"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."– Sigmund Freud

Looking back thusfar, I can buy that. The only unadorned stories I tell are those of triumphant journeys back from terrible places, snapshots seared into memory by the flashbulb of intensity. The images I rotate on my brain's screensaver are memories of times when all "we" had was each other and the sweetest moments were tucked away innocently between the bookends of obligation.

I'm kind of hungry right now, and, as Delta pointed out just now, I am not a normal AM blogger, so all I can equate it to to is a bowl of raisin bran. I love raisin bran, all of it, but it's the raisins that make me keep eating.

Lately

Whew. It feels like both a million years and a heartbeat since I last blogged. Time has ceased to define anything for the last few weeks. Here's what I've gathered so far:

1. Grief is like sitting on your feet so long that they lose feeling. As soon as you try to stand up you realize that there's no feeling at all and that perhaps the two slabs of meat attached to your ankles are not yours at all to command. Then the blood comes rushing back all at once and hits you like a curveball. You can't move. Even the smallest movement of your littlest finger reverberates through your body down to your throbbing feet. You can't concentrate on anything but the pain. You're afraid the pain might never end. But it does lessen and you're left with pins and needles, still a bit shaky but able to walk around even if it is with a limp. I'm limping now. Grief is the single worst feeling there is. You know how when something really good is about to happen like Christmas or a date with that really hot Scottish guy in the band you've worshipped for eight years? You know how you get that little twinge of anticipation every time you think of it and the twinge makes you act a little nicer to everyone and makes even balancing your checkbook tolerable? Well, grief is the exact opposite. Grief is the grand wizard of all things crappy and the little twinges make you suck just a little bit more when they come, and they do. It's like sitting back down on your pins and needles for a little while.

2. My grandfather always told me to surround myself with people better than I am. Thank God I listened. If there's anything positive about this grandiose saga of shit, it's that when I fell off the tightrope because my two little slabs of feet wouldn't hold me up, I fell into a net. There is nothing I could possibly write that could express my gratitude to those of you who caught me. There has not been one moment, since the terrible moment of truth in the "family room" at the hospital till this one right now in front of my computer that I have felt alone. So many people have reached out to us... the fact brings tears to my eyes. I am so thankful.

So, tommorow is Thanksgiving. I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope you have something to be thankful for. Safe Travels and Tryptophan for all. (BTW - I just found out that one would have to eat more than one turkey for the tryptophan to put one to sleep. The sleepy feeling is really from the gross amount of food crammed into one's stomach.)
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It's been 12 days since my father died. He was my biggest motivator for writing this blog. Every day he'd check and if there was nothing new he'd rag on me. The last two entries felt alien, like I was writing to no one.

The first ten days after his death I'd realize, out of the blue, that I'd been pacing. Looking out the window, walking across the house to look out another window, wandering upstairs and down. I didn't give it much thought, but later I read in a book about grief that this type of behavior is known as searching. Though a person's intellect understands that the missing person is gone, the subconscious does not and thus searches, endlessly. When I read that, I thought how sad that sounds - searching, wandering, hoping that next time you look, the person you love so much will be there. I guess you spend so much time being, well, conscious for lack of a better word that you don't even realize there's more to your brain than just that. I guess it's like, out of consciousness out of mind.

On Death and Dying

As I think everyone knows by now, I lost my father last week to sudden cardiac death. My father's heart simply died. Certain things have gone awry since then. I can't eat or sleep or write. I can't focus on one thing for more than 20 seconds. I spend the sunlight hours wishing for a sign from my father and the darkness terrified that I'll get one. I spent the last week wrapped tightly in the anesthesia of numbing shock. My priest, who is quite fond of metaphors, once told me that the road to healing is straight through the woods, one step at a time. Last week I told him that I'm afraid of that, afraid of the amount of grief waiting just beyond the tree line and he reminded me - one step at a time. If there's one thing I can offer, the first lesson I've learned thus far it's this: don't leave anything unresolved. Don't let anyone wonder if you love them or not. Cling tightly to the people you love. The people I love have carried me for a week now. Without that, I might have been lost, wandering about in the woods. I pray we never walk alone.

...here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

(excerpt from ee cummings)

i miss you

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