In Dreams Again!

You were in my dreams last night, little sweetheart! Thank goodness! I always feel so much better and feel like I’m doing good things when you appear. Thank you!

The one I most remember is the one this morning just before fully waking. It’s still a bit cloudy but we were with your mom and a couple of friends - I can’t quite remember who, they were two guys I knew from the old days, I think - and we had just arrived. Your mom had expected us to fly but somehow we’d wound up driving all the way to California from New York. We’d started out just to go a little way and then wound up driving the entire distance across the country.

Everything was a completely normal with you and I. Nothing bad had ever happened and it was just routine and altogether lovely. I’d just been for a run, too, I think, because my hair was still all wet and sweaty from my skully. Your mom was talking about a movie they’d seen and that we shouldn’t even bother. We could see it when it came out on Netflix or something.

What struck me most about the dream was just how wonderfully mundane it seemed. Everything was fine. We were together, all of us, and happy. Unworried.

Thank you for coming to me. I’m so grateful and I love you always. Forever.

Thoughts of Boston With You

Working on the book just now, little sweetheart, and I’m thinking of our time together in Boston as I write about it. The season has something to do with it too because it’s nearly autumn here now and it was late autumn then.

I’ve so many memories of being there with you in the little apartment you had on Bay Street Road while you were working at The Huntington. Even though I’d been to Boston several times before and many times since, any time I’m there or even think of the city, my thoughts are of you. It seemed, like indeed every moment that I spent with you does, to be bathed in a golden kind of light, glowing and brilliant and perfect.

When I think of heaven, I pray that these times are for all times. That we can remain in each moment as long as we want to and fly to another as the whim takes us. As long as I am at your side my heart is full.

How very much I love you, my little sweetheart. Please draw near me today and take me to you the moment heaven will allow. With all my love forever.

To Do Better

I had a bad night a couple of nights ago, little sweetheart, and awoke with such a feeling of regret and disappointment in myself. For the last few days I’ve been endeavoring to do as much as I can to get things done, be productive and find ways to be kind.

Yesterday, I picked up a few things at the grocery store and I stopped in the baking aisle and got some cookie mix. I decided to bake some cookies and give them away to my neighbors here on the 5th floor and the lion’s share to Sister Catherine and the nuns over at the rectory at Sacred Heart. Sister Catherine wasn’t in when I rang the bell but another nun, Sister Naomi was. She remembered me and I’d brought along one of our new postcards which has all the album and singles covers, so there are several pictures of you. She asked about it, so I told her some about you. Sister Catherine already knows and prays for you. I like meeting new people and being able to tell them about you.

And it made me think, also, of one time being in Davis with you when you suddenly just got up and decided to make some cookies. You were disappointed that they didn’t come out as good as you had hoped but I thought they were delicious and that it was a lovely thing to do. I was so grateful to be with you.

And I still am, little sweetheart, so grateful, indeed, to belong to you. My treasure. Forever. Please be near me and help me be the best person I can be. With all my love forever.

Mini-Documentary

Little sweetheart, we’ve finished rolling out the documentary about the making of Til Morning Is Nigh.

Each Friday for the last six weeks we’d been uploading a new “episode” of the six part interview and a new music video from the album. The whole thing is up now in a playlist entitled The Making of “Til Morning Is Nigh” on the band’s YouTube channel.

I think two of my favorite clips are Part Six of the interview, set in Central Park, because I talk quite a bit about you. And the video for “Noel” because your vocals are so prominent and there are lots of images of you including some footage of you on our trip to Ireland.

Thinking of you always and with love forever.

Jesse

Today, little sweetheart, is the sad anniversary of your beloved big brother Jesse's tragic passing.

It happened just a little over a year before I met you and was still so hard to comprehend - you loved and missed him so very much. And although I was not lucky enough to have met dear Jesse, I have dreamt of him many times, doubtless because he remains so very near us, even now, nearer than we can imagine - just as you feel so near yourself - and because you and your mom and dad and his dear friend and ours, Noah, have all told me so many wonderful stories of him. You never stopped telling me, little sweetheart, about Jesse. Just as you told me so many stories of your childhood, of your mom and dad and how very much you loved all of them.

