The day after Christmas. I woke today in deep sadness. Christmas and its preparations are past. I was so proud of myself and my family for the real joy we were able to bring to our Christmas celebration yesterday. We found many ways to honor Sam and bring him into our observance of the day. It could not have been a better day given where we are. I have tried to be optimistic and uplifting in these posts when I can, but I also want to be true to myself about what I’m experiencing. The reality of Sam’s death comes into my life a little more each day. Christmas brought me a little relief because I was able to focus a little on getting ready for the holiday. I know it sounds crazy… but I realize now that we all carried a secret wish for a Disney style Christmas miracle would let us be closer to Sam somehow yesterday… maybe we were.
My parents drove in from MA yesterday afternoon. It’s very good to have them up with us. Our friends Joan and John (Max’s girlfriend Jessie’s parents) had invited all of us over for Christmas dinner. It was so good of them to share their Christmas with us. . It was a really nice evening.. good company.. good food.. family games.. and gifts. We understand how brave and compassionate someone needs to be to offer to share their time with us during these holidays. We deeply appreciate it. The later it got the more quiet I became. By the time we left around 10, I was deeply sad. Diane drove us home because I couldn’t because I was crying too hard. When we got home, we took our lead from Max in creating a closing moment for the day around Sam. We held hands around Sam’s rock outside, lit a lantern and spoke our Christmas wishes to Sam out loud. Diane and I then quietly walked up to our favorite rock in the fields above our house. We sat there for a while looking down at our house.. at our lives.. and cried. We had to just be in our sadness then. We walked back home and went to bed.
Now that the day is past, there’s nothing to punctuate the unfocused sadness I feel at many times during the day. Nothing external, at least…. I realize that I’m going to have to create my own reasons for getting out of bed in the morning. I think being ‘here’ for Max, Gabe and Diane is going to be my main drive for the next few months. I’m also going to try tapping into the creative urges I’ve been getting to ‘make stuff’ in Sam’s memory. (If anyone has any cool ideas please share them with me.)
Speaking of making stuff… We’ve received many amazing gifts in Sam’s honor over the last week. Last night Jessie handed us a gift wrapped box… Inside it was nearly $300 she’d collected from kids at the High School for Sam’s Fund. The day our friend Grit’s daughter Lindsay donated the money that she was going to spend on Christmas presents to the fund. We heard that only thing on Sam’s friend’s Sawyer’s Christmas list was a rail named in Sam’s honor at
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Monday afternoon – Christmas Day
It’s
Last night we went to friends Lou and Kathy’s Christmas party. Lou had arraigned for everyone to bring their potato cannons to give Sam a Christmas eve salute.. The twenty or so of us took turns shooting spuds into the starlit sky in honor of Sam. Highlights included a successful launch of a potato launched with a lit sparkler stuck in it.. and a four gun volley fired simultaneously by Diane, Max, Gabe and me. It was just the sort of tribute Sam would have wanted.. I hope he saw it… We then made a quick stop by our good friends the Kenny’s before going home. Diane gave Jen a ceramic wind chime that she’d helped Sam make at a school program in 3rd grade. That exchange brought tears to everyone’s eyes… As we drove home from the Kenny’s at about
It was
At about
Saturday evening
The house is quiet. Max and Gabe are up trying to ski/snowboard in the rain. They feel close to Sam up on the mmountain no matter what the weather is. We’ve just come home from a really nice evening at the home of our friends Gretchen and Marshall. Gretchen’sparents, Ed and Sue Gannon are in town. Gretechen had a sister Stephanie who died in an outdoor accident at age 18 which was 27 years ago. It was both wonderful and sad to talk to the Gannon’s and Gretchen about Stephanie and their path through her loss. It was so clear how much Stephanie was still in their hearts and minds.. It was also clear that they’ve been able to move forward and have lived rich and full lives since her death. That was good for us to see. We talked about how loss like ours changes your whole view on the passage of time. Sue told us that although it had been 27 years since her daughter died.. it seemed much shorter. We see that too. I can’t believe that it’s almost five weeks since Sam’s death. The entire time seems like only a week. I think it’s a trick of perspective.. just like driving away from a hugh mountian.. It always seems to be about the same distance away. Sam’s death is so huge in our lives that it always feels like it just happend. I susupect it will be that way for a very long time …if not forever.. . The good thing about that is that we will not forget him…
