"Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Hours)

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure."
~ Henri Nouwen

An Open Letter About ALS | The New York Review of Books

An Open Letter About ALS | The New York Review of Books

This is the disease that took my husband's life. I can only hope that someday there will be a cure for this horrific disease.

WORD FOR THE DAY

From: Gratefulness.org

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

Collected Poems

You Can Go Home Again...

...but it doesn't mean you can stay there forever. I took a trip back east last week. I spent two days in New York City with someone who means far too much to me and then flew to Syracuse where I had close to three days to catch up with as many people as I could. All this was brought about by a birthday dinner that I had always been a part of and which I wanted to still be a part of. I told myself that I had the time and the money and that may not be true again for awhile. I told myself I needed to do it. My hope was that the trip would turn things around for me and that I would come back feeling renewed and determined to move ahead, something I have not been doing.

So here I am, back in Seattle, and starting to move forward, even if the trip made me feel that I really don't know anymore where I belong.