Mattering

my daughter Pallas (2nd from the left) and her friends

She says to me “Kim, you’re important. Other widows want to meet you. They ask if you will be there.”

I was talking to Michelle, the founder of this blog, Camp Widow, Widow’s Village and Soaring Spirits Foundation.

She was trying to convince me to come to widow camp.

I wasn’t going. Even though I live just two hours away.
I wasn’t going.

I’m important, I whispered to myself. I’m important.
I matter to other people.
I had not felt that way since…
Art died.

The moment Art died I felt like I mattered less.
Like the space I took up in this world was not nearly as important as the space others take up.

I was not a wife anymore.
As a wife I knew I mattered to one other adult. I mattered a lot to him.

As a widow there is no one to call to say “I’m on my way home.”
There is no one to worry about me, or worry with about the kids.
My day doesn’t matter to other people.
They guy who cut me off matters less.
The great deal I got on a dress doesn’t really matter either.
My life and all it’s little insignificant happenings does not matter to anyone else.
It would take days for anyone to realize that the kids and I were gone…or dead.
Without a husband I questioned my matterness.

And it was not until Michelle spoke the opposite of what I believed that I saw how I carried around that little belief. I carried it around as sure as I carry around my kids were born from me, that Obama is our president and that I will wake up tomorrow and it will be Sunday.

I don’t matter as much now that I don’t have some to matter to.

That belief just sits there,
quietly,
solidly.
I matter less with no one else to share my life with.

And the thing is I didn’t realize that was my belief until I spoke with Michelle.

“I matter,” I whisper again, this time just a little bit louder.
The funny thing is:
if I take a really close look at my life.
if I am honest about who I have become since Art gave me the gift of his death
if I really look at it, I matter more
now
than I did when he was alive.

And if this is true for me, then it is true for many of us widow’s too.

We matter.
We matter to each other.
Every blog that is discovered at 3:23 am, when a widow is terrified of what has happened to her or him,
matters.

The comments that widows leave, the open, honest, "me too" comments that are left and read by THOUSANDS
matter.

The visitors, lurkers, outsiders
matter.

We all matter! It just doesn’t look the same way it did before our partners died.
Heck it doesn’t look the way we were taught it was supposed to look, dead partner or not.

I matter
You matter.

So when you see me at Camp Widow, or out and about in LA, come up and give me a hug.

I need it. I need to be reminded that I matter.
And my guess is you need to be reminded that
you
matter
too.

I think we all do.

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Grief from A Child

This is what Ezra has to say about grief. He wants you to pay attention. He's nine. He was 7 by three weeks when Art died. M=Mom, aka Kim

E: It's scary whenever I go to sleep because I’m afraid I will be dreaming about daddy.

M: Why do you not like that?

E: Cause then every morning I wake up and I realize that he’s never coming back and it’s really hard for me.

M: What do you miss about your dad?

E: I miss that everyone would say, “Oh your dad is so tall. I wish I had a dad like him!” and stuff like that.

M: What do you think about our new lives without him?

E: Everyone says that everything that happens on earth has a reason. And it’s really hard to believe that this has a reason.

M: What do you like about our lives now that you don’t have Daddy?

E: Come to think of it, I’m having a lot of new experience that I wouldn’t have if my dad was alive.

M: Like what?

E: One of the biggest experiences is not having dad.

M: What are your good days like?

E: I don’t know. I think about him. I have my mind on other stuff.

M: Do you have any advice for people who are grieving, adult or child?

E: If people say that they are in worse grief than you are, just say, "You know I don’t think you are." because there are different kinds of grief. So it may be they are in bigger grief than me but in a different way.

When people say that to me, I just think you don’t know how I feel, so how can you compare something when you don’t know what it is?

M: What is it like to watch me cry when I miss Daddy?

E: I have different feelings. Sometimes I feel like I let you down somehow. Sometimes I feel like I should just leave you alone because I’m not in too good a shape myself.

M: When you comfort me, how does that make you feel?

E: When I comfort you, it kind of comforts me. And also that’s why I like to play the piano sometimes. It’s another way to express myself without getting mad. It comforts me.

E: slyly. That’s why you should let me get on the piano more often.

M: Do you have any tips for widowed mothers?

E: When the kids say, “Leave me alone” the mother should. Cause a lot of times when we say, "Leave me alone." it’s just better to be left alone because it feels good to let your feelings out when you’re not with other people.

M: Ezra can I post this for other widow’s to read?

