Year 2 begins....

year 2 begins...and grief in some ways feels like a weight that has become a part of me like it is knit into my skin. i have had many emails and comments to posts since the article came out...and so many people have lost dearly. life is hard...plain hard...
i feel tired...like running a race of grief all year and have finished the first lap. ugh...and just to find out that there is another lap to begin...God help us all with the race of life..and losing...we so need you and each other. boy, do we need each other.

this is a picture Paula sent from Italy, where Sarah died--the day of her anniversary. She went and sat and visited this place for all of us who could not be there that day. How kind...how good. we all need one another.....
thank you to all of you---and to my dear husband too...

a full year now--another begins.

couldn't have put together a better tribute and day to remember you---so many who loved you and came to touch the place you so loved and to be part of releasing your ashes to the water's you loved so well and the beach you spent so much time on. just is a tribute to you today and to the grand goodness of God to bring a beauty out of the tragedy.

the article was in the Plain dealer also on Saturday--you can go to cleveland.com/religion to see it. so much to thank God for--so much to ponder...so much to just sit in and wonder still what the heck just happened...

God--please help us all to continue to walk out this precious, most precious of life---moment by moment...embracing one another, sipping the full glass of the moments you give to each of us...to look up, not down...to hope and not despair...please help us.

miss my girl...miss her so...such a girl.

closer

getting closer to the year date of your death. spent the afternoon on the beach and writing in my journal and reading all the entries from last year at this time. I didn't talk with you on the phone ever again after the 19th...ugh...
you called me so many times that day as we drove to the airport--even when we landed in NY-talked and talked...didn't know it was the last...
still have your messages on my phone---love to hear your lighthearted laugh and encouraging words..and hearing you call me mom. didn't know how much that word would be missed. never to be called mom again by you in life. don't know what heaven will mean for how we will relate...is such a mystery to me about the spiritual life we will live...it will be grander than I can imagine...but for this minute...i am sad to not be hearing you say it again...or even MOTHER!!! You loved to say that when you wanted my attention NOW. When you were serious...or just frustrated with me not paying attention to you at that minute! LOL
Sarah, you were the best. I miss you more than words can say---can't figure out how to arrange enough words out of letters to say it all. Loved it, loved our time...all of it. reread the journal of last year. wow---was pretty broken, pretty sad, pretty defeated...overwhelmed in grief...
am better now---try to stay away from the black hole of grief, doesn't mean I miss you less...and all...just is better...life is better...but miss you the same...that probably won't ever change...miss hearing you, being with you--dreaming with you, playing with you, laughing with you...all of it...will always be a big empty place...no one can fill it. life does move on....have to keep moving...keep believing...keep hoping in some great place called heaven where no more tears, no more death...no more of this yuck of life and death...we were never made to understand nor cope with death...I just can't do it...can't ever figure out how to...
unless you lose the dearest thing---you don't know what I am talking about---you just don't, so don't try to get it...it just is impossible to imagine...
Treasure it all---love life...live it, savor it....don't wait to have it come to you---go for it...hug it tight, but it still is never yours...we just get to be part of it, never owning it or possessing it. just is the facts of it all. it still is good---just isn't yours.

in place for the one year....

here it is...the final plaque in place. to remember our dear sarah. sometimes i try to understand why it is so far away, so hard to go to...but it also is as right as can be---for she would love to be really---cuz it is so beautiful and romantic and just the most dazzling place. i live there too somedays--my spirit feels the wind and sun and hears the surf. i feel her...i sense her...and can almost hear her voice laughing like the gulls...
heaven is coming and it looks better than i ever imagined it to be...and i long for home. but the course of life is still the chart held in my hands. i know that i have been compelled to continue to speak truth and hope and light and life into people. i only can do that because of you, my dear Father. You have filled me with this compelling force to not settle to live small, nor afraid, nor under the heavy weight of sorrow and grief. I will not wear these grave clothes for all days. I will not walk as though there is no future kingdom and no future glory. i will run this race-with perserverance and smile at the wind. I will continue to look forward with expectant eyes to see You, my Father---and run into your arms and be finally home...and then to also see the ones gone on before...and to laugh and eat and celebrate for the remainder of all eternity...wow....

