Listening

On the bus where I often think of you, little sweetheart, because you and I would often talk on the phone while I was waiting or riding. Just now passing Port Authority and looking out the window quietly listening for you and something came into my mind, a message I think from you. I heard these words: 

 

"Just do your best and be a good boy". 

 

Thank you my angel. Thank you for encouraging and instructing me. I will try. Love you forever.

Help Me Find It

Little sweetheart, I was running around yesterday trying to get out of the house to go up to The Met so I could renew my membership. I was also meeting a friend there. Sometimes I get an idea or have a thought that I'd like to write about at some length - always about you - but I'm on the run, so I grab a scrap of paper and quickly write down the essence of it so that I can come back later and elaborate. Yesterday, I wrote this on a post-it:

"Find that feeling of our lost life I can nearly touch. Find it inside me and live there (within that feeling) forever." 

It's still here on my desk.

While I was up there at The Met, I saw a stained glass window in The American Wing that looked so much like you that I reached for my phone to take the picture here below. When I did, I saw that I had a message from your mom. I guess you were calling to us both at the same time, weren't you?

Help me to quiet myself today, little sweetheart, today and everyday until Heaven says it's okay for you to come for me. Let me quiet myself and listen for you. Let me quiet myself and feel our life so still nearby. Let me find it and live there again with you now and forever. With all my love...

Find Me

Thank you for finding me tonight, my angel. I've not been doing well for the last few days and I so need you to point me in the right direction, get me back on track, feel you closer to me. I went to the candles tonight, little sweetheart, and sang and prayed and chanted. Keep me near you, open my heart and that secret part inside me that lets me hear you. And take me to you forever as soon as heaven will allow. With all my love.

 

Listening

I try to quiet myself, little sweetheart, and listen for you in the things around me. Sometimes a bird will sing insistently outside my window or a watch, its battery long expired, will begin ticking and I'll know it is you making your presence known in a way that merely mortal I can detect. You send me word through these events, your word that you are nearer than I can imagine and that all is not lost. That in just a little while we will be together again and forever. This morning as I made coffee, I heard a quiet whirring sound, like an old movie camera  buzzing away. I moved closer to the sound and discovered it was coming from the frame of this photo of you and I that we took the first morning we woke together here in my/our apartment. It's the two of us in the kitchen and the photo itself is on a shelf here in the kitchen. This morning it was vibrating brightly, as you can hear if you listen. And I am. I am listening, little sweetheart. May I always always hear you. With all my love forever.

The Photo Album

The last time we were in Davis together, little sweetheart, we had several days to ourselves. It was wonderful and I have a thousand memories of things I want to say about it, a thousand more about a thousand other things with you too. But today I'm thinking especially of this one. 

You were looking for some clear plugs for the ear piercings you had recently gotten. Your idea was that you could switch out the studs for the clear ones while you were doing the play in San Jose. We stopped in at a tattoo place downtown and you asked. While the girl was looking for something that might work, a song came on in the shop. It sounded like a DCFC tune neither of us had ever heard. 

They were such an important band to us. You introduced them to me and they quickly became one of our favorites. For my birthday in 2009, you took me to see them at Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento. We stood together in the crowd, you in front of me, my arms wrapped around you tight and we swayed and sang and cried and it was our own. 

In the shop, I asked you if you thought it was them and you told me to use the Shazam app on my phone and find out. It was. It was a song from their record "The Photo Album". I bought it on iTunes immediately and we listened together over those days. 

Today, little sweetheart, I was listening to a playlist on my old MacBook. My current one is in the shop. I didn't have my glasses on and I thought I was putting on another DCfC album, their first, "Something About Airplanes". That one wasn't your favorite so I don't have as much of an instant emotional response to it. But it turned out to be "The Photo Album". It's not as overwhelming as some of the others - "Plans", "Transatlanticism", "Narrow Stairs" - are that we listened to together so often and hit me now so hard. But his voice does take me to you. 

I only played the first song because I saw that there was something in the playlist info that had the date listed "last played" and all the rest of them had the date March 4, 2011. 

Four days before your tragic accident. Four days before out beautiful life would slip away. At least for now. I think somehow it's still there and when I die I will able to go back there with you anytime, even for ever. 

