Tag Archives: Richard

Two Convertibles, Some Azaleas, and a $3 Tiller

Friday morning, the strangest thing happened–I was early for work.  Significantly early.  I’m so used to chasing my tail in a rush that I decided to enjoy the 20 minutes of peace and sit in my car.  That lasted about three minutes.  As I stepped out of my SUV then paused to pick up the Diet Coke cans, peanut shells, unsigned permission slips, and My Little Ponys that came rolling out onto the pavement, Cindy pulled up in a white BMW convertible.

Y’all.  Her car is so CLEAN.  I peaked inside and the only thing on the passenger’s side was a little net with a nicely folded shopping bag tucked into it.  Of course, the car is also so small that she had to pop the trunk to get her book out.

I blurted, “I can’t wait to have a tiny car that only has room for ME!”

She said, “Well, when my son turned 16, I gave HIM the minivan and bought myself a convertible.”  Awesome.  And so much easier on the insurance budget.

Drooling over Cindy’s tiny white convertible took me back to a hot Saturday afternoon in April, 2004.  Richard had found an old rotor tiller at the dumpster that only needed a $3 spark plug.  He would have torn up every inch of lawn and put in tomatoes if I had let him.  On Friday night, he had tilled up a space for a vegetable garden and an herb garden.  He was thinking about putting in CORN, but ran out of daylight, thank goodness.

So there we were on a muggy Saturday morning in the bugs and the heat, ripping out the flower beds that run allllllll the way across the front of this house.  Monkey grass and ivy snarled every inch that wasn’t covered in old snaggly holly bushes.  All of it was coming out.  Every blade.  Every prickly leaf.

The $3 tiller lasted about another hour.  Pretty good for our investment, but it left us with hours of work left to do.  We each got a spade and started digging up monkey grass and cussing.  Four, five, six hours later and we finally had the beds cleared down to red dirt.  Then came the cow manure–15 bags to stir into the red clay.   Hoeing, raking, shoveling, stinking.  Ah, homeownership.  And it was HOT.  H-dammit-O-dammit-T.

Richard was never one to quit halfway through a job or to say, “This can wait until tomorrow.”  So as soon as we had the cow manure mixed in, it was time to plant azaleas.  We toodled on over to Cofer’s and dropped a bunch of money on deciduous azaleas, native azaleas, and two little variegated specimens that he bought because they were called “Ashley Marie.”  Sweet.

By dusk, we had it all done.  You know how gardening is in the early stages–dinky and spindly.  I was left underwhelmed after all our efforts.  Neither of us could move.  As we lay there, prostrate on the reawakening spring lawn, one of our neighbors drove by in a tiny white Miata with the top down.  Her strawberry blonde hair sparkled in the last light of day.  She was smiling, and as she drove past, slowly, she checked to make sure we weren’t laying dead in the front yard.  Richard and I each raised a hand in a weak wave and she waved in return before cruising down the hill in her convertible, into the sunset.

In that moment, I so envied her car and her freedom and the energy she had to be kind.  I rolled my head over towards him and said, “I bet her azaleas are already established.  Pfffffft.”  I felt myself looking forward, into the spring days ahead that wouldn’t require all that back breaking work.  The days where I would awaken to a yard filled with flowers and a tiny white convertible all my own.

I still don’t have the silly car, but I do have the flowers.  Every spring, they make me smile, remembering all that sweat and toil.  Working on something together.  I think he would have loved how they turned out.

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Sunday Sweetness–A Teapot on a Rainy Day

Sunday Sweetness is all about the quiet moments, the gentle times, that make life sweeter.  Today, click on this teapot to read a sweet story about a kind man who used a teapot in an act of kindness.  Enjoy!

 

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No Spaghetti

spaghettiI don’t think I’ve ever made reference to this before, but my children may not be perfect in all ways.  And I sometimes worry that I’m not the Best Mother Ever.

I KNOW.  I’ll give you a second to regroup.  Put your head between your knees if you start to see sparkles.  

