In Oregon on the 4th...

Little sweetheart, I remembering today our trip to the Oregon coast with your family and what great fun we had. It was just less than six weeks since my mom had unexpectedly passed and your folks were so incredibly kind to me (as always). I can't imagine having gone through it without you by my side. You kept me aloft with your love (as always).

 

 

About May 23

Little sweetheart, my mom died on this day 14 years ago. I've been thinking about it, of course - how you helped me and how cruel it was to lose you, too, just 10 months later. 

My little sweetheart, I don't post here enough - I'm working on our book and our music, but I'm tortured by the idea that I have not kept up this blog, too. I resolve to do better. In all things. 

Below are my notes about my mom. Love you forever. 

MAY 23rd, 2010:
14 years ago I was in London when I got the news, by email in the middle of the night, that my Mom had died.

I'd been up late, excited about starting rehearsals in the morning at The Finborough Theatre. Wilson Milam was directing my play "Seven Pages Unsigned" to help kickoff the theatre's 30th anniversary series - The Vibrant Festival. I'd only just arrived in London the day before. We - Wilson, I and the play - were featured in TimeOut and I sent the link to my mom. It was one of the last emails I ever sent to her.

I was still sending rewrites to Wilson and the actors that night because that was very much Wilson & me, changes right up to curtain - I had his new notes and had been writing all day. Summer was marked for the play, too - she'd read in Seattle and NYC, where we hoped to stage productions but she couldn't make this trip. It was still her part, wherever it finally went up and she knew that. No full production was going up without her - bottom line, understood. But this was a great development opportunity for Wilson and I to work on the play. And all three of us loved The Finbourough. Summer was keen to hear how it all went. And we had plans in NYC as soon as I got back in June - recording sessions for the new BPX record in Brooklyn.
 

Wilson and I cast a mostly RADA-centric cast, several of whom had been in my play DC at RADA two seasons before.

I was staying at my lifelong friends Binky St Joy and Kris's flat in Kentish Town. They were up in Wales for a few days but coming back for Vibrant. I'd see them in a day or two. I was alone in the flat and remember emailing and I think even texting Wilson (on my bottom-of-the-line free with a cell-plan VodaFone- Summer got one, too, from Orange, when we were last in London together, a few months before -we had to remember to pack and charge them the moment we got to England!) as we chatted about the play before I finally went to bed. There was a documentary about "Exile on Main Street" on Channel 4 and he was watching it, too, a huge Stones fan.
I finally went to bed and tried to sleep for a few hours, over-excited about the first day of rehearsal in the morning. I put Radio 4 on my MacBook and tried to get some rest. I slept fitfully, waking at some point and decided to check email.

My brother had written me in all caps: EMERGENCY! YOU MUST COME HOME NOW! Puzzled, I wrote back that it was after 2am, I was in London and what was up? Was Mom okay? "NO! COME HOME!" was the answer.

I couldn't call out on the landline because I didn't know how, so I woke Joy and Kris in Wales, dialing out on my UK cell to ask, saying I thought my mom was in hospital or perhaps, unthinkably, dead. I guess Joy told me how to dial out to the US. I don't remember but she must have. I don't remember talking to my brother but I must have. I do remember calling Summer and getting her voicemail. It was still early evening in SF and I didn't hear back for half an hour - she'd been at the theatre.

I think I've said the rest before - I told her the news and she immediately burst into tears and then told me to get on Skype. I did and there was my little sweetheart, the love of my life - thank god she and Mom got to know one another! "I want to see you drink an entire glass of water", she said, eventually. "And try to sleep. My mom is here with me and we will get you on a flight home. Sleep and I will watch you, I will watch you while you sleep", she said, my laptop remaining open.

Summer and Linda got me a flight and even booked a car to take me to Heathrow in the morning, a few hours away. At the airport, I texted Wilson - they'd stage the play without me - and wrote my mom's eulogy. Summer flew herself to Detroit. She and Linda had got me to JFK and I'd fly again the next morning- Summer wrote me, while I was in flight - to Detroit Metro to meet her.
She had brought my suit, hanging in her closet in SF. She slept that night in the airport, making friends with everyone working the overnight shift. When I saw her, I ran to her. I always did but this time remains especially burned into memory. I saw her before she saw me. I gathered her in my arms.

