So beautiful...and I have always loved Rita Dove

Borderline Mambo
by Rita Dove
 

As if the lid stayed put on the marmalade.
As if you could get the last sip of champagne 
out of the bottom of the fluted glass.
As if we weren't all dying, as if we all weren't 
going to die some time, as if we knew for certain 
when, or how. As if the baseball scores made sense 
to the toddler. As if the dance steps mattered, or there's a point 
where they don't. For instance wheelchair. Heart flutter. 
Oxygen bottle mounted on the septuagenarian's back 
at the state ballroom competitions--that's Manny, 
still pumping the mambo with his delicious slip 
of an instructor, hip hip hooray. Mambo, for instance,
if done right, gives you a chance to rest: one beat in four. 
One chance in four, one chance in ten, a hundred, as if
we could understand what that means. Hooray. Keep
pumping. As if you could keep the lid on a secret
once the symptoms start to make sense. A second
instance, a respite. A third. Always that hope.
If we could just scrape that last little bit 
out, if only it wouldn't bottom out 
before they can decode the message 
sent to the cells. Of course it matters when, even though 
(because?) we live in mystery. For instance
Beauty. Love. Honor. As if we didn't like
secrets. Point where it hurts. Of course we'll tell.

About This Poem

"I'm a fanatic ballroom dancer, and Latin rhythms are usually invigorating. But I find mambo simultaneously joyous and poignant for two reasons: first, the pause in the rhythm (stop!-2-3-4) suggests that something's always missing--a hole in the fabric of celebration, perhaps. And, secondly, the memory of Manny dancing with his beautiful young instructor, oxygen tank on his back, suggests a way to plug that hole, even though we know that some patterns--disease, age--are relentless and will grind on long after the dance is done." 

--Rita Dove

Lights of Life 2011

Remember my work with hospice and Concord's Lights of Life ceremony from last year? Well, it's that time again. And damned if I don't have new names to memorialize. [Looking forward to celebrating the year when I just donate money and not a new name for the list.] Anyway, Lights of Life is a wonderful celebration of those whom we have loved and lost, who have gone before us and continue to shine in our hearts. Electric candle lights are placed in town businesses and restaurants to actively remember each soul, and they are a visual blessing to the rest of us still traveling this earth.

This year, we will memorialize:

Dr. Arthur "Pete" Snyder - Scott's father, a wonderful, generous man and highly skilled surgeon who healed and touched the lives of so many in his 78 years. We will celebrate the Christmas holiday with his wife of 55 years, Scott's mom Fran.

Dorothy Alma "Ann" Holman - My maternal grandmother, and the sweetest, silliest, and most fun grandma I've known, mother to my darling mother. We were blessed by her memorial service in Wisconsin and the ensuing family reunion last month.

Judith Schaeffer - Scott and my previous boss and dear friend from Vermont. She was an incredible beacon in our book publishing industry, with so much knowledge and a pure love of the craft. She was a longtime and faithful best friend to Jessee and surrogate mother to Jennifer (and Kira), some of our other Vermont "family" members. She died suddenly and will be sorely missed.

And of course,
my beloved father, Larry Cox, who continues to live heartily and joyfully, if not sarcastically, in my heart. I feel your presence all the time, Dad; and though I am pissed you are not here to play with and utterly adore Miss Lucy, not to mention take her for special pancake breakfasts and fishing outings and camping trips, I know you are watching over us. I don't know much about the likelihood of a heaven, Dad, but I do know the absolute truth of your enduring spirit. I love you very much.

Please celebrate with us. Feel free to use the Comments button below to add your special loved ones' names. When I see the candles lit downtown, I will remember yours as well.

~Ally

The Lights of Life are Shining

On December 1, something very special will happen in Concord, New Hampshire. Every year, Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association (CRVNA) and Hospice fills our town, and the surrounding towns of Contoocook, Penacook, Pittsfield, Henniker, and Hillsboro, with hundreds of electric window candles. Downtown businesses, shopkeepers, and restaurant owners light these candles in their windows, so that every evening in December, the memory of loved ones who have passed shines for all to see.

Anyone can make a monetary donation or simply add a loved one’s name to the Lights of Life Honor Roll. The list of names will be published in the Concord Monitor at some point during the week of December 5. You can visit http://www.crvna.org/donations/lightsoflife.php for more information.

CRVNA holds a ceremony on December 3 to celebrate life and honor the people we carry in our hearts from year to year. Mom, Scott, and I will be there.

These are the names I added to the list this year:

Larry Cox

Les Cox

Lee Holman

Kenny Cox

Katie Gober

Caralee Ladd

Anne Heine

Frans Amelinckx

Jack Savage

Tom Little

Casey Migacz

Pete Vanderboom

Tip Snyder

Mae Beck

You are among heroes, each of you ~ the most beautiful, most true, most loved, and we remember you fondly.

Celebrate these wonderful people with me, and if you have the chance to drive through Concord, enjoy the beautiful candles and pick one for your special person. Happy Holidays!

~Ally

grief

It is so very complicated. Not unlike our other up-and-down relationships - years gone by, details forgotten, then remembered in an instant.

My friend Jean who works in hospice calls the sudden just-happened-yesterday moments "grief bursts." She is so right. Attending a funeral that feels a little too familiar. Insert my family members instead of these random strangers and we are at Dad's funeral all over again. The songs the choir sings - are they singing for you, Dad?

Dad seems to keep showing up in the form of great and majestic birds...not surprising, really. The other day, a Peregrine falcon flew alongside Scott's car, right at eye level on the drivers' side, looking at him while he drove. They beheld each other. It made Scott cry and opened up his heart in a big, momentary way. Earlier, there was the eagle that flew right over us and landed in a tree a mere twenty feet away, too low for an eagle to land, too close to not be some kind of sign of your presence. And the loon(s). And the hawks that circle above or the black crows, always flying in twos, that lead me on many days. I see you. I'm glad you are flying now. You waited a long time to fly.

About a week ago (or two now?), my friend died. Literally five minutes later, another friend's husband passed. The next day as my mother told me of both events, I felt them sit down in my heart and stay awhile. The heaviness of grief can be overwhelming. Our friend's husband's memorial was a few days later. Mom and I went and boy, if it didn't feel a little close for comfort. The wife, now widowed, gave a long message at her husband's service, attributing all his accomplishments and passions to his great strength of character, blessing his children by telling everyone how much she had loved him. It hurt, in a good way. The wife asked Mom to read a piece on grief. In it was the phrase, "grief is my friend." And Mom would not read that. She just couldn't. But I could have because I have become so entwined with that relationship, that "otherness" of Grief that it might as well be a member of the family.

It is not a friend in the sense of comforting - or maybe it is. But it is close to us, always present, showing its colors in different forms. Like the fact that at coming on two years past Dad's death, I am just about strong enough to finally read his fishing memoir. I loaned the book to a co-worker in hospice, a social worker, who wanted to read some stories to a patient who was basically unresponsive...except when a nurse showed him pictures of big fish he'd caught. So I passed on the stories. And maybe when I get the book back, I can actually read it without getting sick to my stomach and throwing it back on the shelf.

Dad, life is going on, but not without you. I am still pissed at you, don't get me wrong. But only because there is so much I'd like to be able to discuss with you. So many things we still have to do together. Like skydiving. And fishing up at Chazy. Going to the funeral of your best friend's daughter - I know you would never have chosen to miss it. And hiking up the correct side - the steep but MUCH SHORTER trail to the top of Locke's Hill. Mom showed it to us, and it wasn't so bad. We came down the back side, the longer trail you tried to ascend and I can see why you thought it was miserable!

We are making fajitas tonight and watching stupid TV. Want to join us? Wish you could.

I'll be looking for you in the sky, Dad. My Buddhist teacher (oh stop rolling your eyes!) says the sky is always there and all is well.

All is well, Dad.

Love, Al

Aging

It's exceptionally hard getting older.
It's hard to realize your body isn't working the way it used to, healing as quickly from injuries, rising to the occasion like it once did.
It's infuriating to be told you cannot (should not) drive anymore. To have your keys taken away, and not for the intoxicated party night, but for good.
It hurts when your friends - the same age as you! - begin getting cancer, or dying of headache-turned-brain-tumors. It's horrifying when a loved one drops dead of a heart attack.
You can't believe it when the thought of going up that damn driveway hill with the garbage bin is exhausting, or your just don't feel like watering all the plants in the garden anymore.
When you realize your clothes look like the outdated relics of your mother's closet...

Aging sucks.

This is what I am learning as our parents start to enter the age of grief, shocking diagnoses from the doctor, and visits from friends who are now widows.