on this dear week of her death--Sarah's so unexpected and untimely death that sucked all our breaths away and caused us all to droop and fall and crumble....help us all Father. We don't want to live here...we want to embrace one another and celebrate the 28 years we had with that wild child you gave me....the one filled with such passion and daring to live each moment with gusto. I love that she did that. I want to keep doing it too---to laugh from the bottom of my belly---to drink the whole glass of life. I want to savor and swallow the beauty in the midst of this great sorrow. It is the greatest sorrow I have wandered through...it is the hardest and most difficult road I have ever walked. I want to lay down on some days and just cry till my eyes run dry...but they never do---there are so many tears inside of me...and then I remember you catch them all, you save them all...you created them. you made them to bring relief in the sorrow...and sometimes even sleep---rest when done. You are so amazing God--so Big, so Kind, So Loving. I am blessed.

almost a year....

We

Those without wings

Bounded to the sky

With blue thin thread

Wepoor toys

we love each other

So what the seagull have wings?

and have memories

When the same..Sad

somewhere

on a foreign shore

and forgotten

We poor toys...

we die..

People ask me where I find these photos--and the words above are the translation....

I feel blessed to find them..they help me to find the heart of my sorrow on some days. I am full right now--of anticipation of next week...the one year anniversary of dear Sarah's death.

Everyone is asking...."How are you?" I don't know what to say, but answer...Fine...but deep in my heart...just have sadness. I want to begin to live better...it has been a very long year. I can hardly believe that it has been now a full year since I heard your voice talking to me for real on the phone...as we didn't take our phones on our trips....thinking it would be a bother to try to keep them charged in a foreign land.......

soooo, I still have your voice messages stored on my phone and listen to you sing happy birthday for 2 different years and other sweet messages I saved...and that helps.

Moving on in grief is a wild journey-and so original for each of the ones traveling their assigned road. I have been so blessed with many walking with me-and a sweet and tender husband now too. Yet...it is so solitary...the ache in your heart that stays just like the beat of your heart....just a part of the life of grief. tears that have carved a path in your face from the familiar road they travel. the sadness that you fight to keep from weighing you down every day...keeping you on some days from being able to take full breaths...and causing you to stoop and not see as well.

I am working hard to lift my head up these days....to see...to see the life all around me.

But just do miss you my girl. So many do...you touched many...loved many...

how can you really be so gone? Just so gone.

summer is ending and fall is coming

fall is coming and with that...the first anniversary of Sarah's death on 9-27-07.

It is like a sunset---seems like it takes the sun forever to get to the horizon and then in the last 1/2 hour---it goes so fast that you want to slow it down to watch the splendor of it. Then once down...the glorious afterglow of the sun just melts you away.

losing someone is like that---you see it ending and want to slow it down...move the sun back up into the sky...but you can't. and then the sun slips away. at this point you could walk away and miss the glorious afterglow of the sun...many people do--they leave the beach before seeing the show of the colors as the sun has gone away...

i am in the season of seeing the afterglow of Sarah and her impact on life itself as well as those she touched. many are still having a very hard time with her gone...even having trouble with how to move on---and how can anyone close to her move on....but life is like that...

i don't always get it...and if i am not careful...i can not understand how others do it in their own situation. i have learned a big lesson in this experience...life isn't what you think for others. how much do i really know about what it is like to walk in their shoes...their pain, their daily life. NOTHING. help me to be so careful to not judge, not criticize, not condemn, not try to figure out how someone should do it for them....

grief has colored life in a new way for me. seems like i see in a broader way than ever before. i have patience and grace for others....

i also understand how terribly over life is when someone dies abruptly and that they are no longer there---not for just that day...but for all the rest of the days on this earth...forever. it is a big word...forever. i have learned to look to heaven for a great hope like never before either....and am thankful for that. it is more than i could imagine..and keeps me wanting to live more fully because it is there--heaven is to follow this life and how full do I want to live here till i go there? i want it all fully here--to embrace what is before me, i want all the ones who also loved Sarah to have life in fullness here too--to live well. She and I believed that with all our hearts...and she wanted that for all of us...we talked about death alot....even planned our funerals on my birthday last summer with her and Marty and Kim when at Brios for dinner. what a girl. she probably has more to do with all that is happening to bring full life to me and others...don't get it, don't understand it...but feel deep in my heart that it is true.

help others God to heal. Help them to see the good in life and moving on...to trust. to see more clearly what is the goodness of living in great loss. i guess if you haven't lost greatly and abruptly---you can't know. it just changes everything...and you either live...or you don't.