Easter Sunday

Little sweetheart, today is Easter Sunday.

Sunday service is really nice but honestly, it’s the ones leading up to it that are the most meaningful to me. Maybe because I don’t remember observing any of them as a child - just Easter Sunday itself. And mostly, I think, for the reasons I’ve told you here - how the great gift of your love so changed and saved me.

I do have on our album, our 5th - Electric Hymnal - which I’ve often described as a sonic prayer for you. It was very much inspired by my experiences at West End and I had wanted to write and record something to express that - how it helped my mindfulness and listening for your celestial, guiding presence. It kind of marks, too, the beginnings of our using spoken word in our work. I think it holds up pretty good - it came out in June 2016 - and it takes me to you immediately.

Happy Easter, my little sweetheart!

The Morning After The Miracle

It's Easter Monday, little sweetheart. Not everyone celebrates this day and it's not widely thought of, I don't think, here in the states, but there's something resonant in it, I believe. The day after the miracle - and didn't I always call you one, yourself? - the first day of forever.

This morning as I'm having coffee and gathering notes for the days writing, I have Joe McGasko's WFMU show on. He's interviewing Dave Cousins of The Strawbs and the first song they play is one your favorites, the haunting "Where Does the Time Go?", with Sandy Denny on lead vocals. It just always stops me right in my tracks.

Someone else, overcome as I by the sound and words, would turn it off but I turn it up and sit quietly, the tears rolling down my face and think of you.

It happens a lot. On Friday, I was in physical therapy when Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" came on. I simply stopped what I was doing and sat there and let every memory roll over me. How you sang that song yourself - it had just come out - over and over, switching from your head voice to your chest voice in the chorus. How my heart swelled.

I remember you singing it in the parking lot of Andronico's, it was the last time, though we couldn't know it, and I gathered you in my arms and said "I love it when you sing".

My miracle. My Miracle Girl. How very much I love you. Forever. Forever.

Til Morning

The new album, our 8th, Til Morning Is Nigh, is out today, little sweetheart. We've already had some very kind words about it. As ever, it is so very much of, for and about you. As ever, my thoughts are of and with you. Forever, little sweetheart. Forever.

Down By The Pier

Little sweetheart, I remember waking  up with you one morning there in our little room in the cottage and deciding to set out on a long walk heading toward the end of the peninsula.

We started out that way and once we were a good ways beyond the village turning instead toward Bantry Bay and the pier at Doneen. The surrounding area there is lush and green and there was also a curious and sightly dangerous blowhole that dropped to the water below, a protective fence around it.

A longer walk would take us to the cliffs and as we set out, that little Jack Russell pup came flying seemingly out of nowhere to run just a little ways ahead of us almost the rest of the day.

This picture of you and I is from all the way down by the water. How complete you made me, little sweetheart. The other half of my soul. Love you forever.

April 1

It's Easter Sunday, little sweetheart, and, as ever, my thoughts are of you.

There's a lovely floral display each year at Easter at that little church up on West End Avenue I've told you about. You can put a few dollars into a little envelope and write the person's name you'd like to have flowers for in tribute, so I always have some for you. The envelopes usually say "Flower Offering" but one year at Easter they had instead a quote from Revelations: "I'm alive forever and always". 

I saved an extra one of those, little sweetheart, and I have it between two pictures of you on the bookshelf.

I'm saying grateful prayers for you, little sweetheart, that you came into my life and saved me with the great gift of your love. I know you are closer than I can imagine - alive forever and always - and that I simply must have faith, listen carefully for your guidance and know that I will be with you again, soon and forever. With all my love...

Together

Little sweetheart, I forgot about a picture I took last month that made me think of you...

I was at D’Agostino’s. They have a few things in common with Safeway (and we don't have Safeway's on the east coast...). I didn’t discover it until after I’d been in SF with you. The Safeway at The Marina had a delightful little SFX in the produce aisle that would make the sound of thunder when the sprinklers went on to wet the vegetables there. D’Ags has the same thing here. They also sometimes have something on the other side of the aisle opposite the produce that you and I used to love - frosted sugar cookies.

Remember? They’re really soft and cake-like and they usually put them out with a holiday theme - at St Patrick’s Day, they’ll be in shamrock shapes with green icing; on July 4th, they’ll be red, white and blue… They had some last month with a Christmas theme.

I took a picture because it reminded me of how you and I used to get a package of them, usually right there at the Marina Safeway, but sometimes at the one a bit closer to your house, and then drive down to the beach and watch the waves together. We’d eat the cookies and watch the tide come in. Once, I remember, we saw several dolphins. One and then another and another. We cried out excitedly. Remember? And we’d try not to eat all the cookies. but we’d have most of them.

Little sweetheart, I miss a thousand million things about my life with you. The life I was meant to have but was torn from me. I suppose there are many things I don’t and can’t yet know. Maybe there is a much better life with you just ahead once I get through this mortal one, one that I will find when I pass through the veil and see you finally take my hand and bring me along again to your side but this time forever.

I pray for that every morning and every night and often throughout the day. Take me to you the moment heaven will allow, won’t you, my love? I’ll bring those cookies we like…

Sunday morning

I haven't been able to go to Sunday services at that little church I told you about for the last little while, little sweetheart but I went two weeks ago and today and last week, too, when it was Easter. They had a "flower offering" - you could give a little donation ahead of time and on Easter it would go toward all the pretty flowers, lilies and azaleas, that decorate the altar. You could dedicate the flowers to someone. So, of course, I dedicated some to you. I did last year, too. Sunday services are a bit different from the Wednesday Taize ones. And to be perfectly honest, I like the quiet, candlelit Wednesday ones better. But both are good for being an hour of mindfulness when I can sit and think of you and pray for you and pray to be with you again soon. Many days are hard, my little sweetheart, without you. Somehow, weekends seem even harder. It's good to go to service, I like its mindfulness and I get very emotional. I've been crying all day, sweetheart. That happens a lot. Many days I'm simply in tears. I feel drained, exhausted, even dehydrated after. You'd tell me to drink an entire glass of water, wouldn't you, my love? So, I try to remember to do that. I feel horribly sad and terribly lost. I often feel that way, little sweetheart. But in a way, I don't mind feeling sad. It's supposed to hurt. I love thinking about you. So, even missing you so painfully is to also feel your presence somehow, to feel a connection, that once-in-a-lifetime connection. I'm so blessed to have been found by you. I've been thinking all this today, little sweetheart. Now, I need to lie down. But I didn't want to fall asleep with telling you all this. Now, I need to lie down. It's my favorite time of day, often. Lying down and talking to you as I fall asleep. Saying a quiet prayer. Hoping if not in the morning, then maybe the next one, that when I wake, I'll be with you in The Forever. Someday it will be so, won't it, Summer. Someday. Someday soon, I hope. With all my love forever...

Home

It’s Easter Sunday, little sweetheart, and I woke up early to go to that nice little church I’ve been telling you about. I’m really beginning to feel a shift – not in the way I love or miss or long for you, that is eternal, unchanging – but in how I get through these inexplicable days now. It’s such a contrast, I want to tell you.

I went to the theatre last night and really understood why I hadn’t been in so long – I don’t belong there anymore. There are so many things that used to be a part of my life, even seemed important, that just hold nothing for me anymore. Not without you here, my darling. I find myself doing my best, feeling the most right, when I’m at something mindful. And that’s not so easy to find always. It means letting go of things that once were routine and familiar. The letting go of those things, surprisingly, is not the hardest part. Sometimes, like last night, it just becomes so very clear. Sitting there – and also milling about with all the noisy, fussy, pretty people before and after – I could just feel and see with such clarity that I did not belong, that this wasn’t anything to do with the world I exist in now. It seemed foreign, strangely. Unrecognizable. Was it so different? Was it me? Was it both? It didn’t make me sad at all. I just had no reason to be there. It no longer spoke to me.

By contrast, this morning, even tho’ I didn’t feel good – I think I’m coming down with something, little sweetheart, this winter has gone on one day too long! – I got myself up and out of the house and I was glad to get to the lovely Sunday service. I felt better being there. And people were welcoming and friendly and knew my name and knew of you – I love talking to people about you, my love, I showed a young couple there who’ve been so nice to me a picture of you & I together in Carmel and your name was in the bulletin because I made a donation for the flower fund that decorated the altar today. I felt I was in the right place. And I felt you with me. Even tho’ you weren’t too big on church, your shining light of love would be so perfect here at my side, and I know you’re with me.

Afterward, on the walk home, I felt very tired - I fell right into bed and napped most of the afternoon – and a bit sad and so very lonely, my sweetheart. So very lonely without you. I don’t know why I’m still alive, to be honest, darling. I can’t imagine what more there is for me to do. How to go on. I just want more than anything to die myself and be with you where you are. All I want is for you to come collect me. And I guess while I wait the best thing I can do is just try to be nice and quiet and listen for you and try to find the places that feel at least a little bit right, where I feel I might belong a little, to let go of everything else so inconsequential, until I’m truly home. Because home is you, Summer. Home is you, my love, my beautiful angel, my little sweetheart. You are my home.