So I was blowing off to my friend Nicole yesterday about my worries regarding my kids and she said, “Hey, this is no spaghetti.”  

There’s nothing like having your own advice quoted back to you.  Here’s the story behind “no spaghetti.”  

Back in 2004 when Richard was sick, I spent 10 months traveling back and forth every other week between home and work in Athens and Baltimore where he was getting his treatments.  On a typical week, I would leave at lunch on Wednesday, take the dogs to Griffin, drive to the airport and fly to Baltimore that night.  Stay for a few days with him, marking hours in the hospital, running errands, waiting.  Then back home on the Sunday 7 p.m. flight.  Drive from the airport to Griffin where Daddy and Big Gay would have my puppies and a big Diet Coke waiting on me.  Then a two hour drive to Athens.  Hit the bed about 2 a.m. and get up for work Monday morning.  

One Monday morning was particularly hard.  That weekend, Richard had gotten bad news about his response to the latest treatment.  It was getting really hard to believe that he was ever going to get better.  He had been readmitted to the Oncology unit with pneumonia on Saturday.  After all that and the long journey home, I was used up by the time I got to work on Monday.  

At lunchtime, I dragged down to the cafeteria.  The line snaked all the way to the entrance because it was Spaghetti Day.  Our cafeteria makes some kickass spaghetti–tasty, cheap, and healthyish with turkey.  I got in line to wait my turn.  I was so tired I leaned up against the counter by the dessert case.  The line crept along.  

After a while, only one woman remained in front of me.  She automatically said, “Spaghetti for here.”  The steam tray that had been filled with spaghetti was scraped clean.  The woman behind the counter answered, “I’m sorry, we’re out of spaghetti.  Can I get you something else?”  

WHAM!  The disgruntled employee slammed her plastic tray down on the serving counter so hard that her silverware bounced into the air and scattered.  She snarled, “I’ve been waiting half my 30 minute lunch and y’all are out?  This is UNBELIEVABLE!!”  She turned to me like it was time to rise up in rebellion and asked, “Is this not unbelievable???”

The sudden noise and her ridiculously infantile behavior sent me over the edge.  I burst out in maniacal laughter.  “My fiance is 38 years old and DYING.  THAT is unbelievable.  THIS?  THIS IS NO SPAGHETTI!  NO SPAGHETTI!  GET OVER IT!”

She scooted over to the sandwich line without another peep.  

No spaghetti.  It’s good to have friends remind you of your own advice sometimes.  Pump the brakes, Ash, this is no spaghetti.  Thanks, Nicole!

 

There Is This

there is this

New Year’s Eve finds me wistful.  Contemplative.  To be honest, I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve much.  There’s such expectation that it will Be. Big. Fun.  I never seem to be able to be present, even when I’m all dressed in sequins and have a glass of champagne in my hand.  That plodding moment when we count down to an exact moment on the clock…then we find that the exact second passes and the one after it is just another second in the billions we live and no more “new” than the one before it.

Years are created by humans.  The changing of one to the next?  Sometimes leaves me feeling anticlimactic.

Or maybe it’s the cold medicine.  I dunno.

I remember one New Year’s Eve in particular, the last one I celebrated with Richard, six months before he was diagnosed with leukemia.  We had just bought a house and moved in together.  He had finished up a grueling semester of teaching.  Instead of going somewhere new on our traditional trip between Christmas and New Year’s, we decided to go somewhere familiar instead.  We returned to The Reefs in Bermuda for a week of pink sand and drinks in the hot tub.  Ahhhhh.

It should have been relaxing, but I had a Plan.

We had the love.  We had the respect.  We had the house.  We had the commitments.  According to my plan, it was time to get Married, by jinkies.  And what better place to expect a proposal than on a pink sand beach at midnight on New Year’s Eve?  I had it all planned out.  In MY mind.  I bought the black velvet dress with the sequins scattered across the shoulders.  I bought the beautifully ridiculous shoes.  We dined and we drank champagne.  We danced on the veranda to “At Last.”  We wore silly hats.

