Goodreads | Quote by Dr. Seuss: "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fant..."

Goodreads | Quote by Dr. Seuss: "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fant..."

I am missing everything today...Martin, my mother, Michael, my job, my apartment, my car, solitude, peace, being surrounded by what I love, the ability to come and go as I please, freedom, my own bed, feeling connected to the place I am, familiarity, an anchor, a feeling of order, knowing where I belong...

THE VIOLETS OF MARCH | BY SARAH JIO | BOOK TRAILER.m4v

Passages to the Past: Author Guest Post + Giveaway: Terence Hawkins, au...

Passages to the Past: Author Guest Post + Giveaway: Terence Hawkins, au...: "Passages to the Past is pleased to bring you a guest post written by Terence Hawkins, author of The Rage of Achilles.  And don't forget to c..."

Passages to the Past: $100 CSN Gift Card Giveaway!!!

Passages to the Past: $100 CSN Gift Card Giveaway!!!: "The kind people at CSN has given Passages to the Past another $100 Gift Card to give away to one of my lucky followers! You have probably he..."

The Susan Holloway Scott Giveaway Extravaganza on Passages to the Past

To honor the release of The Countess and the King by Susan Holloway King, Passages to the Past

has Susan's entire bibliography (FIVE books total) up for grabs. Click on the Passages to the Past link to see how to enter to win. The giveaway ends on September 13th. Good luck!

"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.

The Past

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

~Herb Caen

This is not what I want to do but so often I find myself doing exactly that. I suppose I should be grateful that it is not like this all of the time.

An Anniversary for Remembering

Today is the anniversary of one of the most painful, sorrowful, and heartbreaking events of my life. It is not an anniversary to be celebrated but an anniversary for remembering the single most important person in my life, the one who when he went away left a void that can never be filled, an ache that will never go away, a sadness that even in my happy moments is hidden away in my heart, ready to make itself known again. Sometimes that sadness creeps up on me when I least expect it but there are other times when I know in an instant - when I hear the first few words to a song or I come across a picture or a card I had saved or when I close my eyes to go to sleep at night.

One year ago today my Martin passed away. One year and twenty three days after he was diagnosed with ALS he slipped away, surrounded by those who loved him. He fought the good fight, he handled his disease with grace and courage and with his wonderful sense of humor. I am comforted only by the thought that he is no longer suffering and that someday I will see him and we will never have to be separated again.

Today I remember Martin, my husband, who gave me the happiest times of my life and who loved me like no other.

A Rare Moment

I just now finished eating my dinner - a pasta bowl from Wegmans with bowtie pasta and sliced chicken - accompanied by a bottle of Sam Adams that had been poured into my Pike Brewing Company glass that I bought back in July while having dinner in the restaurant in Seattle, with Phil and Amanda- and reading the current issue of Artful Blogging and being enchanted by the story of Dottie Angel.

I closed my unfinished magazine (it will take some time to get through it because there is so much to look at and to savor) and felt pleasantly full. But more than that I realized I actually felt content. It is not often that I am visited by that feeling. I was amazed that I could feel this way when I am surrounded by vast heaps of stuff that is waiting to be packed for the move to Seattle. I looked around the room and I didn't see a mess. What I saw was a little corner of my world, messy though it is at the moment, and I loved it. My eyes rested on my collection of Boyds Bearstones, waiting to be carefully packed away in their boxes in order to keep them safe for their journey across the country. I looked at teapots and honey pots and piles of books. I looked at the living room lamps that my sister and I shopped for when she was here in June, when our mother passed away and I was still trying to create a place that was mine, even though there will always be something of Martin in everything I have.

I couldn't understand how I could be feeling content when in two and a half days it will be exactly one year since Martin passed away. How could I feel content when I am faced with so much work to do to accomplish this move to Seattle and I cannot see how it will all be done by November 21 when Molly and I board a plane and fly across the country to start a whole new life?

I sat and drank in the total silence in the room. Normally I am not happy with too much silence but there are those rare instances when I fall in love with it. I felt that I'd had a good day, though it was certainly nothing exceptional, not by the standards of most people. I felt I had accomplished something simply by getting up, taking a shower and fixing my hair, putting on my makeup and my earrings and then leaving the house. It was a major victory for me - me, who had not left the house since last Monday when I drove my sister to the bus station.

Did I do anything of any great importance when I left the house today? In my world, yes. I did. When you consider the fact that I really had nothing in the house to make a meal from and had been scraping together odds and ends for the last several days, then yes - it was important that I got up today and did all those things and actually went to the store to buy food. Unless you have been in the place where I so often find myself - that place of really not caring what happens on a daily basis and that place where I struggle just to find a tiny spark that will make me do something as simple as moving - getting showered and dressed and going out and being a part of something other than these four rooms that I choose to hide in - unless you have been where I am then you cannot know what a monumental task it is to simply do those things that so many people do on a daily basis and think nothing of.

So yes, I felt content - not only with the silence and the good meal and looking at all these things that need to be packed - and that will be packed because there is nothing else to do with them - but I felt content because I had gone outside my comfort zone and I had actually enjoyed it.

Maybe this is the right time to start posting to this blog. Major changes to my life - and isn't that what has been happening for the last two years? - with a move across the country to the Pacific Northwest - the city of Seattle - to start a whole new life. Exciting and frightening, all at the same time. So much to do to get there. It all makes me dizzy!

Since losing Martin, and then my mother, and finally my job - a job I truly loved, working with people that I love - has been the straw that broke the camel's back. I have reached my breaking point and I want and need to be near my son now. He is so excited and happy that I have made this decision - a decision I could not have made a year ago when Martin passed away. Then was not the right time but I believe in my heart that the right time has arrived at last. I will be travelling an unknown path, embarking on my great adventure, starting my new life at the age of 56.

"You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself any direction you choose
You're on your own and you know what you know
And you are the one who'll decide where to go."
~Dr. Seuss

Tuesday, Mar. 31

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.
Johannes A. Gaertner

www.gratefulnes.org

A Good Day

Under Construction

I should be arriving sometime in January though there is no definite date yet...I like to leave my options open.