She'd brought a purple dress and my suit and we took them to the only drying cleaning place in town for a press. Later that day after my brother arrived and we talked, it was clear that he had no idea what to do. Summer was on it. My mom had a cottage on Lake Leeanne. She had hoped I would bring Summer out to see it and we thought that we would but, we ran out of time. I drove her out to see it. Summer loved the cottage. I imagined how much my Mom would've loved to see her there and pictured her any minute coming out of the house with a tray - "how about some root beer floats?" When we drove back, I saw an ice cream stand and took Summer for that very thing. That was the first day.

Summer was with me for the entire week as we planned my mom's funeral. I could not have done a thing without her. Her love was/is like the fucking sun. She saved me. My mom, more than anyone saw and knew that.

10 months later, Summer herself unbelievably, tragically passed.

I wasn't over my mom's death, honestly, when the second tragedy wiped out everything.
I once nearly drowned in the Atlantic. The first wave knocked me down but subsequent ones hit me with more force, making it impossible to see the surface and drawing me out to sea, toward my death. When I emerged, no one on the shore noticed, as if it hadn't happened.
I dunno. I guess your parents are meant to proceed you in death.

I don't think I was quite done mourning - I'm sorry, Mom - but losing Summer... what can I say? It was, it is, too much.

I miss my mom. I miss my little sweetheart. Love you both forever. Grief is the price we pay for love, yes?

Thank god for you both. And I know I will see you again - Faith! - soon and forever.

With love & faith....

August Days

Little sweetheart, I'm returned from travels armed with writings and recordings and so many thoughts of you. 

I managed to avoid the crazy heat wave that all but engulfed New York in my absence and am running around now in the relatively mild weather getting caught up on things. Including your mom's birthday which is in less than a week! 

I usually like to bake her a birthday cake (just like I would do for your own!). She particularly likes a lemon cake. I can't get to California for the occasion, so I'm ordering one, a vanilla bean one, for her later today to arrive the day before. 

So many thoughts of you, my little sweetheart! And all my love forever.

Christmas Day...

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas! I’m on my own but I’ll always remember our Christmas together with your folks.  

I’d gotten you a couple of things. As always, a little something from our London friend, Joy’s, jewelry shop in Newburgh Street near Oxford Circus. And I’d remembered that you’d said something about wanting a pink angora sweater, so I found a nice one for you from Karen Millen. You’d completely forgotten about it, so you were delightfully surprised.

Your mom made a point to give us a couple of gifts together, and because she knew we liked watching movies and shows together - “watching a story with my partner at the end of the day”, you used to say - she bought us a box set of the first season of Gabriel Bryne’s show “In Treatment”, with the instruction that we were only to watch it together. I loved that.

As everyone opened there presents in the living around the tree, you sat right next to me on the sofa and watched me especially carefully as I began to unwrap another present from your mom and dad. When I slipped the gift paper off, there was a small square box. I opened it to find what at first glance looked like an antique pocket watch but upon closer examination turned out to be a compass. I looked up and your dad said to me, “so you can always find us”. I burst into tears.

I’d lost my mother just a few months before. I’d been in London when I got the news and you and your mom had gotten me back to New York and then on to Detroit, where you met me and stayed at my side for that entire week as we planned the funeral and everything. It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever done for me and now this. When I turned the compass over, I saw that that very phrase “so you can always find us” had been engraved by your mom. Later she told me that when she had shown it to you before Christmas you had said to her, quite presciently, “oh, mom, you’re just going to make him cry”. The beautiful compass remains here, little sweetheart, on my mantle with many pictures of you and other treasures.

So many memories, my little sweetheart. I’m so very grateful. And I love you forever.

That Song

It’s the last day and night of June, little sweetheart. Today has been the hottest day of the year, so far. 97f at its peak here in the late afternoon.

Tonight, I don’t know why, I thought of looking up something on YouTube. It was something that had been on TV and rather a phenomenon at the time, so much so that my mom had sent me a link to watch it. It was that clip of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. I remember it being a little extraordinary as it was one of those awful TV talent shows and as she was older and didn’t look like a model or something that everyone was rather mean and dismissive when she came out and then shocked, and hopefully ashamed of themselves, to hear how wonderfully she sang.

I remember telling you about it and although you agreed with all that you were less excited because, as you told me, you had “a relationship with that song”, yourself. I didn’t quite know what you meant, little sweetheart, but I thought I understood.

When I finally did hear you sing it, it was from a performance that had been filmed when you were only 12 years old. They played it at your memorial on a huge screen at the back of the stage. You were still a little girl but all of you, all I would come to know, was there in your eyes as you sang expressively, soaringly and beautifully.

Your memorial, of course, was held, incredibly, on my own birthday. A day we’d meant to spend rehearsing a play of mine in New York, then driving to Philadelphia that night to see Low play at the storied indie venue at The First Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street. Instead I was here at the Brava Theatre in The Mission in San Francisco about to give your eulogy.

As in all things, little sweetheart, I followed you. After they showed you singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, the tears still rolling down my cheeks, I got up with the words I’d written for you and stood at the podium in silence for a long moment before I could finally gather myself enough to begin.

When I hear that song now, I, too, have a relationship with it, little sweetheart. One that you gave me, like so many other things that I treasure, that saved and redeem me.

How I love you! Forever, my angel. Forever.

May 23

Little sweetheart, eleven years ago today, I learned that my mom had died. 

I was in London for the Finborough Theatre production of my play Seven Pages Unsigned. I’d just arrived two days before. Rehearsals were to begin in the morning and I was too excited to sleep, so at about 4am, I checked my email and I had one subject-lined “EMERGENCY - YOU MUST COME HOME” in all caps. 

I couldn’t dial out internationally because I didn’t know how and I was alone. I feared the worst and called the friend’s - Kris & Joy - whose flat I was staying at while they were on holiday in Wales. Joy told me how to dial out, I called and got the news. 

Then, I called you in San Francisco. When I told you, you burst into tears and then told me to get on Skype so you could see and help me. You and your mom arranged fights for me to return and even a car service from North London to Heathrow. 

While I was flying back to New York, heartbroken, you packed up one of my suits that was hanging in your closet, and got on a plane to meet me in Detroit. When I landed at JFK, you told me to go home to my apartment, sleep and get on a flight the next morning. You spent the night, all night, at Detroit Metro, waiting for me to arrive. 

When I saw you, I ran to you and you took me in your arms. Your arms, that held me up all that week through everything as I buried my mother. 

Ten months later, I would lose you, too. 

You did so much for me, little sweetheart, but this act of love and kindness may have been the most incredible. 

I will love you forever. I miss you terribly. And I pray with faith that I will be with you again, forever and soon. 

With all my love.

May Day

It’s May 1st, little sweetheart. 

I remember when I was a little boy that we used to celebrate May Day in elementary school by making little baskets, cutting strips of colored construction paper and then weaving and taping them together, finishing with a little handle at the top. Then, on the walk home, gathering flowers - honestly, probably dandelions, mostly - filling the basket and then hanging it on the front doorknob of the house for our mothers. 

How I’d like to do that with you and for you, little sweetheart. I’m thinking of you on this day and every day. 

With all my love forever.
 

Good News

Little sweetheart, I heard from your mom today and I have good news - your dad, being a frontline worker, an MD, has gotten the second of his two Covid vaccines. 

He’s the first person we know to have done so and we’re all incredibly relieved because he has been so committed, as always, to caring for the sick and we’ve been terribly worried about his constant exposure. Hopefully, your mom will get hers next, soon. Fingers crossed! 

With all my love forever.

Listen and Remember

I’m sitting here tonight switching through the channels on Sling, little sweetheart, and I saw that The Wizard of Oz was on. It doesn’t matter where I pick up watching that - the beginning, middle or end - randomly, it just always breaks my heart because of how thoroughly my thoughts are filled with you. 

Of course, you famously played Dorothy - I think you were 12, is that right? - in the production at the Chico Light Opera company. People were still talking about it 20 years later and it had been such a big thing early in your life, it’s how you’d first worked with and met Coy. 

I remember one time you and I set out on a long walk from your apartment in the Inner Sunset all through Golden Gate Park and finally winding up down by Ocean Beach. It had begun to rain and we ducked into quite a nice restaurant. You’d wanted to take me there anyway, so we got ourselves a table by the window. A little jazz trio was playing and at one point they began to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I held your hand and looked into your eyes and cried and cried and cried. 

How I love you! How I still do! How I always will! 

I remember you telling me once - remember exactly where we were, I was driving your Prius and we were on the way to go grocery shopping at Andronico’s. It was shortly after my mom had died and you propped my up that whole week. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you - As we drove you said something to me about your own death. You thought I would probably outlive you and you asked two things - that I speak at your funeral or memorial and that I listen to our songs, like what we were playing on the car stereo just then and all of our songs - and think of you. 

The Wizard of Oz is like that. It’s so hard to take it on and not fall apart with longing and grief. But I try. And I love you my little sweetheart. 

Love you forever.

Butterflies

Little sweetheart, as the season comes to a close turning to autumn, I've been savoring the last sights and scents and sounds. 

One of the loveliest of them all has been the proliferation of butterflies these last few months and it always makes me think of you, feel your celestial presence near me. 

There's a very pretty spot along where I run in Riverside Park. It's the little 91st Street Gardens. Often I'll go for a walk up there or start my run even father up to get in my miles so I can come walk and linger there, looking for the magical creatures. 

One of the most recognizable of all butterflies is the orange and black beauty called the "Monarch". They're famous for the epic journey they make each year from the Brazilian rain forest all the way to southern Canada. Sadly, over the last decade or so they've become endangered by climate change. Your mom and I watched a documentary about the monarch's migration about a year ago and one of the things they said would help bring them back is milkweed. Monarchs love milkweed, apparently. So, your mom planted some at both houses. 

And here in the park up by those gardens I've seen three or four or five of the little beauties almost every day. Also, a black swallowtail, of late. 

It always brings me close to you, little sweetheart, to stop and watch and gently talk to them. I know you are so much closer than I can even imagine and these pretty winged ones help always to remind me. 

With all my love forever. 

July in Remembrance

July is drawing toward a close, soon, little sweetheart, and just as I said I thought it might, it is bringing to me memories of being with you that last July we had together.

Your folks had rented a house on the Oregon Coast for the July 4th weekend and invited the extended family along. Your brother nearly burnt the place down when the fireworks he was shooting off on the beach caught some brush alight. But even that was fun in the end, the crisis averted.

I have some breathtaking pictures of you from that time, my iPhone still quite a new thing, and a video of you magically appearing from the doorway of your room onto the balcony. We drove dune buggies (or rather you drove, I rode) along the shore, specifically where the rental guys told us not to go.

Staying on in California some additional weeks, we shot that short film based on my play Two From the Line, expanded with a role I wrote especially for you. And we spent several days together at the beautiful house in Davis.

My mom had unexpectedly passed away less than two months earlier. You’d gotten my home from London, then flew to be at my side. I knew that week and told you that whatever happened in my life now, I needed to be nearer to you.

We were figuring it out. They were the best days of my life.

I think somehow they still are there and that when I know that all you know now, I will find that - that we can live in all moments of our life simultaneously, ad infinitum, however we choose, because time is not what we think it is.

We, you, are forever. With all my love.

With A Heart Full of Longing And Love

Little sweetheart, I’m doing one thing after another tonight that brings you near.

Just finished mixing one of the songs for the new album, your voice soaring above all. Then found a YouTube video of a forum at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard about the West Wing and burst into tears as they played the theme song, my first thought of your enduring goodness.

As I was thinking about that and how I’d like to express it maybe as the caption to the big photo of you inside the CD, someone said something that suddenly made me think about the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.

Little sweetheart, that was one of my mom’s favorite songs and everything came to me in that moment- all the loss and my love for you.  

“Every place I go, I’ll think of you
Every song I sing, I’ll sing for you
When I come back, I’ll wear your wedding ring”.

The song is written by John Denver, but the version my mom loved was the one by Peter, Paul and Mary, and afternoon that last line that Mary Traverse sings, they repeat, almost plaintively shouting in the background, “I’ll wear your ring!”

Oh my little sweetheart, I’m weeping as I write this. I miss you so! Please please please help and guide and take me to you as soon as heaven will allow. Love forever.

On This Day - Mom

My little sweetheart, within the next 24 hours is the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death. We don’t quite know exactly, because my brother found her after her fall and we don’t quite know when it happened.

When the news of it came, it was a late Sunday night going into Monday morning. I was in London, excited to begin rehearsals for a play of ours - one that you and I were hoping to do together at Seattle Rep.  I had been texting my director, our friend, Wilson Milam, with notes and rewrites well past midnight after which I finally went to bed.

My laptop was nearby playing music and still restless around 4am, I reached over to check email. My brother had written in all caps “EMERGENCY. YOU MUST COME HOME”. I was puzzled to say the least. I wrote back to say I was in London and was mom okay and he replied “NO. COME HOME.”

You know the rest, little sweetheart. I’ll write more later but I'm remembering just now how I called you once I had the actual confirmation. I was alone. I was staying at Kris & Joy's in Northern London but they were in Wales at the farm. I didn't even know how to dial out international on the landline. I had to wake them to find out.

The first call after that, I made to you in San Francisco. I told you and you burst into tears and then began helping me through every single step for a week. You got me on a flight back to NYC and then Detroit. You flew yourself there and brought my suit. You slept in the airport waiting for my flight. You took me into your arms and helped me through every moment. You took me by the hand and over and over that entire week every night to remind me that you were the love of my life and that I was still alive with something, the most Important thing to live for - you.

It’s that day, today, little sweetheart. And I am so grateful and miss you so very much. Oh my dear dear True Love. Take me home, soon, won’t you?

With all my love.

Mom's B'day

Little sweetheart, today is my mom’s birthday. She’d be… well, maybe she’d actually prefer if I didn’t say how old but I sure do miss her. I’m so very glad you two got to meet and spend a little time getting know one another. Like everything, I wish there had been more time but I’m glad there was some.

Last night after working and having dinner I looked for something to watch - just like you thought me to do with you, watching a story at the end of the day together with your partner; was so happy and proud to be called your own! - and I saw that one of my mom’s favorite movies was coming on. It seemed very cosmic, in a way. So, I sat down and watched it all the way through.

It was Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I think maybe I remember the movie most because, even though I often say this was one of mom’s favorite movies and it was along with Casablanca and a few others, what she liked most about it, I think, was the song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, the BJ Thomas version of the Bacharach/David composition. She had the 45 and I remember how she liked singing it.

I’m so glad you two met, little sweetheart. It’s actually a little uncanny how as young girls - like very young, like 4 or 5 - you resemble one another in photographs, even decades and decades apart. I suspect you two have gotten to know one another even better now, in the forever. And I very much like thinking about that and the day when I may finally join you.

With all my love forever.

Christmas Morning

Good morning, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas!

I’m kinda just taking it easy today, writing a little and recording a couple of basic tracks and thinking of earlier years when I was with you or my mom or later, with your folks.

Even though today is kinda lonely, Sylvia will be here day after tomorrow and we’ll have a little Christmas of our own, then, and the following week, head out to see your folks and have a second with them, too.

Today, I’m remembering especially our first Christmas, little sweetheart, when you gave the beautiful scarf you knitted while doing the play up in Boston and the breathtaking Christmas letter you included with it - part of which is now tattooed on my right arm.

Christmas is such a good day to remember all the things you taught me about love and all that really matters.

Merry Merry Christmas, my angel. Thinking of you with love and forever.

Thankful... For You!

Little sweetheart, today is Thanksgiving.

I'm all my own but I learned a couple of years ago that even if I am alone - be it on my birthday or some holiday meant for gathering like this one - I need to observe and not shrink from it. That only makes things the more lonely.

So, even though I miss you terribly (and my mom, too), I am so very grateful that you found me, that you come to me still in dreams and in the most unusual circumstances to fortify my faith. I know we'll be together again and forever. And even though I can't quite see where you are just now, we are together even in your seeming absence.

I'm so thankful and blessed, my little sweetheart. And I love you. Love you forever.

In Ireland

Little sweetheart, it was this week, eight years ago, that we went on our trip to Ireland together.

Although I hadn't been there since 2001, it was one of the first things you and I talked about when we met - my travels there and how very much you wanted to go with me sometime.

After my mom unexpectedly passed away in May of that same year, I knew even more than I had before that I needed to be with you as much as possible and that even though you were already so good at seizing the moment and doing things NOW, not waiting for some mythical "someday", that we needed to plan a trip there.

You were going to be in France in late September and I had to go to London around the same time, so we settled on October. We traveled with my friends Kris & Joy, who had been with me on my previous visits to the emerald isle, and we rented a little cottage in Kilcrohane, a small village at the end of the Sheep's Head Peninsula, a place we'd come to love all those years ago.

You and I went for long walks, one epic one all the way out to and around the lighthouse and another past Doneen pier when a little Jack Russell dog suddenly appeared and ran a few feet ahead of us, seemingly taking us on a tour, for nearly an hour.

I'm so grateful that I have so many wonderful pictures of you on that trip, almost 300, I think. Maybe I'll post a few of them here over the next few days, little sweetheart, and tell a little story.

I'm so very glad we had that trip together, just as you so wanted. It's hard not to feel the sadness begin to rise in my chest at the thought of how much you loved it and had spoken of new plans to return - there was a lovely old man there, Johnny, who had taken such a shine to you, and we had planned to return in the spring when it happened to be his birthday. So many of the village folks that got to meet you were taken with you and your mane of red hair ("where are all the redheads?", you asked one of the locals in the pub, I recall, and he said "they're all in Scotland, lass.").

This picture is one from that day when the little dog led us around the twists and turns of the path down to Doneen pier. May you lead me even now through my own arduous travels and bring me safely home again to your side in the Forever. With all my love...

Let It Be So

Little sweetheart, today is the 4th of July. I'm mostly busy trying to get back to some of the projects that have been on hold for the last two months since the incident.

Two big music things - the side project I told you about with dear Sylvia (we call the band Native Tongue and the album title is Interiors) and the new Bipolar Explorer record (which, of course, you will be on), which we hope to release in time for Christmas. My arm is still very limited in range of motion but I've found that I can play guitar if seated and not flying from one end of the fretboard to the other. I'm trying to make up for lost time, get back on something closer to schedule.

But mostly what I'm thinking of today, unsurprisingly, most wonderfully, is you. We certainly had a memorable 4th of July a few years ago, didn't we little sweetheart?

It had only been a little over a month since my mom had passed away. I got the news in the middle of the night in an email, of all things. I was in London, alone, and it woke me up. You were the first person I got on the phone after I woke up Kris and Joy in Wales to find out how to dial internationally from their landline (I was staying at their flat while they were gone for the weekend). You took care of me, took care of everything. Got me on a plane. Flew yourself across the country to meet me, waiting in the airport all night to meet my plane. Stayed with me that whole week - coaxing the cats out of hiding, still traumatized from my mom's fall, helped plan the service and select the flowers, found mom's music to play, listened as I read you the eulogy moments after I typed it on her computer. You stayed and helped me, comforted me, stood me up and supported me in the crush of grief that whole week when I buried my mother.

Soon, you were here in NYC with me. And after that you brought me to you and with your family on a vacation that 4th of July weekend on the Oregon Coast.

Your dad rented a lovely house for the weekend that your brother nearly burnt down (a pretty wild exaggeration but it seemed like it at the time!) when the fireworks show went awry, we had a lovely boat ride down the River Rouge, visited a crazy "Prehistoric Village" where there old timey sculptures of dinosaurs (I have a picture of you kissing one) and famously went dune buggy riding.

You were excited to take the wheel, even as the proprietors warmed us "no matter what you, do not drive near the coast on the wet sand". So, naturally, as everyone else tackled the huge mountains of sand, you sped the two of us away right to the edge of the crashing waves and along the wet sand because it was fun! I have the most wonderful video of you on my phone, I'll try to post it on here.