These are the things I think on as I work to tend the sick and dying every day, albeit in my administrative, secretarial way, at my Hospice job. People are sick and dying EVERY SINGLE DAY. I find myself saying in my head things like, "If only someone would die so it would free up the schedule a bit." These are the sick thoughts you have when you work in Hospice. These are the blow-off-steam moments that get you through the day. You find yourself so, so tired and worn out at the end of the week (like tonight). Until you realize, you have been surrounded by various stages of death all day, and lending every bit of compassion you have to suffering and grieving families who need it. And I'm not even the nurse.

Last night I found myself at the semi-annual memorial service Hospice holds for families members who have lost someone they loved. On my name tag, I wrote: "Allison Snyder" and under In Memory Of, I wrote "Larry Cox." Because the one you've lost doesn't go away after a year of prescribed grieving time. They are with you always, every day, in your thoughts and frustrations, memories and laughs.

In the service sat several dozen families - some with other family members, some alone (a spouse, a brother, a daughter). Tears were shed and laughs were shared. A beautiful choir sang three songs, each bringing you just a bit closer to your loved one and God (though they were very respectfully not religious). Several people looked me in the eye and did not look away during the service. I made myself keep returning their gaze. In grief, you long to connect, even with a stranger. You find yourself in this unlikely and miserable Club you didn't realize existed - the Club of Those Left Behind. There should be a bumper sticker, key chain, and a membership T-shirt. Instead, there is just a knowing look between stranger-friends that happens every few months (or years), the stories of love lost just on the tip of everyone's tongue, no matter what time has passed.

Afterwards, Hospice offered cookies, cheese and crackers, and juice...as if that could help. But in some way, it did. It is so normal to share a snack with others. And normal is what you crave like the dickens when you feel so lost, your world turned upside down and inside out, never to return to its previous glory.

I talked (listened) at length with a man who's brother-in-law had died in the last few months. He told me endless fishing stories (the tall tales I have heard all my life) of 4 ft Stripers and the night the boys caught 60 sharks off the shore, etc etc. I think he was channeling my Dad, who might have been coming through saying, "I'm still here in every ordinary way."

Aging brings the shadow of death with it, and we all feel that chill and try to run. There's no fight mechanism in place - it's all flight at the start. I am not changing, getting older, slowing down! I'll be damned if I ever give up my (insert your favorite passion)! I don't need anything but the cool, sweet earth and my fishing pole.

Oh, and you. And your support and kindness. And maybe a wipe of my chin where the kernel of corn has stuck and won't let itself free. Remind me, what year was it that we took that wonderful trip? Have you seen my glasses (that rest on my forehead)? There's nothing wrong with my head! Oh, you said "bread"?

Grace. Compassion. For others. For ourselves and this ever-changing body and spirit.

Grace from me, to you.

~Ally

On a dusty road to Mexico

We're getting ready for Mom to go to Mexico on Thursday, to visit with Lauren and Co. for a month. I don't want her to go, though I know Lauren needs her and the time will be good for them. I guess what I mean is, I don't want to be away from Mom for that long. I need her so much right now and feel more attached to her than ever. Thursday will be the anniversary of Dad's death - I guess an appropriate day for Mom to see both daughters in one day. The loss of Dad snuck up on me like a ton of bricks yesterday as I was driving to a friend's baby shower in Mass. Thinking about the lack of Dad when/if I get pregnant and how much I wish he were still here, how much we all still had to talk about and do together. And no, this is not a case of, "If only I had said" or opportunities lost. This is a case of "It sucks that I have to live the rest of my life without my father." And I miss him terribly.

Wonder when the grief will let go of its death grip (pun intended). It still affects everything. My son-in-law is struggling right now and I want to say to him,"It's the fucking grief!" He lost his brother a few months ago. The grief takes hold forever, it seems, but eventually, things do get a little easier, a little more normal.

This is going to be a hard week. Scott and I seem to be living like ships passing in the night - emotionally anyway. Sometimes we looked at each other this past week with the look of, "Who the heck are you and what are you doing in my living room?" Marriage, another long and dusty road. If one partner doesn't feel well, no one does. I wish things didn't feel like work so much for us right now. Nothing coming easily.

That's not true. I did make a spontaneous friend and pint-sized friend at the baby shower - a delightful Chinese woman and her daughter (who latched onto me like I was Aunty Ally). I feel in love with the both of them. They are heading back to China to live soon though and I probably will never see them again. Still, I am grateful for that beautiful feeling when you meet someone and like them instantly, knowing you could be friends. Rare and wonderful.

