I miss you, too.

I thought long and hard about this first blog post and had planned to focus on the good times working at Podesta’s, recalling the chaotic seasonal rushes putting together and loading massive inventories of framed and matted pictures, cards, books, stands, lights, etc. into one of the large Podesta vans for Michael to carry to some far off destination. I had planned to elaborate on the many birthday parties, the Christmas parties, the informal company get togethers at the shop and outside of the workplace that more often than not included our families.

I wanted to write about all of that to intentionally avoid the subject of Michael’s passing in June.

This morning as I was reading over the original idea for the blog, I realized, finally I would need to acknowledge the void. I worked for and with Michael for over 25 years. We shared an office for the last seven, maybe eight years as we scaled down the business as the shows were ended and we no longer needed all the space.

Michael always arrived a couple of hours after I did and he never failed to say, “Good Morning, Gwen.” In the afternoon at quittin’ time, as we jokingly referred to my departure, Michael would never forget to say, always very dramatically… “Gwen, drive carefully.” He meant it.

We had our days. Michael was a perfectionist and quite honestly sometimes I would just be tired of making seemingly endless tiny little adjustments to what seemed to be a perfectly good design. Despite my unwillingness to cooperate at times, Michael was always able to get me back to the computer to move something a “smidge”, to add a swash (only to remove it, later) and to attend to the leading of the type. His patience was immense. Mine, not so much.

In the last few years as Michael’s health faltered, he adapted to the situation, leaning more on me for the design work under his gentle artistic tutelage. He was the artist. I was merely an instrument like his pens and rulers and graph paper. We were able to continue creating personalized pieces, commissions and other special requests. We did one last commission about three weeks before the pandemic shut the shop down early. It was difficult to get through but Michael was determined to finish it for the customer.

Michael never complained. That’s the one thing that kept coming to my mind this morning when I decided to redirect this post. He never did. NEVER. He was never angry about his health or the tragedies he faced in life. His faith remained strong, always, through it all.

I last spoke to Michael on a Wednesday before he passed. I was in the grocery store at the time and it was difficult to talk through my mask so communication was difficult. We had to cut it a little short but we made plans for me to visit as soon as I could. Before we said goodbye, Michael said, “I miss you, Gwen.” I replied, “I miss you, too Michael.”

I still do.