Even before I dreamt of Jesse, I felt I somehow knew him. And I have dreamt of him, many times. Often, you are there, too. I'm always so grateful when you visit me in dreams, my little sweetheart.

One of the dreams that comes most to mind today is one where I was in the Richland Road kitchen. Your mom and dad were there and Jesse too, who was kind of holding court. He was charming and hilarious and we all were enthralled. Then, you yourself, little sweetheart, came through the swinging door from the dining room, as if you had simply come downstairs from your room. I ran to you and gathered you in my arms weeping with joy. I wouldn’t let go. Jesse lightly teased me until he understood and then he and your mom explained that everything was okay. We were all together now forever and nothing could take us away from each other again. It was okay to let go, really. The room was full of love and I felt like I wanted to be there forever. And I was.

I think this is something like what simply is but I just can’t yet quite see. I believe. I believe that you and your brother are so very near but just out of sight of mortal eyes. And that you are eternal and always - that we all are - and that I will find that, find you, on that day when I finally join you.

I love you with all my heart and soul. Forever. 

Little Flashlight

Thinking today, little sweetheart of that little flashlight I got for you. Do you remember?

You were working at ACT at the YC. Craig Slaight had hired you as the dialect coach for an Irish play they were doing. I came with you to one of the dress rehearsals where you both were taking notes and you noticed that he had this neat little flashlight, a kind of a very soft reading light, flat, in the shape and size of a Metrocard, basically, or a bookmark.

You were so taken with it, I began to look around to find one for you and when I got back to New York I found one in the gift store at The Met. It had a nice little print of a Degas on one side and when you squeezed it, a tiny soft little reading light came on. I wrapped it up with a little note and sent it straight out to you the next day by post.

One of the things I most loved and most miss is watching you delight in something and quickly procuring it and giving it to you. You are the great blessing of my life and I always want you to know how grateful I am and keen to make you happy. Love you forever!

This Warmer Weather

It’s nearing the end of September, little sweetheart, but we had an unseasonably warm day yesterday and and even hotter one today - it was nearly 90f! I don’t like running on the weekend because the path along the river gets quite crowded but I do tend to go for a long walk instead.

Today I was just going to go up to about West End Collegiate and back, but I decided to stop in at Zabar’s for a little snack and then headed farther up into Riverside Park to have it. I hadn’t been up there in a while and it was prettier than I remembered. I sat on a bench there overlooking the Hudson, the late afternoon turning to early evening and the light brilliant.

It made me think so much of you and the long days of September in San Francisco with you when it’s at its most warm and sunbathed. I thought of the two of us taking one of our epically long walks, maybe one of those in Golden Gate Park around the botanicals or maybe all the way to the windmill.

The changing seasons are always so bittersweet, my little sweetheart, and I ache for you. But every thought and memory lets me know that you remain, that you are near and forever and that I will be with you again and always. With all my love forever.

Faith!

I was walking over to the river this afternoon, little sweetheart, on my way to the pedestrian path to go for a run. I walk from the house over to where it starts just below Riverside Park and I was walking up 10th Avenue under some scaffolding that kind of cuts the sidewalk in half, making two lanes.

Suddenly someone came whisking past me very very close and startling me because they were talking. They weren't on foot. They were on an electric skateboard speeding past but very near because the sidewalk is so narrow there. I stopped in my tracks because it really did startle me and I watched him keep buzzing up the street, a bit annoyed.

Then, as I calmed down a little, I realized what he'd said. He had earbuds in, so he was probably talking to someone on his phone but all I heard was one word. It was this: faith.

What a strange and wonderful thing, however inadvertent. And it made me think immediately of you, little sweetheart.

Faith. Yes, faith, indeed. With all my love forever.