It's Quiet Uptown (from Hamilton)

[ Two weeks ago, my dear and long-time college friend Dimitrius called me a Compulsive Communicator; now I have not only self-identified but embraced the term, wondered if there is a support group, and joked that I will add it to my business card... 🤣

Since the tragedy of Eric's death (was that really only Tuesday?!?), I have been withholding of myself in Real Life and oversharing on Facebook, but Friday I will roll it all over to my semi-defunct-but-soon-to-be-revived blog which you can check periodically... or not.  Again, No Hard Feelings (see what I did there?).  Well, you will... 🤷‍♀️ ]

No easy way to say this.  Our son Eric was killed in a car accident last night.  His girlfriend Duyen called from Atlanta (where he moved in with her mid-March) to tell us.

We have informed both Sarah and Rob,  and we've reached out to my sister Mari and brother Brad, as well as Chico's family.  The ripple effect widened to extended family and friends and now, Facebook protocol/etiquette be d*mned, here we are.  I haven't really thought much beyond that.  We have circled the wagons, and everyone is gathered at Sarah's tonight (even Colin... and Holly, Rob's dog), coming to grips with the enormity of it all.  So many questions, as well as decisions to be made.

Chico and I are so grateful we had a meaningful, albeit short, visit with E (just two weeks ago, actually).  It's already a lesson in perspective.  It's still not real but, as I sip my mug of hot tea, it becomes painfully more so... as it will over the next hours, days, weeks, months.  How do people in this situation manage to sleep?  To eat?  This is all just so upside-down.  Parents are not supposed to outlive their children.  My brain and my heart are exploding... 🤯

"There are moments that the words don't reach

There is suffering too terrible to name

You hold your child as tight as you can

And push away the unimaginable..."

~ It's Quiet Uptown, from Hamilton

Absolutely no doubt in my mind that you are all there in love and support for us... and I promise we will need you; however, there is just no way I can speak with anyone in the foreseeable future.  Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

I don't know who I am without my youngest, my stubborn Leo child, my Eric... 😭

P.S.  More in the next few days; I am counting on everyone to share their pictures/stories/adventures then... please?


SONG:  It's Quiet Uptown, from Hamilton

BOOK:  Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child by Gary Roe

POEM:  by Susan Frybort

I hear the wind

carrying the voices

of a thousand

prayers my way—

drifting through 

the night, 

weaving through 

the leaves, 

talking in languages

I never heard before, 

coming from souls 

I may never meet. 

There are words

spoken long ago,

finally landing 

in the places 

they are meant 

to be. 

There are whispers

soaked with 

a mother’s tears

circling the earth 

like a blanketing

cloud. 

And the songs

streaming through

the silent air 

are from the fathers

of days gone by. 

I hear the wind

carrying ten

thousand 

prayers your way—

slipping past 

the veil, 

breaking through

the vault, 

soaring across 

the sky, 

reaching lands 

you may never see. 

Open your door, 

look up to the stars,

and listen to your 

ancestors speak.

QUOTE:  "Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it." ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery