The Clean Plate Club ...

It was a busy day, lots of running and such before I ever got to the desk (dining room table, more actually) art and writing, prior to work today. I managed a cup of coffeE by 1pm. feeling real hunger, and not some uppity feeling, I inhaled the sticky bun in short order, or so I tell myself. Maybe it’s still part of the dare, where I don’t want to feel guilty for throwing more food away. Perhaps I need the proof that I'm getting on with things.

The art got started over the thinking I was doing over the mail I had opened the night before, a thank you note from my niece and a Mother’s Day card from my stepdaughter. Both were "thank you" notes of a sort, and both lovely in their own unique respects. I didn’t “really” collage them inasmuch as I arranged them on the scanner, and then tweaked them in a photo program. I didn’t really want to rip them up just yet, if at all, but I do like how it all turned out.

And, while I thought I might either write something else today, or revamp some other work, I’ve decided to pull another excerpt from “the manuscript” about a little girl trying desperately to get ready for a “Mother Daughter” tea that’s been sprung on her without much notice, and not very tender or helpful notice:

[of note, the child has already anxiously struggled to dress, but is composing herself and “accessorizing.”]

… First off, she surprised me about going. It made my stomach nervous and jumpy with excitement, but when she yelled up the stairs like that in such a mean hurry, it made my belly tight and hard like a rock. It’s hard to get dressed and feel pretty when you’re all stone cold in the stomach and one of your knees is only half skinned back over, but I think I did pretty well.

I wore my plastic Oscar Mayer Wiener ring and an emerald ring from Cracker Jacks. It’s not a real emerald of course, and it’s not a real ring either, just an “adjustable.” I have only one necklace but it’s made of little sugar candies, and not quite good enough for going out. I have never gone to a Mother and Daughter Tea before, but I’m sure that you don’t wear a necklace of spit and candy all on the same string around your neck. …

…This is how I went to the tea, but I couldn’t believe Mummy. She was wearing a blue dress, pantyhose and shoes with pointy heels that looked like they would poke right through the floor! They could put your eye right out if she stepped right on your face. I know a mom is not supposed to do such a thing but those heels made me think of things like that and all the other things she could stick right through if she landed her foot just right. …

COLLAGE TWO OF THE PROPOSED THIRTY:

technically still morning ...

...or maybe it’s “technically still mourning,” but I digress. I made myself this promise to do the 30 days, 30 pieces of collage artwork and 30 pieces of writing prior to work each morning and so it goes.

I (and the sticky bun) didn’t make it very far, however. I feel like that scene in the movie, “Mommy Dearest” where Joan Crawford screams at Christina to eat a piece of steak or some other rot at dinner one night. Christina refuses the meal. So for several subsequent creepy days on end Joan forces the nanny to put the same plate of food before Christina until it rots.

I have trouble eating when I’m processing my emotions. I’m deathly afraid I’ll misinterpret hunger as something else when the tough really gets tough-ass tough and things are really riled up.

Grief and loss of any kind, when it’s eating away at me, carving away at my skeleton, I hate to miss that feast on my bones. I’d be very pissed off at myself if I mistook a gut-ripping, mournful pain of any sort, thought it a hunger pain and ate a Twinkie instead.

One must honor their gut-ripping raping losses if they're to move forward. (This counts too even if your moving forward, only to move back nine steps to the fridge, say, six weeks later to eat a tub of ice-cream when the feelings resurface as something even uglier ... no one ever said this was easy, hello?!?!?!?)

Losses are necessary. You have to honor them, that's still the given, it's ongoing, gut-fuckity-uppity, hard-ass work.

So I’m going to have to revisit the sticky bun, perhaps tomorrow. Today, I gazed upon it, had my coffee, and if I’m going to be honest I must confess I had said coffee pretty late this morning because I was hiding under the quilts until 10:30-ish after a not-so-restful night.

I did not launch out of bed this morning with a, “Woo-hoo! I can’t wait to get started on my master plan of bloggie attack, my 30 days of renewed passion for life and art and jump started-ness,” because, well, I just don’t feel all that passionate about the deal, which of course is why I had to set myself up for the double-dare in the first place!

That being said, in all brutal honesty, because that is also what this is all about, here’s another revisal of a portion of “the manuscript,” which is also in keeping with today’s theme somewhat when it comes to emotions, and appetites and such, and then I shall end this blog with my collage and get my sorry ass to work for the day.

OF NOTE: I'm not going to be including stuff from my manuscript everyday. I have only promised myself to write/art in the blog everyday so I'll either be revising or showcasing work, and/or using a prompt or?!?!?!? ... just so there's something, a mark, a drop of some kind of INKISH BLOOD:

(This is a charming little ditty about a little girl who had several Prince Charmings but they were all out in the yard one day and no one could save her.)

... The boys were back outside before I ever got my sandwich even halfway started, and then I was out of Kool-Aid. Mummy got mad.

She said, “No seconds!” and put the Kool-Aid back in the fridge. She said I could drink water if I was so smart, instead of trying to use all the Kool-Aid in the house to git rid of my sandwich.

I felt like telling her there wasn’t enough Kool-Aid in the whole house to ever finish that sandwich, but I kept my mouth shut between bites …

…The water made the liver sausage taste like metal, but I ate almost the whole sandwich. It would have been okay except I started to burp and it felt like puke and guts were going to come back up. It made me gag. My tongue tasted greasy and dirty.

Mummy said, “Goddammit …” and that’s how I ended up in my room, flat on my back with that stupid guts and pukey liver sausage floating around in my stomach.

I have to take a nap today. No one else does, but I’m the one in big trouble again. I’m not supposed to get off the bed. I can’t read quietly because my book is all the way over on the dresser. If I go get it, the floor will creak on the ceiling over the living room. Mummy will hear that instead of “As the World Turns” and then I’ll be dead.

I know this. I’m not stupid. If I were a little smarter, though, I would keep my Grimm’s Fairy Tales book under my pillow for the next time. “Goose Girl” always cheers me up, even when she is all miserable and rolling down a hill in a barrel with spikes jammed in it, hurting her on all sides …

A PIECE OF COLLAGE ART (1 OF 30):

[Just Gonna] Do It!

In honor of Mother’s Day, my first Mother’s Day celebrating such with three now grown children (Alice Jean now 18, Rebekah Lynn 16 and Carol Anne soon to turn 28), I realize there is a child I’ve left behind, and I’m going back for her now.

This child's story has been fully written for a long time. Once written I was very proud of her loud, brave voice and I shared her. People were interested, but hearing that interest I became ashamed and stuffed her in a drawer.

Later, during a move, I packed her away. Her voice became muffled in a box, having only been dug out recently a post-it note clinging to her front cover with the words “do it!” still firmly attached.

Do what!?!?!

Do tell, do see if you have the strength to keep the little Jack, or in this case Jill, out of the box.

Let her live, so to speak.

So, this Mother’s Day, I’ve decided to let her live, this little girl, this story.

I’ve also decided I don’t care how incredibly emotionally challenging things have been lately, I’m going to write EVERY MORNING, and I’m going to do a piece of artwork EVERY MORNING, prior to starting work. Just like the 30 days/30 collages jumpstarts I’ve had to do in the past to break out of slumps, it all goes to show with perseverance it takes 30 days to make (or break) a habit.

Mark, my words (and collages) … and for now an excerpt, from the little Jack (oops, I mean Jill) I just let back out of the box:

This morning I’m drawing pictures on the floor of the machine shed with a stick. I trace careful so I don’t break any of my teardrops. My tears land quietly and then settle right in, caught up in the soft dust. They stay wet and round and whole. Dust scatters as each new drop falls, but none break. They're sprinkled with dirt like butter cookies with powdered sugar from the sifter. I can’t believe something as beautiful as this has come from inside of me.

The child dreamer is alone,
very much alone.
He lives in the world of his own reverie.
In his happy solitudes, the
dreaming child knows the cosmic
reverie which unites us to the world.
-Gaston Bachelard, Reveries Toward Childhood

trying to keep everybody's crappity crap out of my emotional garage

Yesterday afternoon a close friend invited us out to his house “out in the woods,” which we are very lucky to live in a glacier-honed area of Wisconsin, the Southern sections of the Kettle Moraine forested zone, so “the woods” really are everywhere including in and around our subdivided housing area, but our friend Dave lives in the real woods, along a lake front (less than one-half hour from our house ... yes, lucky!).

Dave lives in an A-frame, has outbuildings, raises hunting dogs, and has a taxidermy shop (and the animals he has preserved are pieces of art, I am telling you, but then I’ll also tell you that I can point out the art in almost all my friends’ lives, even if they can’t see it).

On Dave’s property, there are fire pits, tree houses, outdoor grills of every combination, burning barrels, trampolines, swing sets and targets for practice. There’s a camper, an icehouse, a boat, motorcycles, mini bikes, mowers, etc., everything of the outdoor life, but I digress … let’s get back to the fire pit, the reason for the invite.


The original invite was to come out for the day, stand and jaw by the fire, catch some sun, fight off the wind, and just relax and wait for the meat to be ready. Yesterday’s fare was chicken and pork loin. The sides were beer, wine, sauerkraut, condiments and spicy potato chips.

Though there are picnic tables, benches and plenty of lawn chairs available around the fire pit, we all stood, stomping our feet to stay warm, and moving our jaws to keep the laughter going. The sun was out all day, but the wind was pretty wicked, so none of us really left the fire for very long.

As we all stood their drooling, we did remark that maybe our host had over-estimated the amount of meat he was grilling, and that it was likely too much, but we ate practically all of it, the five adults and two kids of us who were there.

It was super yum. It was everything I personally needed after weeks and weeks of stress (the catch-all word, for all that and more) and, admittedly, not cleaning my plate and further, admittedly, sometimes not even building a plate to begin with.

Prior to leaving we threw some “extras” on the fire, some scrap wood and junk from our garage, which Mark had loaded onto the truck before we left the house, things that we’re not “allowed” to burn within our “village limits." Dave also threw on “extras” from his own vast property, fallen branches, etc.

We continued our gab, picked at the bones of what was left of the chicken, decided if we had room for just one more piece of pork, “the other white meat,” kicked at the dirt, looked at the sky, noted the location of the sun and how bad it sucked that it was either a "school night" or "work night" for the best of us.

As the fire died down, the goodbyes began. As we headed out, I said to Dave, “Thanks for feeding me yummy meat,” and he remarked, “Okay, how come your camera isn’t on video for that remark,” teasing me because I was snapping pictures earlier and cajoling everyone into crazy acts, to no avail. While the day was full of laughs, I caught nothing on video.

I remarked further as Mark and I walked off that I’d likely sleep deep that night, and so of course with that deep sleep, another dream:

In this dream, shortly before the alarm this morning, I’m totally freaked out because a woman I used to do work for while I was employed at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital very, very early in my transcription career (age 25-ish), a psychologist, Gay Rosenthal, PhD, (odd that I’d remember her name, and odd that she’d arrive in my dream) had shown up at the house and she wanted to dump some “junk” off in our garage.

I kept telling her no, that would be stupid seeing how Mark and I had just been to this fabulous cookout the day prior, and while at the cookout we had also thrown some scrap wood and cardboard and stuff onto the fire, getting rid of some clutter in our garage, and so, “No, Gay, that’s not a good idea," plus in the dream of course I remembered her pysch notes were often times very, long and rambling and she wanted the testing sections in table form and they were a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS, so likely whatever junk she had was going to be quite messy and out of sorts. I so did not want to deal with it.

Either way, she backed her truck up to our garage and was pressing the buttons on the outside key code box trying to open the garage door, even though I ran down into the garage to dry to stop her. Either way she kept making her attempts from the outside and each time the door would rise a bit and then stop, because Dr. Rosenthal also had several ratty feral cats on her truck, and they were trying to run into the garage as well, which would trip the safety on the garage door and it would stop partway up. My attempts to close the door from the inside switch were also causing the door to freeze partway up/down. Very frustrating.

Finally, I got the garage door to close, and then went back through the house and out to the front steps to talk to her. I realize then that I am in my bathrobe, which is weird because this is the first time I could see myself in my dream why the F! I am in my bathrobe for crying out loud! I continue to explain that she is not to bring any ratty-ass shit into our garage and ultimately, she leaves.

