I hope you can see

Again, to Sarah,

I have no idea if putting flowers on your grave is useless or not. I tell myself that I do it because I just want you to have new flowers that aren't dying. I want to bring you a gift so that you still might know that I love you so much.

I'm just not willing yet, to let you go.

I hope you see them.

Let your people hold you up

So if you're not staying afloat very well by yourself, it is wise to allow your friends and family to be life preservers.

I just got home from my book club; another group of women who are wonderful. Thank you all for holding me up while I need it.

Nothing like a man in tights

I'm sitting at the computer concentrating on something, when slowly, but surely, I realize that there is a large amount of bright red in my peripheral vision - down near the floor, then upward - farther than my vision goes. I remember having asked my husband to please see if he could squeeze himself into some tights - we're doing the neighorhood play, remember...

I decide to take the plunge and move my eyes toward the red.

First, I see white-socked, red-tighted feet. Then the unmistakeable legs of my tall and slim-ish husband - totally encased in red. We move past the wadded up red plaid boxers -under tights, no less, to the red polo, and then his very proud face - also red from holding in laughter.

They fit!

On Sunday, he will debut his role as The Emperor, in "The Emperor's New Hair." I think I've mentioned, he's also bald. I have now sewn gigantic pouffy shorts, ruffles for his shirt, and the heaviest dollar/yard fabric royal robe.

So that we don't cry too much of the time, we laugh!

I'm missing you

A letter to my friend, Sarah.

I still hurt. I am happy that at least you don't hurt anymore. I hate that you had to go through such a horrible amount of pain. I can never know or imagine what you went through, fighting to get back to us. Only you know the point of this whole thing.

I'm very scared - to keep going without you. I know people do this all the time; I know I'm not having the hardest time, I know your kids and husband and mom and dad and brother (and so may others) are probably having a harder time than I. I guess.
I'm still scared.

I just need to call you and tell you funny things, and ask your opinion, and brainstorm insane art ideas, and see if you're free for lunch, and hear about what funny and precious things your kids did today, and vent, and listen to your voice, and hear you laugh. I need to tell you about good sales or good clothes we like so much for ourselves or our girls, and to go through our long list of eating establishments, and then pick one where we will absolutely savor our well-planned lunch. I need this to happen in a matter of one phone call that takes us right to the place where we drive up talking to each other on our phones, yours, of course, being much more within this century. I need to come by and grab you for some estate and garage sale-ing, where we'll reminisc over all the now "vinage" items that we had as kids.

I need you to be at the next P.E.O. meeting, where we will exchange smiles and knowing looks, and our unspoken words will be heard by each other across everyone else. I need to sit next to you and get cracked up when we're not supposed to be, or to help you stop crying when you don't want to be. I need you to call me and make sure I'm going, because you know I might not unless you encourage me.

I need you to be planning to take your daughter with me and mine in a few weeks when we go to see "Wicked" again. I will need you there with me to keep me from sobbing uncontrollably because you won't be there.

I need you to tell me how to best help your kids and husband and family and friends.

I need to see the pink in your hair. I need you to be here to take my daughter with you the next time you got "re-pinked."

I need you here to help me while I raise my girls. You are my biggest supporter and validater of how I'm doing it.

I need to know that you were going to be the friend that didn't move out of our town; that we were going to stay here and be very old together. You left before we got our tattoos.

And I need to hear my phone ring and have it be you.

I hope you know, my friend, that the girls and I are now trying our best to have the pink in our hair remind us every time we see it, on ourselves and on each other, that we must live as much like we watched you live as we possibly can. We are trying to follow your examples as much as we can.

You were/are so good. So incredibly good.

"Because I knew you. . .I have been changed for good." (Glinda and Elphaba)

Everyone should dance

I've known this since I've been 3 years old, at least. This is one of the things that I am very positively sure about.



I've danced a lot.



I'm not saying that everyone has to be a "good" dancer, but everyone should dance.



One of the most recent laughing conversations I had with my friend, Sarah, was when she was telling me about her new jazz class for Moms. She had convinced her daughter's teacher to create a class for the moms, and she was so excited about it. I think she only got to go maybe 2 times before leaving town for her surgery, but she had a ball! Her descriptions of herself in the class, and then sharing her moves with her 5 year old daughter (a seasoned jazz girl, herself), were so funny. It seems that Sarah's moves weren't quite up to par, yet, according to her offspring. I even had Sarah convinced to take the mom's tap class in the Fall. I was going to give her my shoes; I wanted to get another kind anyway.



