Full Belly Files | Ava Decker Glimmers On in Zach Gill Song

By Matt Kettmann Wed Dec 18, 2024 | 12:00pm

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Last week, my wife and I received an invite to attend Friday night’s Jazz & Jingle at the new 28 Vic event space next door to the Santa Barbara Public Market. A dress-up affair with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, live jazz, dancers, and a performance by our friend Zach Gill, the event was a fundraiser and coming-out party of sorts for the Glimmers Childhood Cancer Foundation, which 13-year-old cancer warrior Ava Decker started before she left this earth last May after a long, painful battle with osteosarcoma.

We figured it would be a somewhat emotional affair for a great cause and a somewhat swanky way to spend a weekend night away from our own kids. It turned out to be an extremely impressive, moving, and impactful event that introduced many of us to this already very successful organization.

Not even a year old, the nonprofit has already raised $250,000 for childhood cancer research and aimed to raise another $50,000 at the event alone. The doctors who worked on Ava from UCLA were in attendance, as were her music teachers and nurses. Many spoke of her strength, humor, and kindness in the face of a devastating diagnosis and gave the impression that this was truly a special girl. I never met her myself.

The evening’s entertainment highlight was certainly Zach Gill, who came to the stage — recovering from rotator cuff surgery himself — to perform a song that he wrote with Ava. In classic Zach form, it was funny and sad and most of all very honest and true-to-life. (Here’s a link to a video of Zach performing the song.) He wanted to tell me more about it, and I certainly wanted to hear more after hearing the song, so we spoke on the phone this past Tuesday.

Jazz & Jingle | Kimberly Citro; kimberlycitro.com

Zach met Ava through his own daughter, Ellie, as they attended elementary school together. They lost touch a bit during COVID, and then Zach and his wife, Jessica Scheeter, learned of Ava’s cancer diagnosis and the trauma that their family was enduring.

“You can’t help but empathize,” said Zach. “Jessica thought that, maybe because she liked music, she would want to work on a song. So we did.”

They met up for about two hours in November 2023, when Zach recorded a conversation with Ava and her family. “I had her tell me the whole story and what she would want to put on a song,” he said. “She was this 13-year-old kid talking about the tortures she’s gone through, but also all of the things that make it bearable, like the people and food and these little silver linings.”

Then Zach sat on it a bit, not quite able to craft the song right away.

“It was hard to start writing because it was just so sad,” he remembered. “But she wasn’t getting any better and I felt like she needed to hear it before she passed.”

Through tears, he finally got some lyrics down, and showed them to Jessica, who also cried. When he finally sent Ava a recording, he explained, “She sent me a really sweet video of her listening to it and her family crying. There was lots of crying,” he said of the whole process. “Everybody was crying.”

When Ava started saying her goodbyes this past spring, Zach visited. She gave him a hug, and a kiss, and one line she wanted changed. “She was definitely right,” he said. I didn’t ask which line.

“She really wanted her passing to mean something, and she wanted the song to be her story,” said Zach. “She didn’t want it totally sugar-coated, but she wanted it to be happy and sad. She wanted people to feel something when they heard it.”

We certainly did, as the Jazz & Jingle crowd was pindrop quiet during Zach’s performance, with many of our own tears in the mix.

The next step for Zach is getting “Ava’s Song” the song on the various streaming services, and using 100 percent of its download proceeds to fund the Glimmers Foundation, of which he was as impressed as me.

“They are very serious,” he said of Glimmers having raised so much money already and putting this Jazz & Jingle thing together in less than two months. “They just keep pulling things off.”

Learn more about the Glimmers Foundation by clicking here or just go straight to supporting them with your own donation by support them directly too by clicking here.

Zach Gill and Jessica Scheeter | Kimberly Citro; kimberlycitro.com

Here are the lyrics to “Ava’s Song”:

I first noticed the pain
On the plane from Vegas
They said it was just
growing pains
But it didn’t go away
And the X-ray showed
Osteosarcoma
a cancer of the bones

Then IVs and MRI’s
Surgeries I was terrified
Chemo around Christmas
Old nurses with red lipstick

Feeling sucked
out of this world
And falling somewhere
And I just wanted my mom there when I woke up
When I woke up

“I am not doing this foundation for me, it’s for all the children out there, and for all of my friends,” says Ava Decker. | Photo: Courtesy

Life is a dance
Not a puzzle to be solved
Let’s come back to the present
And just be
Comeback comeback
Comeback to the present
And just be silly with me