But today, I stopped the player. I want those dates to remain as they are. I found the album on YouTube and listened there instead. I want those dates on my old computer to stay as they are. With our beautiful life awaiting our return together. 

Maybe you are there even now, making things ready for me to join you. I can't wait. I know I must but it's hard. Someday soon, my love, take me. Bring me home to you. With all my love forever. 

On Grief

 Little sweetheart, I'm watching the new film "Jackie" for a second time tonight. It's set on the day, just a week after JFK's funeral, that Mrs Kennedy gave the famous interview to William Manchester. It cuts back and forth from their discussions that day and flashbacks from the tragic events of the week before. It's moved me very deeply and I wrote a little something about it. It's below:

"I don't know what anyone is saying about this movie or Natalie Portman's performance but it is an absolutely shattering and truthful depiction of grief. It is harrowing and as difficult to watch as it is to tear one's eyes away from. For anyone who has had the most important thing in the world, the person dearer to them than anyone ripped cruelly from their life, this film will touch that place that we, the always and ever aching, feel forever, and carry so close to the surface that even taking breath a bit too hard will bring to keening. Every note here is true and familiar to we the bereaved, not least the incandescent rage - the lesser known twin of sorrow that the uninitiated cannot imagine. What an unblinking, vital film this is for the broken. For us. For me. "

My sweetheart, I'm feeling you closer tonight and for that I am grateful. I love you with all my heart and soul forever. 

In An Instant

Loving you is why I was born, little sweetheart. It is the only thing that ever mattered. I'm here tonight having left my MacBook Pro in the shop for repairs and just charged and opened up my previous MacBook, one I haven't had on since about a year after God took you from me, took you home, took you where I hope I may fly to your side again soon and forever. As I sit here in front of the old laptop, I see playlists I haven't heard in 5 years. Music that was ours and meant everything in the way that you always will. Just a note takes me there instantly and I can nearly touch our beautiful, magic lost life. Please let me know you're near me tonight, won't you my love? And take me to you the second that heaven allows. With all my love. 

 

Where Your Magic Lingers

Thank you for finding me tonight, my angel, as I await my flight home. I've been reaching for your magic, which lingers still and always, all day - around the lovely tree we decorated and the quiet of your rooms, sitting in chairs beside your bed and at your desk. I'm saying our prayer with a hand over my broken heart as I wait to fly through the tempestuous weather here in NorCal tonight. May my prayers fly to you and may I not be far behind. I long to be at your side again and forever. With all my love, little sweetheart. With all my love. 

#travels #christmas #summerserafin #michaelserafinwells #angels #celestialvisitations #eleveneleven #faith #truelove #prayers #MichaelLouisSerafinWells #soulmates

Dream Together - today

Little sweetheart, the new album, our sixth, Dream Together, was released today - New Year's Day 2017. It's on iTunes and Amazon and CD Baby and pretty much everywhere. And it so very much, as ever, is of, for and about you.

Below is a little something USC filmmaker and writer Alexandra Dennis-Renner wrote about the new album on her blog this morning. I read it to your mom as we were listening in the front room this morning, by the beautiful Christmas tree we decorated together, as she put the new charms I gave her on your (now hers) silver bracelet and we both cried.

Love you forever, my darling. Please help and guide me this you and take to you as soon as heaven will allow.

"I think with unanimous consensus, 2016 was trying. However, frustration, loss of confidence, and despair are not organic. They're born of hope. As much as we liked to paint the overarching climate of the year since passed with the theme of despondency and resignation, for all of us, in one way or another, 2016 was a beacon of hope. It alluded to prospect. There was expectation for change. We faced wins and we survived losses. Sometimes it felt like the universe was abandoning us, but here most of us are...on our feet and moving forward. I think there's no better way to forge ahead than with a new record from my friends Bipolar Explorer. Every song on Dream Together is a reminder that the end of one thing is not necessarily the beginning of something new--not a hard reset--but the continuation of what was through the lens of what could be. What will be. And proof that there is always love, hope, and strength in that journey. Happy New Year, everyone. You made it to the next chapter. There's something here for you and you are loved..." 

Alexandra Dennis-Renner
January 1, 2017
Los Angeles, CA