Again, the idea here is, don't wait! Sarah wasn't a dancer, never had been, but loved being around dance, and loved the idea of trying it herself. The gift of those couple of lessons that the other moms, the teacher, her daughter, and I received because of her doing it, is priceless.



I've danced for a lot of my life - I'm no professional at all, but I do love it. My Mom told me once that I seemed to be the most truly happy when I was dancing, and I think she was right.



In the last couple of weeks, I've gotten to fulfill one of the most important dreams of my life - to dance with my girls. Understand that we've been dancing together since they were in the belly, but now......now, they are big enough, that we can actually coreograph together, and perform!



Sunday, will be our neighborhood theater production, and my two girls along with my spare daughter next door, will be doing this dance. I am more proud and happy than I can hardly stand.



I have taken a break from my normal routine since July 7th, but I will go back. I normally take 2 ballet classes, a modern, and a tap class every week. I've just been too sad to go, and I've been trying to just feel what I feel, and take each half hour as it comes.



I will go back in September, and I will dance with my whole soul. I will do this for my friend. I will do it as beautifully as I possibly can. I will probably cry, but I will dance for Sarah.



For now, I am satisfied with silly performances by me in the basement for my girls. Yesterday, using the tv remote for a microphone, I did a very wild performance, complete with out of breath singing, to "Big, Blonde and Beautiful" for my youngest daughter.



Whatever makes us smile.

Do you LOVE IT?

One of the primary lessons to be learned, to remember every day - all day, is this:


Do what you love.





My friend lived that way, especially so, in her last two years. So there is no reason that the rest of us should have to have a "wake-up call" to follow through. Of course, we know this. Of course, we know we should do what we love. I'm not inventing the wheel here.





But why then do we not?





I happen to be a person who doesn't place house-cleaning high on my priority list in life. I schedule parties and gatherings, so that every so often "we have to get it clean." Otherwise, we do what we have time for, and what we want to do. Sarah (Her husband gave me permission to use her name...) and I had this in common. As a matter of fact, I went into her house last week after sharing precious time with her two kids at our house, and not only did it not feel right to bring them home and have her not be there, but her house was too clean! Her mother-in-law, who is an amazing and wonderful person - Sarah loved and appreciated her very dearly- had cleaned.





So, I'm sure cleaning up a little was what Sarah's Mother-In-Law chose to do, because perhaps, she really wanted to; maybe she even loves doing it. I do not, in any way, mean to disrespect her. It's just that it was another of many reminders that my friend is physically gone from me.





Back to the point. I intend to take my wake-up call seriously. No, thankfully, I don't have one single health problem, but I'm not going to wait for one, either.





I love being with my daughters and my husband, digging in the dirt, dancing, laughing to the point of needing the Depends, my many, many friends, riding my bike really far, the woods, oceans, cities, farms, travelling, meeting new people who are nice and fun, doing things for other folks, making big changes, singing in my community choir, teaching, good food, tons of flowers ......I can't begin to think of an end to this list.





My plan is to always be doing what I love. If somehow I'm not loving something, and I can't or don't want to learn to love it, if it's not positive and beautiful, I'm not doing it. I can just hear the responses from the nay-sayers: "Sometimes people HAVE to do things they don't love, blah, blah, blah..."





I know this. There are plenty of things I don't love too. I just mean, this is my goal. This is what drives me. I am extremely lucky to live the life I do. I have food, shelter, love coming from 500 different directions, many luxuries, etc. I just don't intend to waste one day of the gift of my beautiful life, albeit in a messy house.





Now it's back to "sewing" (more like rigging up) costumes for my kids' neighborhood play - very swirly chiffon and sequined get-ups for an interlude dance to "It's Hairspray!"
This, I love!

I had a date!

Just spent an entire day with my husband, totally goofing off. Awesome. We ate good food, we antiqued, we talked and laughed, and cried a little. We've just wrapped it up with an evening at the winery watching the sun set with some more of our great friends.

Three cheers for all-day dates with husbands and evenings with dear friends! I highly recommend both!

Make time.

So, we keep going

There options when one grieves. I'm having to make some very concious choices about how to handle all of this.