End of dream.

And then I woke up and it was Monday, whew, and so far (and it’s well past dark now) nobody has come over in a ratty old truck with feral cats to try and put crappity crap into our garage, so I guess I would call that a good day.

And I need these good days because, for every inch of crap I pull out, decide what I need, get rid of what I don't, I really, really don't need someone filling up all my clean edges with their crap! Only just sayin'.

I also stand on what someone once told me about dreams. It's not so much the symbols in the dream. It's "how you feel" when you wake up, and after this dream, I felt ... well, I felt very, "Well, then, I certainly washed my hands of that matter now, didn't I?" And that felt fantastic!

P.S. Of course no offense to Dr. Rosenthal who had no idea she'd appear in my dream, or this post. While I hated putting the educational testing materials into table format in her very lengthy reports, that's because all transcriptionists hate tables and graphics of any kind especially back in the day of word processors that had no graphics capabilities!

However, the work being done in the Learning and Behavioral Problems Department at Minneapolis Children's Medical Center was fascinating and I loved my job there, and in the other ancillary departments of the hospital, the non-medical work that I was transcribing.

Also, since Dr. Rosenthal appeared in my dream I had to Google her and see what she's up to these days. Yeah, I know if any of you can figure out a way to shut the human brain of for ten seconds so it can take a deep breath, I'd like to hear about this.

--And if you can further imagine, she's the cutest little Jewish American woman you'd ever like to meet, so picture her at barely 5 feet tall, coming to my house (dream or not) in a rickety pickup truck with feral cats, and me standing on my front steps (five feet off the ground above the drive and then also at 5 ft, 11 inches) yelling at her wearing my flowing black Ralph Lauren bathrobe sporting what's left of my black eye and bed hair.

Yes, quite a picture!

Sleeping, Soundly

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. ~Colette


I realize you have to sleep in order to dream, deep sleep, and I hadn’t really been doing that in the weeks since my brother took his life. I’ve always had odd sleep/wake cycles over the years with kids, work, my brain/stroke, etc, but this time it was different.

With this loss, at first it was the shock and awful feeling of my ribs crushing my heart into my soul. I became immediately anemic. I bled out at the news.

The grief left me shaky as an addict. I needed a “hit” of something, but it wasn’t food, it wasn’t sleep. Nothing filled the vacant spot.

Later the raw gnawed out spot became a comfort. What fell away was all I had left.

Because I wasn’t sleeping meant I could be there for Jamie in the wee hours of the morning, prior to 4:44 a.m., the hour of his passing from “here” to wherever “there” is.

As it turns out, his vehicle traveled the four-lane highway parallel to the headboard of our bed that morning, on the way to the spot where he “did it (with the help of a train), whose whistle I/we all still hear, even when we don’t. Maybe I was even awake as he passed by, literally right over my head, for the last time. Or, maybe I slept on. After all, how was I to know?

All I know is, by the time I got up that morning, I was reading an email he had sent the night before, a quick note from my perfectly fine brother, which made no sense then when someone showed up at the door to tell me he was dead, right before my daughter got there to try to deliver the news, to try to catch me before the actual fall … as if that can be done.

This is why I began not sleeping “on purpose,” or at least making sure to be awake at a certain “window” of time in the wee hours of the morning, surrounding the 4:44 a.m. hour. I had to “be there” for a decent amount of time before, during and after the time that he “did it.” I could not leave him out there alone.

I planned to keep this up indefinitely. It wasn’t at all difficult. Many times, I was still up at that hour, unable to sleep the first week, terribly ill the next weeks with pneumonia and in the latter weeks it simply became the norm until one night the chain broke at 42 days.

Friday morning, April 22, 2011, 4:44 a.m., I was not there. I was sleeping, soundly.

Blame it on exhaustion, or maybe it was after my therapy session the previous day when I left some “things out on the table that we’ll talk about next time” (things totally unrelated to Jamie’s death, and certainly unrelated to my secret talks with him EVERY MORNING AT 4:44 A.M., because I can’t tell my therapist that, he’d think I was C-R-A-Z-Y!!!!!!!!!).

