with the loss of her beloved Petey. How could this be true? How could someone who’d been so alive, so vital, be here one minute and gone the next? I couldn’t fathom it. With one big exception, I’d been remarkably lucky in the friend department when it came to good health. Yes, I had just turned Medicare age, but all my buddies were fine, a few aches, pains and prescription drugs aside.

Not Peter, apparently.

No one didn’t love Peter Grad. No one. He could walk into a room and charm even the crabbiest person. He could play a round a golf with Joe Schmo and the President of the United States and put them both at ease. He could elicit a laugh even on your gloomiest day and then order you a pizza or grill you a steak. (No one made eating as much fun as Peter. With him, food was entertainment.)

Laurie is bereft, naturally, and I feel helpless that I can’t take her pain away. I wish my mother didn’t have dementia so I could ask her what her friends did or said that most comforted her after my father died.

I only hope that the outpouring Laurie’s getting from people will ease her grief a little. She did have the good fortune to be married to the love of her life for a very long time. May the gift of that sustain her.

RIP, Petey.

 

Filed Under: Food, Humor, Lifestyle, Mainly Jane, Movies, Television, Wellness Tagged With: A Night at Sardi's, Abe Burrows, Alzheimer's Association, friendship, grief, James Burrows, Laurie Burrows Grad, Peter Grad

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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