I guess some authorities have also put labels on the "stages" that most people experience, although I'm not really interested in those.

There is intense physical pain, sometimes. For instance, I have had such "squeezing" in my chest, that it makes me feel like my actual heart is really wrenching around in there, and that it may go ahead and rip itself apart.

Sometimes, my eyes and head hurt so much from crying that only darkness and sleep will calm them down.

There is, of course, anger. I haven't directed my anger much at anybody or anything. I did have some very frank discussions with God, though. I suppose I've just felt plain angry - at the absolute unfairness and wrongness of my friend having to leave her family, her great life, her other friends and me.

And there is just sad. The deepest sadness. I have sadness - almost all day long - that still makes it hard for me to breathe. The "hole" people talk about having; I feel like I truly do have a physical hole about the size of a bowling ball right through my center - center, meaning every aspect of "center."

My Dad, who lost his brother at 39 to cancer in 1983, told me that "I don't necessarily need to think about filling up the hole with something else, but rather to know that I will just get used to having the hole with me." It seems kind of like what people must go through when they lose a limb or a breast; I've heard that they keep feeling like they have that particular part, and have to be reminded that they can't use it or touch it.

These are my feelings, so far, and I still have all of them.

I am trying my best, I think, to also be happy, and to keep going. My friend certainly would be frustrated at me if I didn't do that. So, in her honor, and for the sake of my husband and daughters, for the sake of my friend's family, and I suppose for my own sake, I am trying.

I also have an amazing life. I do love it. I am grateful for it. I will not disrespect my friend, nor her incredible example of living by stopping.

So, even though my family and I have given ourselves some "breaks" from the normal, sort of busy pace we take, we keep going. My girls are visiting Grandpa's farm right now, and living, living, living! I am accepting the gracious and loving help offered by so many of my friends, and my awesome husband. I am enjoying, appreciating, reflecting and loving.

I guess that's how I love. An old friend used to compare me to "Deanna Troy" from "Star Trek, The Next Generation." She's an "empath." I guess I'm glad I'm like her, and not like "Data," the android.

Including all the pain that goes with it, "Here's to loving!"

Welcome

I intend for this blog to be fun, positive and uplifting, for myself, and for anyone who happens to read it. It is also for the purpose of honoring one of the very best friends of my whole life. So before I get to the fun part, I need to make the reader aware that I am in the early stages of greiving. I want to give background, so that folks might better understand my perspectives.



My friend, my very wonderful friend, passed away on July 7th, 2008.



She was 36 years old, married to a great guy, and the amazing mother of two precious kids, who are 3 and 5. I think I'll just go ahead and give the brief version of what happened. Two years ago she was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer. Things were not good, but my friend wasn't about to accept that this couldn't be overcome. She and her husband worked very, very hard at searching for answers and help - all over the country, and the help in our city was also excellent. She did take some treatments that actually caused some reversal and shrinking of tumors.



This was great. The tumors had shrunk and some had disappeared. She was now a candidate for surgery. We were all very hopeful. She had the surgery, and the results were wonderful. The doctors had gotten everything visible, and were thrilled - which made her family and the hundreds of others waiting for the news, also thrilled. Then, soon after our brief victory, she contracted a staph infection. She fought it in ICU for about 11 days before it took her life.



And people, I am here to tell you that hers was a life that was beautiful.



I will talk more and more about her and the many lessons I've taken from knowing her.



But for now, I will close by explaining the title of the blog. Before she went for surgery, my friend insisted that she take me and two other friends to see the Broadway show "Wicked." She had already seen it, and told me that "It's a best friends show. I have to see it with my best friends." So we went.



She is right. It is a best friends show, but what I couldn't let myself think about too much was the part about one having to leave the other. She cried through most of the show, and I cried too. I knew she was very scared about the surgery, but I just wasn't going there.



Anyway, her favorite song from the show is, "Defying Gravity." It is what the two friends sing to each other as they are realizing that they have to part. It's about no longer following other people's rules, living your life honestly and bravely, and being truly happy.



I want to honor my friend with my life. I want to continue living in a way that I know would make her happy. Although I am in the worst emotional pain of my life right now, I suppose I won't be forever, and even now, I am happy. I know she wants me to be happy.



And, with my whole heart, my friend, "I hope you're happy, now."