Whatever it was, I came home exhausted, went to bed at 9:45ish and slept 12 hours. When I woke up it was daylight. Jamie was gone, AGAIN! This time, he left without our chitchat session, just like he left us the first time, for the last time, for all time.

My first thought when I woke up. I slept. My next thought, I can’t say, since it’s more feelings than thoughts, a real mixture of emotions, relief and great sadness.

Ironically, I had accomplished this on a Thursday night into a Friday morning. Thursdays into Fridays are always the hardest and I feel like they will be forever. A Thursday into a Friday will never be the same ever again. It’s my way of remembering never to forget.

My brother sent me a perfectly normal email on a Thursday night, and killed himself the following Friday morning. I stayed up with my brother late into every Thursday night except into one Friday morning. I knew it couldn’t go on forever, but I wasn’t ready for it to end.

However, I’ve been sleeping now (and better) since this past Thursday night, though I would be lying if I didn’t tell you when I woke at 4:20 a.m on Saturday morning I was thrilled at the chance for a little time with him, till 4:45 a.m., but went right back to sleep afterward. There will still be those times, now and again by chance. Also, because of the sleeping there was last night, perchance, two dreams ...

DREAM ONE:
… the beginning part of the dream, Tina my brother’s widow (she hates that word, as all widows do)is crying. My brother Kyle and my nephew Michael have brought Jamie's giant toolbox home, but they won't let her look inside it. So I say to her, “Well, then let’s go to the book fair,” and grabbed her arm and we went running down this unfamiliar street, in an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar country.

At some point we’re going down a hilly avenue, two lines have formed, and I’ve lost track of Tina, in the crowd. We are all filing into a brick building, looks like an old school, or library. A woman is saying that we need to form two lines. As the lines are forming, I look behind me to see if I can find Tina, which I realize will be very difficult because she’s so much shorter than I am and we are on a hill.

Glancing back, and up the hill, as people are moving to form the two lines, I see her on the left sided line. I’m in the right line, so I quickly move to the left. As I’m doing so I frantically wave at her hoping that she’ll see me over the tops of all the other people, realize that we’re in the same line and that we’ll enter the building and tour, or go to whatever the book fair is at the same time, and not get separated.

I’m frantic and I keep thinking this is very important because I need to take care of her. She sees me and waves back. I turn around then and enter the building. I realize it will be okay, we’ll enter the building in the same line and come out the other side. I can’t lose her. I need to make sure we stick together.

Once the line gets inside the building, we file down a series of stairwells behind our guide. I’m on the right side of the stairs holding the rail but as I’m walking down the stairs, I notice ascending the stairs past me are a number of children carrying books, talking (though I can’t hear them), laughing, gesturing, shoving each other, etc. They are wearing period dress from an earlier time, wool skirts, sweaters, knickers, caps, long stockings.

I stopped where I’m at and go, “Oh, my gosh, I can see dead people! Can you guys see them? There are children marching up the stairs! Look at them! They must be heading out for the end of the day or recess or something.”

Some guy behind me has a fit and tells me to keep going and the guide lady asks what the hold up is. Someone else tells me to knock it off it’s not funny. I can hardly get moving again because the kids keep filing by me, and they’re looking at me too, smiling. They can see me too.

The people behind me shove me forward and they are still all, “Knock it off, it’s not even funny,” and as we round the next set of stairs the wall to our left has a computerized photo display of children in period dress and all kinds of museum-quality educational stuff "playing” about the building we are in.

I started to explain that I wasn’t f’ing around, that I hadn’t got to the part of the stairs where I could see the photo display screen, that there were actually kids walking past me, but then I woke up.

(tina and i are both 49. she started dating my brother when she was 17. they were married 31 years. i grew up with both of them. we still have more growing to do, without him now. we were all together on easter, but monday, the toolbox thing was pending, and also all of us being together is always helpful, but endings and going home, i know for teeny is hard.)