And instead of being present for all that fun, I was wrapped up in a big ball of resentment because the hours kept ticking by and he hadn’t asked me to marry him even though this was the PERFECT setting and….GAH.  He was blowing it!

My mood improved after midnight when I finally let my plan go.  And got out of those stupid shoes.  We put on sweats and walked down to the beach.  He smoked a Cuban cigar and I drank a last glass of champagne.  Not such a bad night after all, there under the stars and by the sea–once I got out of what was supposed to be and looked around at what was.

A gray-haired man in a tuxedo came down to the beach all alone.  He carried one gold balloon close to his chest.  We wished him a happy new year.  He returned the wish.  He held up the balloon, shrugged, then he started to cry.  “I lost my brother, David, eleven years ago.  Damn AIDS.  I promised him that I’d always remember him and send him a balloon whenever there was a good party that he had to miss.  Seems silly, right?”  I put my hand on his arm as the ocean wind thumped the gold balloon against his chest.  Not silly at all.

The three of us stood there close together while he told us about David.  He held the balloon aloft and said, “Happy New Year, David!  I love you.”  As he let it go and we watched the balloon sail heavenward, I raised my glass and Richard lifted his cigar.  I gave the man a long hug and he returned to the hotel.

I’ve been thinking about that night today.  About David and the gold balloon.  About Richard, who did ask me to marry him, but not that night.  How we live so much of our lives outside of the present, in memory or in plans.  It all reminded me of this poem by Barbara Ras, which I give to you now as a New Year’s wish:

 

You Can’t Have It All

by Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

__________________________

May you live in the New Year, and what’s left of the one we already have.  May you breathe deep and know that you are loved, the second before midnight and the second after it.

Let’s Go Krug-ering

I blame Jay-Z and my childhood friend Mollie Battenhouse for this story…

This afternoon, I stood in a daze before the fancy champagne case at Kroger.  The wine guy walked past me and asked, “Are you finding what you’re looking for?”  I, pushing a cart filled with sugar cookie mix, green sprinkles, macaroni, ground beef and–gasp–watermelon flavored toothpaste, felt like a total fraud.

“Oh,” I giggled, “I’m just daydreaming.”  He must have been bored because he came over to stand beside me even though I couldn’t have been putting out the “I’m looking for a $300 bottle of champagne” vibe.  He nodded toward the carefully locked case and asked, “Which one are you thinking about?”

I pointed to the bright gold label on the Veuve-Clicquot.  “My sister and I drank several bottles of that in Chicago a few years back.  I didn’t know I was pregnant with my daughter.”  He laughed.  “When she was born, I bought that one–I pointed to the Billecart-Salmon rose with the subtle pink label–to celebrate the day we brought her home from the hospital.”   Next I waved to the elegant dark blue Pommery.  “I drank a bottle of that one year on New Year’s Eve, in Paris–all by myself.”  His eyebrows climbed higher and he laughed, “That sounds like a good night!”  It wasn’t, but that had nothing to do with the champagne.  I didn’t tell him how sad I had been that night, how I had cried at a table for one.  Instead, I asked–

krugomot“Do you carry Krug?”

He started with a little flutter, “A vintage?  I, uh, I can get that for you.”

It was my turn to flutter.  “Oh, I probably won’t do it, but having a bottle of champagne like that is on my bucket list.”  And thanks to Mollie and Jay-Z, I had woken up that Saturday dreaming about fine champagne.  Mollie is a wine expert in New York and her birthday was this week.  She mentioned on Facebook that she enjoyed Krug champagne with her birthday lunch.  Ahhhhhh.  And my friend, Saralyn has tickets to see Jay-Z coming up.  All that–plus the Nyquil and humidifier–cooked in my brain last night and morphed into a dream.