We're speeding away, the engine roaring, a seagull or two taking startled flight off your path, as the waves roll in around us, the sky brilliant and you, helmeted and face wrapped in a scarf like some daredevil bandita. At one point you finally pull it a little ways away, revealing your beautiful, smiling, angelic face and wave to camera. I linger on you as you return your gaze to the path you're blazing ahead, before you turn to me with that loving look of yours acknowledging my utter devotion, my longing for you even as you are only an arm's length away and smiling as if to say "I know, but we're busy right now, I'll hold and kiss you in just a minute, when we're done and forever." 

Let that be so, my little sweetheart, my love. Let it be so and forever.

Works in Progress

Little sweetheart, I'm home but still struggling a bit with my recovery. I'm sad to not be writing more but will endeavor to do so as my health improves. At a follow up appointment the other day, the doctor told me that during the incident my heart stopped for ten minutes. It's something of a miracle that I am still here. As you are a miracle yourself and my earthly angels- your mom and our dear dear new one, the wonderful Sylvia - are as well. I've been listening to our cover of the traditional Scottish folk song, "Wild Mountain Thyme", which we re-titled from its chorus,"We'll All Go Together". I know that is true and that we will all be there one day, but I also know you and these earthly beloveds have need for me here just now. And I will do my best to get better and with love and kindness do what is set forth for me. With love forever and to be continued....

"Saving" Christmas...

Little sweetheart, it’s been quite a day, this Christmas Day.

Last night, we still had more than a few things to do to get ready. I had my presents all wrapped but we were still making little adjustments trimming the tree. Your dad was on call, so he got home a little late and had to leave early this morning. Before we went to bed we had the lovely tradition of getting our new pajamas. I love mine!

We went to bed not too late but your mom is such a perfectionist and so generous that she couldn’t help but stay up far too late working on everything. Your dad had to leave early for the OR and when I got up your Mom had only been asleep for a couple hours. We got a big turkey and lots of things to make dinner yesterday at the market but I didn’t want to start until we both were up. I went for  run and when I came back I had several messages on my phone. Your dad was worried because he still at the hospital and your mom was a still asleep because she’d been working so hard all night. Your mom is so lovely, little sweetheart, and wants everything to be perfect and he was afraid she’d wake up in a panic. There wouldn’t be time to make such a big dinner before the kids got here.

But I had an idea - instead of trying to cook that enormous turkey in time, I could get together a big lasagna instead. I’d already made a pie. I told your dad that and he said to try that and to gently wake your mom and see if it was okay. I just told her I had things under control and not to worry and, incredibly… it worked.

So, I headed out to get what I need but… all the markets were closed. I couldn’t think what to do. Finally, I tried a Walgreen’s that was open. They had three jars of nice pasta sauce, so I grabbed those and went looking for cheese. They didn’t have parmesan or ricotta but they had those long mozzarella individually wrapped string cheese packages. I grabbed that and some shredded mixture and remembered that sometimes you can substitute cottage cheese for ricotta. They had one tub of low fat cottage cheese so I grabbed that too. They didn’t have the noodles but I thought if we had just 10 noodles in the pantry from last year, if your mom hadn’t thrown them out, I would be fine. I got to checkout and they told me they didn’t have any bags. So, I carried the whole things in a cart to the car and then brought the cart back. I tried to think where to go if we didn’t have noodles at home. I stopped back at the house first, tho’, to check and we had exactly 10!

There were lots of vegetables already because we had plans to roast them. I often sautee different vegetables but I used everything we had including parsnips that we were going to use with the mashed potatoes. I cut everything up fine and sautéed it all in olive oil. I added the red sauce and seasoning and got the noodles on, grated the cheese one string at a time (!) and made the layers and got it all in the oven. I made a salad and by the time everyone showed up, it was all ready. Your mom and dad didn’t get stressed and there was plenty to eat and I even had time for a shower - I’d been going since my run hours earlier. Your dad said later that I “saved Christmas”. I don’t know about.

I do know that you saved me and that while I’m still here waiting to join in The Forever, that I need to take the lessons of love you taught me and do my best to take care of our beloveds as best I can. When I do, I can feel you near me. And that’s what it’s all about, isn't it, little sweetheart? Happy Christmas, my darling. With all my love forever.