Exactly two months ago, on a sunny Wednesday, an unusual Celebration of Life filled a North Admiral home with visitors.
The honoree was present for the party – and died at its conclusion.
72-year-old Shepherd D. Siegel, Ph.D. – a close friend of our family since shortly after our West Seattle arrival in 1991 – chose the timing of his death, looming as the unavoidable end of an unwinnable battle with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease, with which he had been diagnosed in 2024.
The retired educator and author of two books remained lively and energetic for months, even as ALS took away his physical capabilities one by one. Shep had spent years evangelizing and embodying playfulness. My late husband Patrick Sand considered Shep “the world’s oldest teenager.” Countless speakers at his pre-death party talked about the life and light he brought into their lives.
One of Shep’s books is about the Trickster, and the archetype’s depictions, from The Coyote to Bugs Bunny. Here’s a short presentation he gave almost a decade ago:
Toward the end of his nine-hour celebration on January 14, in the spirit of the trickster cartoon rabbit, guests were offered carrots to tuck into his shroud. (Or red roses.)
A week earlier, during our last private visit with Shep – who toward the end had been communicating via an eye-operated keyboard and synthesized “voice” – he granted me permission to publish an obituary with his “farewell speech,” which he delivered at his celebration via the aforementioned “voice”:
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
John Lennon or Martin Buber?
As a middle child, I seek the connections that bring us all together and I encourage you to make some today.
Growing up as a Jew, I learned at an early age the paramount value of liberation and freeing ourselves from slavery, whatever our egypt might be.
Growing up in the Bay Area in the sixties, I was taken with the hippie philosophy of bringing spirituality into daily life and the human possibility for peace and love. But I also joined the Yippies to lay bare the absurdity, harm and nonsense of power itself. The political and spiritual should intertwine. And there was a war to end.
Music comes out of the earth of human relationships — the political — and reaches for the heavens — the spiritual. So I earned a credential as a music teacher.
But I ended up teaching incarcerated youth in lockup. The justice system called them little criminals and the medical model in this age of labels would use terms like emotionally and learning disabled. Unwilling to see these kids as either evil or sick, I came up with a label. I told folks that I worked with the Culturally Disgruntled. I developed an internship program, curriculum, and case management model that was proven to create career and college success for such youth.
My career as an educator was based on economically empowering youth with disabilities, because — and forgive my use of the word weak — a society is only as strong as its weakest link.
Eventually I was at the helm of vocational education for all students in the Seattle school system. I discovered how the progressive movement had forgotten this valuable form of education and its ability to build the middle class.
Yet I couldn’t help but notice how people with developmental disabilities, and the Yippies and some musicians, were in touch with their sense of playfulness. So I wrote a book about play in politics and culture.
Then I was introduced to the Trickster archetype. So I rewrote the book that became Disruptive Play. The followup was Tricking Power. Read them and my posts at shepherdsiegel.com
I had the pleasure of playing the bass instrument in TexMex, jazz, country, rock, and mariachi bands. Okay, mainly rock and roll. Thanks for listening.
And thanks for listening to the music of our friendships. God knows it’s what’s kept me going all these years. Honor me by loving each other. I am me as you are me as you are we and we are all together.
MY NAME IS Shepherd Dogfriend Siegel and I approve this message.
Shep did not have children but was a beloved godparent, uncle, mentor, friend, etc. to many kids. He is survived by so many people who loved him, including his partner Susan, a Canadian with whom he maintained a long-distance relationship that began shortly before his diagnosis. His cat Spidey is in her care.
He loved many types of music and was such a devotée of the Grateful Dead – an attendee at his celebration joked that by dying a few days earlier, the Dead’s Bob Weir was Shep’s opening act – that he wanted to be “played out” by everyone listening to the Dead’s album “Anthem of the Sun.”
Shep chose to be composted into 3 cubic feet of soil by Recompose, a process that he arranged to have started at their Georgetown facility three days after his death – on International Trickster Day, which he invented. A long-stemmed red rose that we brought home from the last visitation there is only now about to lose its petals, two full months later.
Shep’s “Fare Thee Well” event was coordinated by My End of Life Northwest, whose death doula Cassidy Bastien not only worked with Shep and his partner and caretakers but also communicated thoroughly with guests in advance about what to expect. FAQs about regulated Death With Dignity in our state are answered here.
-Tracy Record, WSB editor/publisher
today. It has turned into a Totem Pole design, with a Trickster bird saying “Where’s the ART!” His head above the clouds and his toes in the surf–a suiting tribute to a man whose influence generated such good will, dancing fun, and positive energy. The quilt will be displayed locally at every chance I get! If people would like to contribute a fabric scrap or patch, please do so by April 5 (Shep’s birthday). I’ll be happy to pick it up, or will email delivery instructions upon request. Thanks! Julia Viglione (of Honey Girl Books & Gifts, your WSEA source for custom quilts)
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