We spent today almost preparing for Christmas… I say almost because there are many things whcih we would normally do that hurt too much to do now. We’re trying to figure out what old traditions we can keep,.. and which ones we can’t . We have also given much thought to what we should ‘get for Sam’.. He doesn’t need presents … but not including him somehow in the gift giving seems so wrong . We have done several things which we think Sam would have liked. I spent a few hours today welding him some chubnks of metal with his name on them . I’d llike t give these out soe people can leave them in places that Sam loved. We had another idea we liked. Sam had a favorite necklace which has a pendant with his name written phonetically in Mayan glyphs. We had made when Sam Diane and I went to the Yukatan last June. Sam wore it almost constantly for the last 5 months of his life. You can see it in many of the slideshow pictures from his celebration. The image of the Mayan script came to Diane very powerfully during a Reiki session last week. We knew the symbols were very important to Sam.. The middle symbol is a bird.. which has always been Sam’s ‘totem’ animal . Diane and I traced the gylphs and gave them to Chris Cleary.. a very cool stonecutter we know in Jericho . Chris sandblased the symbols into the side of a 300 pound boulder. On the other side we etched: “you have your wings – fly free – we will love you forever” . We plan to add his name to in the Spring. We picked up the rock from Chris this morning.It’s really beatuifull. This evening Max, Mason, Abbot, Rusty and RJ helped me muscle it into place near the barn door. It looks good there… We also made a donation in Sam’s name to the Seva Foundation to support training of a midwife in a Mayan village. Seva, which means service in sandskrit has some very cool ways that you can give gifts that support health and nutrition across the world. Please check them out.
Well.. that’s all for tonight… I’m going to go up to Sam’s room and read. Diane and I finally got around to putting up all the posters and pictres we have from Sam’s celibrations up in his room. It’s a very comforting place now… Please come and see it… Pray for Snow !.. pray for Sam…
-jc
Friday evening
Hi friends.. just a short post before going to bed. Welcome to the first day of Winter… Sam would have hated this weather… freezing rain. I find my moods are very carefully balanced at this point and can go from positive and peacful to darkness with a change in the weather… let’s hope for bright snow in the near future… Today our house was filled with visitors.. This morning our friend Merril and her dog Sophie came over for walk in the woods. Merrill’s 14 year old dog Suki died last week and both Sophie and Merrill needed the walk as much as we did. One of the things we talked about on the walk was the idea of ‘dog years’. They say a dog packs the equivalent of 7 human year into each year it lives. Sam packed so much living into his 14 years that it was almost like he too was living in dog years.. After the walk we had a steady stream of visitors including a new friend Chris.. who’s family generously donated a flock of chicks to a hungry family in Sam’s name. They did it through Heifer International an organization that encourages charitable gifts of livestock to help folks We also had a nice long visit from our friend Jill, Sam’s friend Sawyer and his mom , Sam’s friend Devin and his mom and bunch of the usual suspects from Skanky Green. I love the fact that Sam’s friends still come around. There was music in the barn again and that made us smile. I woke up this morning with a long list of things to get done.. and I only got to one of them… that was to remaster the slide show that Sumner and Brittany did for the Memorial service so I can put it on YouTube. It’s still not quite right. The timing is goofy and the music is off.. but it still has me on the floor in a heap in about 30 seconds.. take a look here if you want a good cry. What a beautiful, beatiful kid … I love you so much my son…. Good night.
-jc