Leaving soon...
Am always glad to get started after weeks of thinking about it.
I think I showered and packed the last things all night in my sleep...should make it maybe easier to sleep on the flight over.

My heart is tender, sore, aching...remembering...ugh...

5 years ago we left for a wonderful vacation and had such good plans to meet in Rome and Venice...and never did it happen.

Now to go back and to honor your death...to celebrate your life dear Sarah...

God, please help us all.

Hold us close.

Keep us.


going now.

a bottle of beach treasures to take to your spot, the area where the plaque is...to leave there in honor of you.  Glass and feathers and sand and even some of your ashes...lavender...treasures you loved and even the white stones you would gather and keep.  a red glass and cobalt...and other colors...small shells...bits of treasures...

simple...to represent our land in this land you took your last breath. 

mystery.

only 10 days away from the 5th anniversary of your death.

As people ask for words of how I am doing...I find myself like this picture--saying something...then wishing I could cross it out--and restate...just thin on words to describe this journey.

I am learning how to speak-like an infant learns to speak words to ask for what they want, or to point to things that they need...but sometimes, like now...I know I am in a sacred spot of wordlessness...and it is ok.

I don't have words to describe the sacredness of being able to go to the very place she died and be there on the actual date of her 5th anniversary.  I don't have a place to go to at this point where she is buried...which is very ok for me as I know it isn't time yet for that-if ever.

I can go to our beach and know that in the midst of millions of grains of sand, some of her ashes are there.

This will never make sense...it will never have closure...I have ceased looking for that.  Instead, I have learned to walk it out.  Learned how to better nurture a sore mother's heart...how to turn and go away from the crushing wave of grief...and to live...at least on most days.  And on the days not so good, I have learned to just be.  And to know it will pass...sometime.

So, for those of you who want to know my words...there are not any that work...or fit...and so the quietness is ok...I am ok...I hurt like hell and also have the most grateful heart ever for being Sarah's mom...the best job I ever had.  I miss her more than our language has words to write or speak.  I long for the time to see her again---and hug and hold her close.  At times I can feel her presence and smell her smell...and hear her laugh..and her voice...and just savor those quick moments...

I will spend that day-at this place, savoring the wind, quiet, maybe paint...maybe swing in the swing.  just be there...sitting...lingering...being there.  glad to be there....no hurry...sacred place of her death.