Rhythm of the Blues (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

I. Am. Still. Here.  Eric. Is. Still. Gone.  People say Good Morning!, which used to be comforting, but it may be a while before I can verbalize those two words myself.  I was never a morning person, but now it is my enemy; my new wake-up time seems to be 6-6:30 a.m., at which point, after having escaped this tragedy via blessed sleep, I am thrown back into a reality where my son is truly and irrevocably dead.  A living f*cking nightmare.  The horror version of Groundhog Day.  There aren't enough coping mechanisms in the world.  Despite how together I may come across in my Facebook posts (to paraphrase Jimmy Buffett:  "if I didn't [write], I would just go insane"), I am a mess... which, given the circumstances, is to be expected... 🤯

I know that everyone around me is walking on proverbial eggshells, helpless as to how I'm feeling and what I need... when I don't even know myself until something either resonates or jars.  Either one invokes tears... 😭

Last night was the Mary Chapin Carpenter/Shawn Colvin concert (we've had these tickets for months), and we came so close to not going... but we did.  I guess I expected to walk into a vacuum, enjoy the show, and then leave... but, by virtue of being involved with the local folk and acoustic community, of course I encountered many people I knew, and I was like a deer in the headlights.  The music took me out of my head for a while, but I thought of E the whole time.  I cried, but I laughed as well.  

Today found our family + Eric's girlfriend on a two-hour Zoom, mostly to fine-tune details of his Celebration of Life, for which we finally set a date.  So many items to attend to, and they will get done, but Life is like a game of Candyland right now, two steps ahead and then one backward into Molasses Swamp.

So, I just brewed up a huge mug of Tension Tamer Tea (yes, that's a thing), my controlled substance of choice, and I'm about to settle in with a few years worth of texts/e-mails, back and forth between my son and his aunt (my husband's sister), which I had no idea was even happening.  Oh, the sweetness... 💞

SONG:  Rhythm of the Blues by Mary Chapin Carpenter

BOOK:  Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni

POEM:  Like a Small Animal by James Crews

I don’t know how the heart goes

cold as an unpicked apple clinging

to the branch, encased in layers

of ice. Yet even the slightest gesture

can warm it, as if some hand were

reaching out to hold the hard skin,

melt off the months of bitterness.

Maybe a friend hugs you longer

than she needs to, just a few more

seconds of pressing you closer until

you want to live inside that gesture,

inhaling her perfume for the rest

of your life. Or a lover makes you

a turkey sandwich one day for lunch 

with buttercrunch lettuce, pickles

and extra mayo, and eating it at work

later, relishing every bite, you feel

that stirring in your chest, like a small

animal coming out of a long sleep, 

blinking its tender eyes awake.

QUOTE:  "Philosopher Alan Watts used to talk about how the whole world is wiggling all the time. Clouds, trees, sky, water, human beings: Everything's constantly shimmying and jiggling and waggling.  One of our problems, Watts said, is that we're "always trying to straighten things out." We feel nagging urges to deny or cover up or eliminate the wiggling. "Be orderly," we command reality. "Be neat and composed and predictable."  But reality never obeys. It's forever doing what it does best: flickering and fluctuating and flowing." ~ from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology