Hello my dears! Are you wondering what to get me for Christmas (or Solstice or belated Hanukkah)? Here is what I would like: a memory. I would love it if you would tell me something you remember about Val. Or about Val and me, or Val and you, or you Continue Reading
Day of the Dead
Nelson Mandela died yesterday. Here is a thing: nowadays, when I read that someone has died, I am noticing that I react with almost a comfortable sense of kinship. Not kinship with the mourners, but with the person who died. As if the dead person and I, we went to Continue Reading
a poem I read to Val
My dears, In the last weeks of Val’s life, someone from her meditation group shared a poem with her. She described it to me, briefly with her brief breath, and I sat in the bed next to her spelunking the internet with my phone until I found the right thing. Continue Reading
to be dissolved
This is from My Antonia, which I just read, wishing the whole time I was reading it to Val. Today marks six months she has been gone, and it still makes no sense to me at all. I miss her fiercely.
sangha stone & huckleberry
My dears, A small sweet house in SE Portland has been turned into a meditation center, a sangha. Val used to meditate there, and when she couldn’t travel easily, her meditation group came to her at home. Nelly (Val’s meditation teacher) and the rest of the group wanted to Continue Reading
an invitation
My dears, listen, this blog has so many days felt like a lifeline. Writing that – “lifeline” – I pictured, in quick proliferation: a towline, like with a mule on the Erie Canal; a muddy tug-of-war rope at some happy family picnic; an IV drip; the belaying line connecting mountaineers; Continue Reading
When I came into this room
When I came into this room, you were already here. When the fierce winds pushed me in, and the door slammed shut, you looked up from your tables of quiet fellowship and you greeted me. You know who you are. I knew who I was. Now I am becoming again. Continue Reading
tattoo
My dears, Many people have asked me to elaborate upon the meaning of Val’s tattoo. I tried a few times and got stuck, because actually, Val didn’t put it in words that often. But here are some of the meanings I understood her tattoo to have: The spiral was to Continue Reading
rosehips
Four months ago today we lost our Val. I miss her all day, every day. The ache winds like a fugue-melody through the background of everything. The days are filled with things that don’t quite become real because I don’t get to show them to her. I wanted to show Continue Reading
time zones
noticing the strange ways of time this summer of grieving folding and expanding I might have seen the Northern Lights, once. I was on a walk late at night by myself in southern Indiana, when I looked up — I was always watching the sky — and saw my bright Continue Reading