How are you, reader? What's new?

~Ally
p.s. Lauren, I wish Scott and I could come to Mexico too! That would be the best of all scenarios! Have enough fun for all of us. xoxo

On grief

~Henry, from The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger:

"Today is the thirty-seventh anniversary of my mother's death. I have thought of her, longed for her, every day of those thirty-seven years, and my father has, I think, thought of her almost without stopping. If fervent memory could raise the dead, she would be our Eurydice, she would rise like Lady Lazarus from her stubborn death to solace us. But all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. The only thing my need could do was bring me to her."

What's Going On Right Now

1. I am up late as usual, enjoying a blog or two!

2. It has been raining incessantly in New Hampshire...until about two days ago when this big yellow ball appeared in the sky, and the air got hot. We don't know exactly what's going on. But someone said something about "sunshine"? I will have to google that to find out what it means.

3. I am trying to find some pet sitting gigs in our condo complex for extra money.

4. Am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" and enjoying the mind bending aspect of thinking in time travel mode. Best question the girl always asks the man, "When are you from?"

5. We are hooked on watching Battlestar Galactica, or as I like to call it, Battlestar LaGeektica. We are in Season 2.5 right now and deep in the thick of man's fight against the Cylons to keep from going extinct! Plus a whole lot of other General Hospital*-type drama. [*If you're too young to know that show, think the great slutty parts of Grey's Anatomy.]

6. Scott is taking a million photos of the beautiful New Hampshire slice of earth and working on his permanent portfolio online. Selling prints already, but there will be a beautiful online gallery to peruse soon. Stay tuned!

7. Coming up to Dad's DDay anniversary. Must find some other term for it than "Death Day." Not looking forward to the passing of this milestone. The summer has been rough all the way around, stupid with milestones.

8. We are getting ready to go camping on Grape Island in Maine next weekend. Mom will watch our cat babies.

9. Still working on the pregnancy project. Am now off reading pregnancy books b/c they always make me think I am pregnant (which is only fun until the darn stick reads "negative" AGAIN). Am now reading novels and autobiographies about women who struggled to get pregnant. Whoa, those books are an emotional roller coaster, but so good and not quite as threatening.

10. Working part-time at the bankruptcy law office and still greatly enjoying that work. Continuing to look for full-time work in this dismal economy. My unemployment has been recalculated (since I have been on it a whole year! Ack!!) and now it's worth even less, if that's possible! So I am hitting the pavement with renewed vigor, looking for full-time work. Or freelance. Doing some editing and that's highly enjoyable.

And how are you?
~Ally

Poems for Today

When You Come

by Maya Angelou

When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,

I CRY.



The Cat's Song
by Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.



One Year
by Sharon Olds

When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the
first name's O, middle name's O,
the short O of his last name,
and down into the hyphen between
his birth and death--little trough of his life.
Soft bugs appeared on my shoes,
like grains of pollen, I let them move on me,
I rinsed a dark fleck of mica,
and down inside the engraved letters
the first dots of lichen were appearing
like stars in early evening.
I saw the speedwell on the ground with its horns,
the coiled ferns, copper-beech blossoms, each
petal like that disc of matter which
swayed, on the last day, on his tongue.
Tamarack, Western hemlock,
manzanita, water birch
with its scored bark,
I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it,
then I lay down on my father's grave.
The sun shone down on me, the powerful
ants walked on me. When I woke,
my cheek was crumbly, yellowish
with a mustard plaster of earth. Only
at the last minute did I think of his body
actually under me, the can of
bone, ash, soft as a goosedown
pillow that bursts in bed with the lovers.
When I kissed his stone it was not enough,
when I licked it my tongue went dry a moment, I
ate his dust, I tasted my dirt host.
Anonymous submission.



Distressed Haiku
by Donald Hall

In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.

I'm coming! Don't move!

Once again it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.

I finished with April
halfway through March.

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?

In April the blue
mountain revises
from white to green.

The Boston Red Sox win
a hundred straight games.
The mouse rips
the throat of the lion

and the dead return.

Some memories are sharper than Norman Rockwell might prefer

Been thinking about my Dad a lot and really missing him. Had a good cry tonight. Both Scott and I got shaken up while looking through pictures and suddenly running across several of Dad from the last year. This day last year we were picking him up from the airport after the trip to Mexico. We all had a WONDERFUL week together, and then we came home. Another week later, he came home and we picked him up from Boston. We shoveled out his car which was buried in several feet of snow. It was one in the morning and we were happy to have him home.