In the dream I was at a small venue Jay-Z concert, like a hotel ballroom.  I was wandering around before the show started when Jay-Z pulled up his gunmetal gray pickup truck right in front of me and parked it by the stage.  Pickup truck, you ask?  Well, OF COURSE–he had amps and stuff in the back.  I helped him tote a couple of cables and told him that I was looking forward to the show.  He said, “Hey, thanks for helping–drink Kansas City Royals v New York Yankeessome of this with me.”  He took out a giant bottle of Krug and poured me a plastic cup full to the rim.  Delightful! I remember looking down at the golden glow and watching the small bubbles dance.  I remember the cool feel of the cup in my hand, just the right temperature.  I took a sip and it was the best thing I had ever tasted.  I thanked Jay and made my way back to my seat.  I remember thinking in the dream how lucky I was to have something so rare, right there in my hand.  Just another Friday night in my head.

So….what WAS I doing looking for Krug in Kroger?

I really do want to plop down hard-earned money on a world class bottle of champagne one day.  It won’t become a habit, but it’s just something I’d like to experience.  Some people dream of blowing money on a Chanel bag or taking a cruise–I’d rather sit down in a pleasant spot with a pleasant friend and treat ourselves to a bottle of something magical.  Like a 1928 Krug.

In the year between Richard’s passing and when I started to date again, I discovered the mystery of fine wine.  My sister took me to dinner at Gramercy Tavern in New York about a month after Richard died.  The restaurant and the people in it were all so beautiful that I fought feelings of guilt when we were first seated.  It felt odd to be so carefree, on a lark.  I’ll never forget the first dish–pate de foie gras on toast points with a side of ramps soaked in vinegar, paired with a chilly Sauternes.  I didn’t even know what a ramp was then, and I thought Sauternes was supposed to be for dessert, but I dove in.  The combination proved sublime.  I almost cried at the table because I felt such sudden joy–that some chef decided to make this, that my sister had brought me here, that I was alive to enjoy it.  Goose liver and bread and tiny spring onions, vinegar and sugar twirled together on my palate to remind me just how much fun it is to experience the world through my senses.

Inspired by that meal, I spent a few Tuesday nights at the local wine shop for tastings.  Wine excited me because there was so much to know about it that I could never learn it all and it was a relief to me–at that late sad point in my life–to discover that there was something so new out there to explore.

alvear-pedro-ximenez-1927-e1367699508617I once invested in a half case of Pedro Ximenes Alvear Solera 1927 because I was so intrigued by the vintage.  This dessert wine is created by blending a little bit of each vintage–all the way back to 1927.  The blending gives the wine a richness and depth that you can’t get from just one year.  When the first grapes for that Solera were picked, my grandfather was 25 years old.  No one knew about World War II.

My grandfather died that spring, a year after Richard did.  He lived to be 103.  Richard made it to 38.  When I sipped that sweet wine in 2006, I was tasting the sunlight and the rain from all those years, all swirling together into this moment, this day.  The beauty of wine for me is that every bottle captures a moment and in that moment, a world.

I guess that’s what I was daydreaming about, there in the Kroger wine aisle.  I haven’t had much time or money to explore wine since the kids came along, but I still like the idea of it.  Those days will come again and one day, maybe Gay and I will take Vivi to France.  It’s all one life.  The macaroni days and the champagne days.

An Unknown Soldier

Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day make me sad because my late husband, Richard, was not quite a veteran but his service to his country killed him.  

His first career was as an aerospace engineer.  He worked for the Army Research Lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground–a civilian who got a paycheck from the Army.  This career happened years before we met.  I asked him what exactly he did and he answered, “If something that flies blew up but wasn’t supposed to blow up–I investigated that.  If something that flies didn’t blow up when it was supposed to blow up–I investigated that too.”  

SCUD shot down by Patriot missile. Richard's not in this picture. But this is what he did for the Army.

SCUD shot down by Patriot missile. Richard’s not in this picture. But this is what he did for the Army.

He went to Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm to document the performance of the Patriot Missile System (was supposed to blow up–sometimes did, sometimes didn’t, often blew up the wrong target).  He even testified before Congress during the hearings about the Patriot.  