E: Well that’s why you’re writing it all down, isn’t it?

I love you Ezra. Thank you for teaching me what it's like to be you.

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How Did He Die?

I’m at the bank, not my usual branch.
Comments are made about how tall my youngest is.
“He’s only 9?”
I nod.
What I want to do is roll my eyes, and hand her a card that says:

“Thank you for noticing that my child is tall. Hopefully he will be a tall man some day. I have trained him to smile and say “Thank you,” even though he has nothing to do with how tall he is or how tall he will be. Now kindly stop ogling and either lets finish our business or be on your way.”

That’s what the card would say.

But I haven’t printed it up yet so instead I say:

“Yes, he is tall. My husband was 6’6.”

I use past tense easily now, forgetting how ominous it sounds. When their eyes go wide, I assume, for an instant that it’s in response to my husband’s height. Silly me.

The conversational tone changes from light to tragic. Their realization that in front of them is a woman whose life truly is tragic. “Did you say your husband ‘was’?”

Here we go.

“Yes. I did. My husband died.” And depending on the situation I sometimes add ‘recently.’

And then it comes, the stupidest question ever…

“How did he die?”
Or if they have a modicum of politeness, it’s:
“Do you mind me asking how he died?”

Now here is my quandary.

I do mind. Now I do.

When he first died, I would recount the story in detail. Somehow telling it over and over again and getting the same reactions over and over again put more and more earth beneath my feet, a place where I could say “this is where I stand now, without a husband.”

Then right around the second year, I noticed that telling my story began to feel old. I felt like my piece of earth was fairly solid. I had tamped it down and built it up. It was called “my new life: the expected bad, ugly and the surprisingly good.”

As I stepped into my third year, (OMG my third year….. I remember in the beginning not being able to imagine what it would be like to live that long without him!) Wow.

As I stepped into my third year, I find the question intrusive. And voyeuristic and well, like I’m adding to their gossip mill.

Isn’t it enough that my husband died? If I tell them he died of cancer, unless they have experienced loosing someone to cancer, they will have a way-not-accurate-image of his last moments on this earth that will probably include him looking deeply into my eyes and him saying a few final words before his last breath is taken. Or something that is so, so far from the truth!

I have to admit. It’s the kind of question I would have asked before I was on this side of death. It’s the kind of thing I would have listened intently too, shaken my head. Then later, maybe months later, I would have shared with an authoritative tone in my voice “I met this woman who lost her husband to cancer and she said…….”

That would have been me. Missing the whole point. Because it’s not how he died that matters. It’s the fact that he’s dead that matters.

And this is what I want to tell someone when they ask.

“Its not about what killed him. What makes it so difficult is that he’s dead.”

So I resolve to use that line. I resolve to not tell anyone how he died.
From here on out, when someone asks me “how” I will reply:

“It’s not what killed him that matters, it’s the fact that he is dead that is so difficult.”

And in that resolution, I leave the house the next day.
And I find myself in a random conversation with a random person in line at the grocery store.

Out slips “He was … “

“Oh!” she says “Is your husband dead? “

“Yes.” I reply

“Was he shot?”

I give up.

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Widow vs. Widow

She said “Well, at least you got to say good-bye.”

Anger rises in me because I see her comment as one of those my-situation-is-worse-than-yours comments.

Anger because she wants to beat me to the bottom, to claim more grief, more anger, more despondency than me.

Anger because really? Do we have to have this conversation? I’ve had it before but about skin color with a white friend who was saying that my “blackness” was different from the “poor people’s blackness.” And I had to explain that the store clerk doesn’t thing so. I still get “watched,” and treated with suspicion even with a platinum American Express in my purse.

This widow assumes that Art’s cancer gave me time to prepare. I am disappointed at the magical death image she holds. You know the one from t.v.? The one where the person looks like themselves, opens their eyes, says a few last dying but meaningful words with the last exhale.

She thinks that expecting that your husband will die is some how easier. As if I could “prepare” for the impending grief by filling up sandbags to line my life. The more sandbag the less pain.

As I go to open my mouth, to tell her my last memories of my husband are of a withered 6’6" man who went from 235 to 154, his sunken, hollow face, unconscious, mouth open emanating that foul sweet smell of his dying innards. A smell that even in thought, makes me wretch.

Before I can tell her about the relief that came over me when he died that was quickly followed with shame of being relieved. Before I can tell her any of that…

I float
into her head
and see her own
devastation.