My sister Lauren has been really feeling the loss of Dad lately, as it's now been a year since she last saw him. A really sad and lonely feeling. There's a big gaping hole in our lives and nothing fills that void. Sometimes the void sneaks up on you and engulfs you, if for only a moment. That's when the old "stuff your feelings" motif comes in handy. And to McDonald's we go.

Mom and I spent today together and talked about Dad a lot. We both miss him so. I started a grief support group this week and I am so thankful for it already. Told Mom all about it and hope she will find a good one to join. Hospice offers them in many towns for free. The one I'm going to lasts eight weeks and is free; led by two lovely social workers and the participants are from all walks of life, each with a unique (and humanly universal) grief story about their special Person. Several members have been grieving their Person for many, many months.

Simply talking, listening, and sharing experiences is extremely healing. Just sitting in that circle with others who literally do know what you are going through takes me a long way on this journey. Am thankful for it.

This is a journey I wish I was not on. This is a club I wish I didn't have to join. But here I am. And all I can do is open my arms with love to the others I meet along the way, who find themselves in the club too.

*~*A blessing out to you all tonight, my friends. May time heal where it can; may we remember with love and joy when able; may the tears flow when they are ready.*~*

~Ally

Sensing the Light

"The presence of that absence is everywhere." ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay








Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul, my savior, God to thee
How great thou art, how great thou art
Then sings my soul, my savior, God to thee
How great thou art, how great thou art.

(Stuart Hine)

~Ally

Thursday night

It strikes me as very odd that I have been crying for 23 days in a row. I can't imagine I've ever cried so much in my life. And several times a day, for a variety of reasons. A bird flew overhead while I was driving, the people at the car loan company wouldn't help me (or even talk to me about my Dad's account), the flowers are dropping, I found a letter Dad wrote to me over ten years ago that was so funny, I am too tired to make the bed, mom and I found ourselves in a huge yelling match for no reason, the To Do list on sorting the estate is too fucking long, I still don't have a job, I can't imagine having the energy to get a job, I have perpetually puffy eyelids, Anna and Emma sent cards to Tip - the dying dog, the dog woke up another day...you get the idea. Any old reason will do.

I have brief glimmers of needing the people to surround me - the people who are not here and available to surround me. Then the window closes up and when they return my calls, I am sorely irritated. I need casseroles. Then hate my fat reflection in the mirror. I want hugs. Then can't stand to be touched and find my legs twitching or everything aching all over.

Oh, this is good times.

I'm sorry I don't have the strength to read your blogs tonight or even ask how you are (but how are you?)...I am tired down to the insides of my bones. My Dad would say, "Don't print that on your blog or the employers will never hire you." Guess what Dad, you can't give me advice anymore b/c you are dead. [as if that will stop him]

Anyway, I do care how you are. So if you feel the energy in your life, put a Comment on this blog and tell me a little something about you. I promise when I have the strength to ask you again, I will.

Love,
Ally

p.s. Mom and I went to see "Mamma Mia" tonight - that helped.

I say to the Universe, and whoever may be listening

..it's really unfair that my dog is dying amidst (and as an indirect result of) my father's death. Really freaking unfair.

~Allison

Love is never done.

I invite you to check out a post by my friend Lisa, at Chance of Kingfishers:

A Late Reflection on the Death of Jesus


Seems appropriate. The last lines are perfect:

"At some point everything is done.
Except love.

Love is never done."

~Ally

Two Weeks Gone By

There are so many difficult tasks right now, looming like icy mountains that need to be climbed. Like sifting through piles of Dad's paperwork, accepting the flowers and cards that keep arriving without falling into a puddle of tears, calling the million people who need to be contacted (and notified), and figuring out how to move on without the guidance and love of my father.

What people don't tell you are all the chaotic things that will happen, like: your muscles will hurt, your bones (your actual bones) will ache, you will be unable to sleep yet when you doze off on the couch, you will sleep the sleep of the dead, with arms and legs like lead and unable to move. You will cry for no apparent reason, suddenly in the shower. You will think the most awful, hateful and spiteful thoughts toward the deceased, and then start to cry saying, "Daddy, I didn't mean it; I know you didn't mean to do this." And they also don't tell you that people you never expected will say the most sweet and generous things. "He was such a good father to you," "He used to give me advice and I always appreciated that," or, "Larry made such a difference in my life - he was a mentor to me." Death is one big shocker after another. That's the punchline. Now you can laugh.