I have snapshots of him in the desert, in Army camo, Army-issued sidearm and everything, standing next to SCUD missiles (the ones that didn’t blow up).  He investigated the terrorist bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.  He worked on the Blackhawk Down helicopter crash from Somalia.  But he wasn’t a veteran.  

His investigative work wasn’t limited to Army aircraft.  In 2003 we were sitting in a hot tub in Bermuda at sunset and struck up a conversation with a lively couple.  They were part of a large group, there for a family reunion.  After a while, the wife revealed to us that they were there courtesy of Muammar Gaddafi, who had finally paid a financial settlement to the families of the people killed in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  They were one of those families who had lost a daughter 15 years before that night in Bermuda.  Now that Gaddafi had paid millions in blood money, this couple were treating the people who had helped them survive their loss to a vacation.  Richard tensed up beside me.  After they left the hot tub, I asked him, “Did you work on that one?”  He nodded.  

On 9/11, he could barely speak through his rage–because he had worked on the investigation the first time terrorists had tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.  Now that they had finally done it, he was no longer in the game.  He had moved on to being a business professor.  

One year on Veterans’ Day, we were watching the broadcast of the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I shed a few tears.  He sat stoically, holding my hand.  I asked, “Doesn’t it make you sad?”  He answered, “It is sad.  But it also makes me proud that I did my part.  I helped.”

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Hemophagocytic histiocytes in bone marrow

Thirteen years passed since those days when Richard traveled the world wearing Army fatigues, getting an Army paycheck, on Army transport…but not a veteran.  When Richard developed a viciously aggressive form of leukemia at the age of 37, his doctors concluded that the cause was most certainly benzene exposure.  Why were they so sure?  Because the damage to his chromosomes was so severe that it couldn’t be a fluke.  Because 13 years is the incubation period for that kind of leukemia.  Thirteen years earlier, he had been blowing up or reassembling all kinds of aircraft.  And aircraft fuel is high in benzene.  The office that Richard worked in, investigating all those explosions was situated in a converted aircraft hangar.  When the Army Research Lab converted the space to a laboratory, they didn’t bother to dig up the old fuel tanks or test the soil to see if it was contaminated.  

If he had had any other job, he wouldn’t have died.  If he had even had a different office, he wouldn’t have died.   

All that work he did keeping our soldiers safe killed him.  That’s why I feel conflicted on Veterans’ Day.  I wish he had heard “thank you” for the work he did.  Or “we’re sorry” from the Army.  I am proud to know there are soldiers who have made it home because of something he figured out in that lab.  He gave his life in that lab.  

God Says “Duh” To Me

Half a year after Richard died, I visited San Francisco for the first time with my sister, Gay, and our sister-in-law, Beth.  Gay was there for a conference.  Beth and I were there to stay at the Palace Hotel on someone else’s expense account.  Man, they have plush robes at that hotel. Nicest robe I ever almost stole.  Also a sauna, town cars at your disposal, a brunch buffet with everything from sushi to crepes, a concierge every 20 feet.  We were living high on the hog that week.  I don’t know how I’ll ever come back down to the Sleep Inn between the interstate and Sonic.

One morning, Gay had meetings to attend so Beth and I were on our own to navigate the city.  We decided to do some sight seeing up on Nob Hill (because you can’t get lost if you keep going uphill!).  My friend, Gleam, had a thing for labyrinths and had told me much about the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill.  

haringNow….I’m not normally one for church.  At least Grace is an Episcopal church–they don’t make me itch and twitch quite as severely.  I’m a church tourist, at best.  Grace, however, quickly became one of my most favorite spaces I’ve ever had the privilege of visiting.  I found real sanctuary there.  It’s a welcoming congregation.  The first chapel I stepped into remembered thousands of lives lost to AIDS.  The “Life of Christ” altar by Keith Haring is surrounded by symbols of many faiths and a simple circle for people like me.  This was Haring’s last piece of art.  He died two weeks later from complications of AIDS, in 1990.  