DREAM TWO:
I’m entering my Aunt Mary’s house. She still lives in a house on a swath of property on the family property where my brother Jamie, Sean and myself were born. My paternal grandfather built the house where we were born. My father grew up in that home. Anyhooooooo … I’m entering her house with a Tupperware container of spaghetti. When I get in her kitchen, it’s very messy and there are containers everywhere. I guess we are there for yet another gathering for my brother. I’m happy to be in Mary’s kitchen for many reasons (which I may write about at some point later on) but I’m alarmed at how messy her kitchen is. (In real life THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.)

The dream flashes very quickly to the end of the gathering, I’m back in her kitchen again, and I need to retrieve my container. The kitchen is even more of a mess and there are even more containers. I’m still very surprised by the mess and surprised at how messy my guts feel in this dream just like they have felt in every gathering we’ve had since Jamie died. I can’t find my container. I start looking everywhere for it and I keep knocking things over, ever the clutzoid. I’m even reaching into gray scummy dishwater among the empty containers, and through containers clean and not yet washed piled all over the counter.

I can hear someone saying, “It’s not there. There either,” like that childhood game, "You're getting hotter, nope now you're cold, getting colder ..." I keep looking.

I slide a picnic cooler out of my way, and look in the fridge and the voice continues, “Why are you looking in there? You didn’t put it in there. What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”

I open the fridge and a bunch of beer bottles on the bottom shelf tip over and clatter about. I try to right them all, but they keep falling back over like bowling pins. The voice continues, “Now look at the mess you’re making. You are so in for it.” and I’m thinking Whatever, quit picking on me! You big poophead!

All of a sudden, something starts spilling out and foaming all over the floor, just as I get all the beer bottles straightened upright.

What the fuck?

I look up on the second shelf of the fridge, and there’s a bottle of Mountain Dew, a bottle!

What?

I haven’t seen a bottle of Mountain Dew since I don’t know when, and the lid is off, so I tip it back up, so the rest of it doesn’t spill out and I slam the fridge shut.

The voice has stopped by now. I grab a kitchen towel, and plunge it in the disgusting gray dishwater and mop up the Mountain Dew mess and think once more how gross Aunt Mary’s house is, and how gross and shitty everything has been since Jamie died. I whip the towel back on the counter and then I shove the picnic cooler back in front of the fridge.

That’s when I remember that I had put my Tupperware container of spaghetti in the picnic cooler when I had gotten there, because there was nowhere else to put it, what with all the other containers, the mess, etc. So I open the cooler, pick up my container, spaghetti still in it, and I turn around where there stand the usual family suspects who would be at these gatherings and I said, “Did you hear him?”

And they were all like, “Who?!?!”

And I said, “Jamie! He was giving me all that shit about the container, and then I spilled that Mountain Dew in the fridge, and then ….”

… and then of course I woke up …

p.s. Jamie, and all my brothers for that matter, Sean and Kyle, drank 4 trillion cans of Mountain Dew since teens just like I drank 9 gazillion cans of Diet Pepsi since I was 14 years old)

(p.s. 2: the above ain’t over till it’s over/and likely it’ll never be over because the dead don’t ever go, they just go deeper, but I likely will blog about other stuff, more and soon … especially now that i’ve made friends with my pillow again, bittersweet as that was)

words to live by ... TWICE

words to live by ... TWICE

pointed out to me yesterday: "when you talk about your work, you beam. you realize your work leaves you and goes out there, is carried off becomes something else, takes on new shape, keeps on giving and even gives back. it gives you joy, but it also goes beyond that." (seriously, dudes, after he said it, i wrote it down, it sounded that cool).

this same "beaming" was pointed out to me when i talked about my family, my friends, my life partner, our dorky dogs, my writing, my artwork, how i used to feel about biking before my hands fell apart, etc.

i bring this up now because, nearly a month ago, i lost my brother to suicide. for that reason, my family, my friends and i definitely have not been ourselves as we navigate this loss. Grief very much has a person “going through the motions” on autopilot, and who even knows if the lights are on half the time. who even cares? this last month has been a blur.

also, tonight i was supposed to be out with friends, but had to rain-check it. i took some time off recently, and because i’m very much a free lance chick, the work i don’t do in the off time, often times is waiting for me when i return. so i’m swamped this friday night. i’m underwater with work, but that’s the way I like it.