I see her need to tell her story over and over and over again, to compare it to others because in her world, right now, there is no firm footing. Nothing makes sense. She doesn’t know how to get to point B because not only is she standing on completely new territory, she doesn’t even know which direction to head in to find that second point. Comparing her story to mine at least provides her with walls, something familiar, something firm, a shelter of sorts.

And it is not till I recognize all this, I back down. She can have the bottom. She can have the grief and the despondency. I no longer need it to stand on.

I am surprised for my love for her, for the way I want to hold her in my arms and let her know it will truly, truly be okay. I want to tell her that she will find her place in this world. That she will slowly learn to lean into, and live, decently, without him.

The love comes out of my right arm, through my fingertips as I take her hand. I say to her after a moments silence, “Wow, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to loose him so suddenly. I hear you.”

Because I know she simply wants
to be
heard.

Exactly what I wanted and
still want.

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Happy Father's Day

July 2008, Malibu

So I was gonna try and ignore Father’s Day.
It’s Father’s Day and my kids don’t have one.

I was gonna just treat it like every other Sunday only….
Well last time I tried to run from one of the “big” days,
like his anniversary death date,
like his birthday,
like random days when his loss seems to be around every corner,
I get slammed,
Emotionally beat up,
eaten and then spewed out.

It took days for me to recover.
My whole body, my mind, just like in the beginning,
unable to focus, skittish,
in a sluggish way.

So this time, instead of running from his loss,
I turn into it.

Not out of bravery.
Not out of “I’ll show it whose boss!”

I turn into it out of the idea that facing the monster diminishes its power.
I’m not afraid anymore (or well just not afraid TODAY )

Cause what I have learned on this 792 day since his death is:

the loss won’t kill me.

Its unpredictability, won’t make my heart stop.
Its depth won’t suffocate me.
Its “holy-shit-this-hurtness” won’t be with me every single moment of every single day.
I have learned that all that pain that often brings me to my knees in random places like the kitchen, outside the car and yes, once in Whole Foods,
washes over me and then goes away.
And while I don’t like it, (I will never like the feeling of being left, abandoned and vulnerability),
every time, every fucking time afterward,
a rainbow appears.
And at the end of that rainbow is the new, better me!

It was a gift to have him even if he did stink up the bathroom (Cannonization of Art)
It was a gift to loose him (Dancing)

I am standing here, not just stronger, but wiser, more open, more sensitive than I have ever been.

I am standing here alive.
And alive means feeling all of it but knowing that “all” passes. The joy all and the yucky all, it passes.

Now as for the kids, cause really, the day is more about them, than about me.

This year I watched the grief and hopelessness catch up with Langston and flip him, and for moments, pin him to the floor. I have watched him look for relief in food, in friends and in video games. I have stood beside him, nodding my head, rubbing his back, curling me 128lb frame around his 251lb one.

He is walking his own journey and it is not for me to dictate it, fix it or say “No, no don’t go that way!” because he has to find his own place of strength. I have to remind myself that it is not one I can create for him.

His blessing through this? It seems that it is dawning on him (slowly) that the outside things bring him only temporary relief. He’s learning to turn into the loss, too. (That’s more awakening most adults 3, 4 and 5 times as old as he is!)

For Pallas, I still worry. I’m not sure where she is. I watch her float around with her friends, and with me seemingly content. I worry but as the saying goes, “Worry is putting a negative spin on the future.

For Ezra, I watch him fear the fear of his loss, hold it in till he turns blue with it and then let it out because he doesn’t have the strength (who does?) to keep it all pent up! And then worry what we will think him less than when it comes tumbling out. I am waiting for him to discover, like his brother, to run from it, gives it more power.

They lost a father, a man that cannot be replaced. I lost a husband who frankly, can be replaced. (I don’t believe there’s only one soul mate per lifetime.)

And the journeys my kids travel are their journeys. Not mine, I have to be careful not to confuse the two.

No doubt Father’s Day will mean different things to them as they grow up, as they discover and acknowledge their own courage and growth as it spills out of them in this life.

This year (cause next year may find me in completely different place!) Father’s Day is a day to give thanks to Art for being a decent dad and for mourning the kind of father he “could have been.” It’s also day for me to marvel at my children as they make their way in the world without a dad, something I didn’t have to do.

The one thing I hope for them for forever is that Father’s Day doesn’t scare them, doesn’t become a day to avoid.

I hope that Father’s Day becomes their independence day.