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When we were there that October of 2005, the main aisle had been decorated with a genuinely soul-lifting art installation.  This tiny thumbnail is the only record of it that I could find (because 2005 is like the Jurassic Period of the Internet).  Translucent ribbons swooped from the ceiling, suspended by invisible wires.  Hues transformed from deepest red toward the altar to pale sunshine yellow down the aisle.   The floating fabric sculpture reminded me of a fiery spirit, 100 feet long.  The motion of it, the color, the space inside it–all took my breath away.  While Beth explored the side aisles, I slipped into a pew and sat quietly, just so I could share the same space with the fiery spirit.  That’s when I began to cry.  I missed Richard so deeply.  He and I had spent many an hour exploring the cathedrals of Europe.  Now I was learning to adventure on my own.  

Beth had been giving me my space, but we eventually came back together and talked about what to do next.  I felt like I was holding her back, but there was one thing left to do at Grace.  I trusted her enough to risk making a fool of myself.  As we stepped out into the afternoon light, I turned to her and confessed, “I want to walk the labyrinth.”  

She was game.  Beth’s not usually one for any kind of mumbo-jumbo–she was totally humoring me.  “You’re going to need to explain it to me.  I don’t want to screw it up.”  I told her what I knew of them from Gleam, who had made a pilgrimage to Chartres with the last of her strength.  Cancer took her the next year.   

Here are the instructions for the Grace Labyrinth:

The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart.

Three stages of the walk

  • Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
  • Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
  • Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work for which you feel your soul is reaching.

Labyrinth-HorizBeth and I chose different starting points and began our walk.  We had the place to ourselves, which let me let go of some of my inhibitions about doing something so mystical in public.  I focused on the soles of my feet and the contact they shared with the ground, just like in Buddhist walking meditation.  I felt safe in the maze.  Not rushing, just doing.  The rhythm of my steps did help me let go of the details of my life.  I felt the grief slip away, the anxiety abate.  My quieting mind sloughed away the months of grief, the months of worry, winnowing it all down to the real question that weighed down my heart.  The question I wanted to ask of God when I got to the center of the labyrinth:

“Is Richard OK?”

I know he can’t be here.  I know he’s not here.  I know I can’t know where he is.  But…is he OK?  

That’s when God said DUH to me.  Not in a mean way, more in an “of course, sweetie, bless your heart” way.  It wasn’t a thunder thump of a DUH.  I was open to what was there for me to receive and the gift that I received was a simple, quiet knowledge that Richard was beyond all the hurt.  I was the one who was hurting, but I could set down my worry about him.  That’s the burden I left in the center of the labyrinth.  

On my exit journey, I did experience Union.  I felt empowered to do the work for which my soul was reaching.  Healing myself.  I smiled a lot on the way out.  

The story of the labyrinth came back to me this week because every time I’ve tried to write a word about anything, my mouth is filled with ashes and grief for my friend, Chris.  Last week, Chris’ beloved daughter died suddenly, leaving two beautiful and bright children whose hearts could be broken forever by this.  I worry for Chris because no parent should have to lose a child and Chris has had this happen to her twice.  Both of her daughters have gone before her and that’s not fair.  There are no words for what it is.  

In the autumn of 2005, when I was sunk in grief and learning to live in the world again, I got back from San Francisco and began to plan my solo trip to Paris.  Chris, Gleam, and the rest of our writer bunch cheered me on.  The week before my trip, we gathered together for my bon voyage dinner.  Chris presented me with a soft blue beret and scarf to keep me warm in Paris.  She had knitted it from the leftover yarn from her grandson’s blanket.  The son of the mother who is gone now.  The blanket, the beret, the boy–they’re here.  The beloved is gone.  

I hope that grief, even a grief this abysmal, can be like the labyrinth.  A path we all walk, in our way, that teaches us to receive what we need to receive and empowers us to continue the work for which our souls reach.  

If you pray, pray for Chris and Wayne and Amy and Charlie and Emma.  May they find some peace on this journey.