We’ll belt Whitney Houston
At the top of our lungs
And you know our song
will be true
You know you know you know
I will always
I will always love you

Neuropathy rocking
Recovery pain tears
The red devil chemo
The voice feeding my fears
Making room at the table
For anger and all that I feel

Nurse Ryan was the best
With stories of mosh pits
and beer can smashing parties
When I awoke from twilight sedation
I promised all my nurses
effing Bugattis

Tasting good food
Grateful for the flavor
C’dario clams
Tamales from our Neigbour
You don’t know how good
food is, until you can’t eat

And my little Brother James
is my fiery protector
And Dad drives
my get away car
On those nights when I need
to break free and fly
so fast and so far

And It’s the little things
The present moment
The kindness and the care
Its the golden hour
the glimmers we share

We’ll belt Whitney Houston
At the top of our lungs
And you know our song
Will be true
You know you know you know
I will always
I will always love you

Jazz & Jingle emcee Geoff Green and Zach Gill | Kimberly Citro; kimberlycitro.com

My name is Ava Decker
And I’m a 13
I’m standing up
To cancer
I’m not afraid to be seen

I’m asking you to join me
And other kids too
support the research
Now’s the time
demand it comes through

Cause It’s the little things
The present moment
The kindness and the care
Its the hugs that last forever
the glimmers we share

We’ll belt Whitney Houston
At the top of our lungs
And you know our song
Will be true
You know you know you know
I will always
I’ll always love you

It’s the little things
The poker parties
The fresh prince of Belle aire
It’s the gift of Brooke and Zara
And of brushing Scarlett’s hair

It’s the little things
The shining moments
Dust dancing in the air
And you know you know you know
It’s the glimmers
It’s the glimmers we share

Hospitality Gamechangers Cover Story

If you haven’t picked up your weekly copy of the Santa Barbara Independent or peeped Independent.com in the past 24 hours, you may not have seen my cover story on “Santa Barbara’s Hospitality Gamechangers.”

Clocking in at more than 5,200 words, it may be the longest single-topic cover story that I’ve ever written in my 25 years at the paper. Granted, it’s really about three companies and their more than one dozen establishments, and it was based on my conversations with more than 30 people. So perhaps 5,200 words was about right. I couldn’t get it any tighter myself.

Reporting this piece — which involved hanging out in kitchens, eating great food, and talking to really inspiring entrepreneurs and industry experts — was a true joy. But writing it was a true challenge. I had more than 20,000 words of notes when all was said and reported, and the format could have gone any which way.

Greg and Daisy Ryan, soon after opening Bell’s. | Credit: Courtesy

Many people think that writing is a linear affair: One sits down, and out flows the article or book or song. In my experience, it’s anything but straightforward. Rather, as in this piece, it’s written in a completely scattered order.

I do like to get the introduction mostly set first on longer pieces like this, as that really can outline everything else. But after that, it was written in blasts that had to all be wrapped into a cohesive whole. The additional struggle is ensuring that it flows, that it’s interesting, and, frankly, that it doesn’t feel like it’s more than 5,000 words.

I hope I succeeded. These companies and these people deserve this praise, and I am excited to watch the future unfold for all of them.

But it does remind me of an adage that some famous dead writer apparently once said, although who and in what specific phrasing remains a bit of a mystery. (Read more on that here.) My preferred usage is: “I don’t always like having to write, but I love having written.

From Our Table

From left, Dave Phinney, Amy Whiteford, and Chris Hussey | Photo: Macduff Everton

Here are some other recent stories you may have missed:

Ryan P. Cruz gets the lowdown on what’s happening with The Palms, the Surfliner Hotel, and the new restaurant development on Linden Avenue in downtown Carpinteria.
I wrote a lengthy profile of Dave Phinney and his Our Lady of Guadalupe Vineyard out by Lompoc.
Wearing my Wine Enthusiast hat, I rounded up tasting rooms, restaurants, and hotels to visit in both Carmel Valley and Carmel-by-the-Sea.
I briefly broke out of my Central Coast beat to write a couple of our Wine Star Award profiles, one on La Crema Winery, which is the magazine’s American Winery of the Year; and another on our Winemaker of the Year, Eric Aafedt of Bogle Family Vineyards.
And I might as well share my guides for choosing wines to buy for the holidays. Here are my suggestions for red wine strategies, and here’s a similar approach to white wine buying during the holidays.