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A Different Grief

Pallas and Langston

It was a lovely evening. I could feel the exhaustion running all the way into my finger tips and for once I welcomed it. It was 9:30 pm. I checked the clock 7 times to make sure I hadn’t misread it.

9:30 pm and for once all three of my children were in bed and….asleep.
A self-congratulatory smirk (accompanied with a sigh of unimaginable relief) passes over my lips. I’m in bed at 9:30 pm!!! I close my eyes doing a happy-skip-run-prance towards sleep.

I am exhausted. In an effort to take care of myself I have run myself into the ground. Eating healthy and answering all those kid questions, paying attention to the long and drawn out stories, making orthodontist appointments, and ordering skin cream and buying bikinis and getting my 9 year old to SLEEP IN HIS OWN DAMN bed and getting a break from them and running a business (two now….) and trying to have a social life and exercising and trying to spend quality time with each of them so they don’t feel further abandoned and teacher meetings and volunteering (which I admit I HAVE TO STOP doing) and talking to a new widow 3 times a week and remembering who has what game/doctors appointment/play date when
has
run
me
into
the
ground.

9:30 is huge fucking triumph!!!

I drift into my triumph

At that mother sleep level, the level that allows you to hear the cough, the sneeze, the bathroom runs, the talking when you are asleep but not quite wake up, I hear him rise from bed. I hear his heavy methodical one-foot-slightly-dragging footsteps make their way towards the bathroom. Only they don’t stop they keep heading my way. I think “Lie really still. He’ll just go away.”

I remember those nights when all three kids just seemed to keep getting up, Art and I would pretend to be asleep so the other one would get up with whichever kid had just wandered into our room. I remember how the person who “won” would feel guilty and would hold open the covers.

So I’m pretending and it’s not working because Art’s dead and I’m the only one here. Langston, my oldest, says to me, almost pleading, “Mom I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.” His voice is nasally, stuffed up, then that mother awareness memory kicks in. He’s been blowing his nose….a lot. My big man-child has been crying. A lot. Him in pain jolts me awake.

“Hey … kiddo, what’s going on?” I hesitate using ‘kiddo” it’s what Art called him. I let my mother imagination fly … drugs, girls, bullying and suicide. He won’t tell me. He won’t alleviate my anxiety. He repeats over and over again “I don’t’ want to go to school. I don’t want to go to school.”

I repeat “I need to know what’s going. I need to know what’s going on. “

After the seventeenth “I need to know what’s going on.” He shouts, exasperated, “Never mind!!” and storms out. I get up, go into his room, he’s not there. I find my crocks, grab my sweatshirt and head out the front door, that I just noticed is ajar. And there he is. Sitting on the front stoop.

“I want to be alone.” He says. I pretend I didn’t hear him. I sit next to him. I put my hand on his back wondering when did this back become the back of a man, and not of a little boy. His man back is shaking as he cries.

My heart, that feels so fragile, begins to tear at seams that have been mended over and over and over again.

“Sweetheart, tell me what’s going on. It’s safe. I promise you it’s safe.” I say
“It’s everything.” he says “I miss Daddy and no one understands. Only one of my friends gets it.”

I say “Yes, that’s true. Many of my friend’s don’t get it and it makes me feel lonely.
But you know people who get it. You can talk to them.”

Then he says
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!”
I want to laugh.
I’ve been waiting my whole parenting life for one of them to say that to me.

“You don’t,” he catches a sob in his throat, “You don’t have to walk past his office every single day!

Rip…the seam is completely undone.

Langston attends school where Art used to work and he does walk past his old office every day. I thought it didn’t bother him.

I’m such as ass.
Such a mother ass!
I know better than those not-knowing people who act all surprised at my sudden tears over Art’s loss and say “Are still mourning?”


“I think about him all the time, Mom. All the time, every day and I don’t want to think about him every day.”

He’s sobbing. He’s almost pleading. My 6 feet-225-pound-14-year-old is sobbing. I'm trying to use my 5’7”-130-pound frame to comfort him and it feels entirely inadequate.

This is THE WORST PART OF ALL THIS.

I can’t fix it for him.
I can’t protect him from this loss.
No amount of words, or actions or back rubs will take his pain away.

It is like watching someone drown because I am unable to swim.

I’m silent. Every day he walks past Art’s office. Every day. How many of those days does he think he might see his dad? How many of those days does he just want to punch that door?

