"Live ... From Heaven" | Carla Zilber-Smith's Farewell Video To Family And Friends

Carla Zilber-Smith was an a actress, singer, songwriter, and comedienne who died of ALS in Los Angeles on 21 May 2010. Her son, Maclen Zilber, posted his eulogy on her blog, CarlaMuses. This is part of that eulogy:

... I asked how can one sum up the life of somebody who squeezed 80 years of happiness and 80 years of pain into 47 years. Carla Zilbersmith as not a professor, a singer, a blogger, an actress, a director, a writer, a comic, or a dying woman, she was a bard. A professional human being. She was what a renaissance man would be like if they had a sense of style and didn’t wear those silly tights. She was a method actress, playing the roll of Carla Zilbersmith to a T. People often want to know what they can do for her, for me, and the answer is to take that vacation you’ve been thinking about. Enjoy yourself in her honor. Go on a hot air balloon ride, or go skydiving. Go to the library, pick out a random recipe from a random cookbook, and cook it for a randomly chosen friend. Live the shit out of your life. That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?

... I have worn two personalized wristbands on account of Carla, and I think they show the two sides of her philosophical coin. This one says “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” “through the thorns to the stars.” It means that you should strive to do what you want to do even in the face of difficulties placed in your path. The other wristband, which I don’t have with me, says “Give up.” It was an ironic parody Carla created of inspirational wristbands, like “Livestrong,” but I think it also had a powerful message. The first noble truth in Buddhism is that there is suffering. I believe that “Give Up” simply acknowledges that we aren’t going to be able to avoid the painful part of life. In conjunction, Carla’s philosophies of “Give Up” and “Ad Astra Per Aspera” say that life is going to happen to you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t happen to life.

YouTube via Gawker TV