The only way I am getting through all this is with the loving arms of your support, encouragement, and kindness. Your cards and flowers, emails, voicemails and blog comments are lifting me up. And though I have not responded to barely anyone yet - I just can't - your thoughts and prayers are felt. Your love is coming through in a big, big way. I am deeply indebted to you and forever grateful.

Today some beautiful roses and ferns arrived in a rust colored pitcher - so lovely - from two of Dad's friends. I don't know them. Turns out he helped edit their book on writing (and so did Mom), and they even featured him in a chapter about his writing, to inspire teen writers. Who knew? I read it today. He had a vast life I didn't even know about, and every moment like this helps me love and know him more. Daddy, you are so missed. You have no idea.

***Also today, Hillary gave a fan-f*cking-tastic speech at the Democratic National Convention! Did you see it? I would've jumped out of my seat and shouted, save for the leaden appendages and poor Scott trying to catch a few hrs of sleep. She told her supporters to get on board with Obama for crying out loud, and make this change happen! Thank you Hillary. I am on board, officially. Go Obama!


We are keeping our chins up and moving ever forward. Keep those loving thoughts coming. We need you.

~Ally

A Very Bad Week

This is more for me than for anything else, but will explain why I have been out of touch and will continue to be out of sorts.

Tuesday 8/12 - doing day 7 of early, early temp job (and day 2 with no help, as the training employee went on vacation and I was alone in the HR fray); v tired.

Wednesday 8/13 - up since 5, at work since 7, got call at 10 a.m. from Mom - Dad died in his sleep at 4 a.m. of massive heart attack; life as I knew it crumbled; met Scott at home, made miracle travel arrangements, got Puppy to kennel and got on plane to Indiana.

Thursday 8/14 - after very, very long previous night ending at Holiday Inn, got up and went to Benners' house (home of my cousins, where we all basically grew up, the most stable place in my world); family arrived in droves; went to funeral parlor to see dead father (absolutely AWFUL); talked to irritating minister about Friday's brief service and tried explaining that though there were many Christians in the family who would appreciate the Jesusification, my Dad would probably not have; dinner at Benners' with everyone under the sun.

Friday 8/15 - breakfast at Benners'; funeral, which turned into more of a real service since more and more people kept showing up. Sister Lauren and family could not come (horrible) since she is eight months pregnant and not allowed to travel. Cousin Jake came, Uncle Bob and Cousin Amber, The Ladds and Birdsalls (my parents' lifelong best friends), Leslie and family (wonderful to see her), and others. Service was brief in Jesusland and then opened up for people to speak - wonderful tributes, often funny, lots of fishing stories, and heartfelt remembrances. We videotaped it for Lauren. Chad, Karen and Amber put together a slideshow of old pictures - v nice. Lunch after at a restaurant; everyone in a surreal daze; dinner again at Benners'. Oh, and poor Scott's birthday (f*ck!!), celebrated with cake and a song. The little kids made him cards and told him special birthday secrets, and that made up for a lot.

Saturday 8/16 - Said early and reluctant goodbyes to Amber and Uncle Bob; went to Bass Lake (scene of the obscene crime) and had a swimming, relaxing day with Mom, Birdsalls, Karen and Jake; broke the miserable curse of the cottage - now we can go there again; Jake took us out on the boat and that healed a thousand sorrows. Dinner at Karen's enormous house with her kids, various relatives and Grammie. Saying goodnight and goodbye to Karen's four kids (whom we are now officially in love with) was hard. Their love and little games and "watch me, watch me" were healing us. Spent night at Karen's.

Sunday 8/17 - Left early. Went to Benners' to say goodbye to Grammie, Aunt Anne and Uncle Fred (also hard) and caravaned with Birdsalls and Mom to Beaver Island, Michigan for a few days to recover from total shock. Scott kept saying all weekend, "Dad woulda loved this."

Monday and Tuesday - Michigan; Scott left this morning to drive back to Chicago and fly home - hate being without him; we will be here a few more days until we can bear the thought of going home; then Mom and I will drive across the country, soaking up our Motherland the Midwest and its corn, big skies, bright fields, and nurturing crops...and make our way back home to all the misery that awaits us.

Dad will arrive in two urns in the mail. That promises to be a fan-f*cking-tastic day.
Uff-da.
~Ally