It feels like for the first time I am seeing his world, a world that doesn’t include potential other fathers the way my world includes potential other husbands.

He lost his father. There will be no other.

I breath deeply. He is not ok…he has been hurting all this time? Shame rises and then falls. In Art’s death I feel the lack of motherhood omnipotence.

He’s right. I don’t get it.
I don’t understand because I don’t walk past Art’s office every day. I don't understand because my dad lived till I was just one day shy of 40, not when I was 12.

Then he says, “Mom, it was so hard having you and Pallas and Ezra fall apart but I couldn’t.”

I let out the kind of sob that hurts my body.

“I know, baby. It must have been so hard for you to lose Daddy and then have me not being able to function. Sweetheart, I’m here now, I’m functioning. It’s ok. We survived it.”

He continues, “I felt so powerless. Unable to do anything to help you.”

This is when I hear my heart shatter.

I stifle the sobs. “I know how you feel.” I say.

He just sits there and cries. And I sit next time him, my hand on his back, or stroking his hair, his neck. I do what I wanted so many others to do for me.

I witness him.

I witness his pain. I honor it. I validate it. I don’t hand him a tissue, I don’t say “It’ll be alright.” I don't distract him with "You know your father loved you." or "Your dad used to...." stories. I just sit there until he’s cried out.

I put him to bed and he lets me rub his back as he falls asleep. I notice that it takes longer than I remember to traverse the distance from his left shoulder to his right, then down diagonally to his waist and across.

He has grown in the last two years, inside and out. Another loss for me. I feel like I am seeing him for the first time in two years, since Art died.

And in those long strokes, I send him courage and strength and love, love, and love. I sit in my powerlessness, finding that I do have some power.

My power is not in protecting him but in honoring his journey. My power is in not lying to him, telling him it will be ok because it will never be ok. His father is dead.

My power is in letting him have his feelings and making them ok. My power lies in showing him that the bad is followed by the good, which will be followed by the bad and the good again.

My power is in teaching him to hold tight to those moments…all of them because they are what will make him so wonderfully approachable and human.

I see his grief and my grief as separate. I always saw it as the same.
He lost a father, someone that cannot be replaced.

I mourn his innocence.

-----

I finished writing this, the eve of Mother's Day, and for a moment I can't think. I keep wishing everyone else a Happy Mother's Day and forget that it applies to me as well.

I'm not sure how I feel about it or that I should even put much thought into it. The man who is partially responsible for me becoming a mother is dead, but I'm still a mother. A very, very different mother than I would have been if he were still alive. I haven't thought about the ways I've changed till now.

But when I re-read my post I see. In Art's death, I am becoming the mother I always wanted to be. The approachable kind, the kind that my kids (and others?) know will love them, will honor them, their triumphs and foibles. I am impatient, but real (I'm sorry guys. I don't have the space right now to help you.) I am harsh. (It's because when I was your age I didn't have the chance to do it. It may not make sense to you. But you are doing it anyway!) Above all I hope my kids see that I am human -- flawed and imperfect, courageous and terrified and still moving, changing and forever growing. I have never felt more like a real mother than I do today, at this moment.

Art's death freed me to be this kind of mother.

So to all you widow-mothers out there -- I love you. Our journey through motherhood without husband's is an imperfect one, full of bad words, horrible feelings and unwise actions. Yet we not only live it but find the courage to grow in it.

That truly is the miracle of motherhood.

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The Smell

I didn’t mean to.
I was only trying to help
To help him
Because he missed you so much.

He was in your closet.
He came out and said,
“It doesn’t smell like Daddy anymore.”

He looked so sad.
He looked so forlorn.

So I showed him my secret.
Your cap.
The one I have kept folded up
Tight
In a Ziplock bag,
Stashed
in my bedside table.

I unzipped it.
We both inhaled.
It smelled like you.

And then his face crumbled.
Mirroring mine, I think

Your smell.
Your smell reminding us,
Of how it no longer surrounds us,
How we can’t take it for granted.
How it is no longer part of the background of our lives
How it is fading.

We didn’t remember what you smelled like
Till that moment.

And after we remembered
Me and Ezra,
Ezra and I,
Sat on the floor
Sobbing like ….

The people we are
A wife,
A son,
Missing you.

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Another

I had a conversation yesterday with another widow.
Sorry, a widower
He wanted to meet me after his sister, a friend, showed him my black widow photo.

It was a conversation that felt good, connected and real.
It was a conversation with laughter and head nodding (which he didn’t see cause we were on the phone.)
It was a conversation of understanding.

It was a conversation of “Oh!! ME TOO!”
It was a conversation of faith.
It was a conversation of regret.
It was a conversation of courage and hope.

It was a conversation that made me sad.
It was a conversation that afterwards made me cry
For all that we have both lost.
It was a conversation that made me sigh for all that we have gained.

It was a conversation that reminds me that with pain comes wisdom
and hope
and profound tenderness.

It was a conversation that reminded me that while I didn’t want this life, I am moved by it
and
odd enough
grateful for it.

Grateful because I can have a conversations with a widower and recognize my inspiring journey in his words.

I can’t wait to talk to him again.

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Ashes to Life

Pallas and Ezra with Art in the box with the bow.

Last weekend......

We're at the ranch.
It's my cousin's place.
90 acres
horses, sheep, ponds, creeks
and
ATVs.

It's our second home. It's the place where we escape our noisy city lives. It's the place Art wanted to be sprinkled. I left part of him here in May 09, 1 month after his death. I left him in a box. That was placed above my cousin's book shelf.

Today was time to take some of him home to LA. And then spread him out here, down by the creek his favorite place at the ranch.

Ezra and Pallas wanted to see his ashes. So they took the box and sat outside with it.
We opened the box. And then Ezra touched his father.

"I want to keep some of the ashes with me." he said.

"That way I can keep daddy forever."

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Ours to Mine

Our wedding rings are no more.

His was so huge. My 6'6" husband had fingers that matched his size.
When he died, I removed his ring
and put it into the ring box that I kept my diamond in.

I don't remember when I took off my wedding bands.
Long enough so that wearing a ring on my "wedding" finger feels odd.

I needed something that would represent us, who we were, who we will always be.
Something that spoke to our commitment to each other, our fights, our love making, our sense of humor, our thought provoking, intelligent conversations.

Something that said moved 8 times, birthed two kids at home, had dogs, interrupted each other to read interesting or beautiful sentences from books. Something that said didn't like to be tickled, loved to hold me, incredible father, kind, endearing, stubborn. Something that spoke of our love of Monty Python, riding race bikes and moving our bodies in any form of athleticism only because it felt good. Something that spoke to our competitiveness with each other. Something that held our dissatisfaction of the world and our desire and actions to make it better.

I needed something that would not get in the way of my committing to someone else, but something that would remind me that yes I was fiercely loved for exactly who I am.
Yes, I was worth the time.

Something that will give me hope to being loved like that again ... only differently.

And so I had our rings, his wedding band, my wedding band, the anniversary band and the diamond he gave me, I had them melted and put back together, differently.


Just like me.

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I'm OK?

Today looked like this....

I got up.

I laughed before the big toe of my left foot hit the floor.

I left at 8:15 for an 8:30 class that was a 20 minute drive away.

I drove giggling...my lateness, some things never change.

I didn't know anyone in the class.

I didn't feel like knowing anyone from the class.

At the class, I didn't eat the granola bar, tossed the too sweet yogurt and drank 4 little bottles of water (borrowed from my the table mates, the ones I didn't know.)

I drove home and sang till I coughed.

I made a semi-nutritious lunch for my kids out of food I already had in the refrigerator!

I made a really nutritious lunch for myself. (Spinach, yellow peppers, avocado, pine nuts and goat cheese. Tossed with more balsamic vinegar than olive oil.)

I braved Target at 2:30 pm shopping for clothes with my two youngest. We didn't run over anyone while we were telling each other jokes.

I put together a telescope. I saw the pink-purple flowers of the Morning Glory way in the back yard REALLY well.

I dropped off my daughter for her (as of this minute) first successful sleep over in over 1 1/2 years.

I was truly interested listening to Ezra's hypotheses about weapons, bombers, fighter planes and tactical ways to win over an enemy.

I paid attention as he went on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Just he and I went to see Avatar. It was a 7:45 pm movie. He's usually in bed by 8:30. We didn't get home till 11:00.

Now at almost midnight, I am laughing again.

I'm OK.

His death didn't destroy me.

Didn't remove my essence.

Didn't consume me.

And I'm still standing

and I find my feet are encased, ensconced in this new earth.

I wriggle my toes and notice that I cannot move the earth that covers them.

I laugh so hard....I pee.

My friend said, "How are you doing?"

Today, I didn't lie.

"I'm ok." I told her

And I am.

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