this picking up of speed is good for me, after this loss, which was then followed by a debilitating bout of bronchopneumonia which was then cured by a whirlwind day/night trip lunching and funning with my daughters, nieice and dear friend (because we all need the reminder of things up and coming, life going on, things in their season).

that being said, however, feeling that delicious momentum and (dare i say) joy in being back to work, i also feel guilt.

things are starting to feel back to normal, but there’s always that odd little jolt, like “beaming” in one sense takes the focus off of my grieving. like you can't do one and also do the other. you can't go on and still stay back there holding on to the person you aren't ready to let go of yet. it's been a difficult dance, a very difficult dance.

but, i’m coming to realize there is this fine line you walk when you lose someone in an unreasonable fashion, which makes you also want to manipulate your grieving into awkward hoops you force yourself to jump through; it doesn’t work.

it’s quite possible this is why i’m now talking to this clever person whose clever words i quoted above, because the last thing i want to do is grieve my brother unreasonably.

i’m trying to figure out a way to keep the high beams on, because i (we, all of us) have to see everything twice now because he can’t. he’s not here to share it with us any longer. and he loved us loud, loves us still.

if things got quiet and dark and stayed that way, he’d die all over again, and that would be wrong.

i’m not saying i have this all the way figured out, or even halfway figured out, or even an eighth of the way figured out but i think this is a HUGE part of it. i also think it's the hardest part of it. it's the part that catches me up every second along the way.

this past sunday, three sundays past the funeral, we had a huge family dinner. it wasn't until then that it dawned on me as we drove home that of my four siblings, one of us no longer stood on this earth. my dinner churned as i stared out the dark car window, the world speeding by, car sick at 49.

Monday, i had a fabulous time with my daughters, niece and a dear friend. at the end of the day and night's events my middle daughter said to me, "did you have fun Momma," and i immediately felt nauseated and my eyes filled with tears, as if i'd been "caught" doing someing wrong. she said "don't cry," which is funny because i didn't realize how quickly that sensation had hit me because i was answering her question saying, "yes," yes i had fun. it was a grand day, the kind of day i needed. we had laughed so hard my cheekbones felt like they had splintered.

so i am working on it. there has got to be a way to keep that can of whoop ass open here on earth, to keep the party we all started going, so loud and so warm and full of love that he can still feel it, because if we didn’t that would make him very, very sad. and the last thing we ever want him to feel again is sadness.

right now, this is words on a page, but these are words i’m going to live up to, twice … twice as loud, twice as bright, twice as everything!

*andrew wyeth-wind by the sea (above)

four days into spring ...

Four days into Spring: Frozen tears clinging to the high branches, set against a sky so blue, so sunshine morning bright I had to squint, my eyes so pinched from lack of sleep, and now-dry tears I wasn’t even sure I was getting the shots right. Heavy wet snow, blanketing the woods, holding all the trees steady, warming my sore heart in the odd way that snow always warms my heart, sun shining on the lot of it all. The sun will help the trees shake off their tears today, the snow will melt, the woods will return to mud and mulch, the crocus will reshape its bowed back, raise its head and bloom. The redwing, the cardinal, the robin and the rest will resume their banter, the crane his whoop-whoop. And at the same time, my grief howls at the moon, stands in bare feet on a hillside, in the mud, pinches toes over twigs and pebbles, as they shoot by in the current of the ice melt, wishes to stop it all, wants to start over, wants winter never to end.

**the deal was i was going to take some time off, two weeks “or so,” and use said time to declutter some physical spaces in our home, and move my office from its makeshift space downstairs to it’s “forever space” upstairs, kind of swapping spaces with my 18-year-old daughter who will be transitioning to college within a 6-month period. we are also prepping for a remodel on that lower level of the house as well. i was also looking forward to restarting my blog, restarting my art, jumpstarting/restarting a lot of stuff about my “self” as i also transitioned into yet another stage of life. as it turns out, and as life has a way of never turning out quite like you plan, i’ll be working on more than just physical spaces during this time. it could get ugly, or could be worse, i might not write another single word. too.early.to.tell.**