My dears, Our much-loved Val Garrison left us one year ago today, a fact which still seems inconceivable. I miss her every day. Here is something good: the Valerie Garrison Art and Education Scholarship is launched! Miles and Sandy and I have chosen the very first recipient from Val’s hometown Continue Reading
death
birthday relay
Val was almost exactly a year older than me. 22 days separate our birthdays: March 8 (mine) and March 30 (Val’s). Every year when my birthday would swing around again, I would get this companionable, kid-like goofy happy feeling from being the same age as Val for most of March. Continue Reading
dahlias
A wonderful woman, Betty Garrison, left the world a year ago today. She is sorely missed by me and many others. I’m doing my best to remember her on Val’s behalf too. This year I’m gonna pick out some new dahlias in her honor.
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.
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
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
how to coil a cord
An old friend called and left me a voicemail the other day. He said he’d been coiling up an extension cord and it called Val to mind, because of course he did it the way Val taught him: the way that lets the cord unwind again later without tangling. Val Continue Reading