Not much to say tonight. I think I have a little of the day-after-blues after the big birthday bash last night    Today wasn’t  a bad day,,, just a little sad.  The same thing happened after Christmas and New Years.  Actually, I’m trying to get better about calling  whole days as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ most days have elements of both so it’s unfair and inaccurate to label them as being one or the other.  Anyway… I’m finding that having fun is still fun… I just find  that I need a little down time now after doing it.

   Last night things went pretty late.. I think some kids stayed up all night. There were still lots of them around …   Its  always nice having kids around in the morning. Once again Diane managed to cook several shifts of breakfast before I finally rolled out of bed at 9:30. Once everyone left, things quieted down.  Sometime in the morning, Gabe went up on the Mountain and   Max left with some friends to visit Bas and Andy in Quebec.   Around noon Diane. Chai and I got out for a snowshoe with Jen and Tim behind their  house. It was a beautiful trail.. I ran on it several times many years ago when Sam was at Noreen Grant’s   doing Suzuki keyboard lessons.. I remember the pieces Sam composed then.. they were beautiful.

   After the snowshoe, our friend T came by with her two kids. We know T from MMU.. She has been affected deeply by Sam’s death and has had some amazing visions and insights about Sam and his passing. It was her husband who made the Bodhisattva reference to Sam. She made an interesting comment to us about how unusual  and special  it is to be able to see the whole arc of someone’s life.. especially a life lived well like Sam’s .. 

    T had written me a great note earlier in the day commenting on some of the stories in this blog.

She joked that it seemed like I was getting younger as the blog went forward  sort of like the wizard Merlin’s “youthening” or reverse aging process. I like this image of Merlyn..  .since kooks  Merlyn. Dumbledor, Gandolf, Doc Brown  from Back to the Future . have been my heroes since I was a kid.  (Can you see it ? )

I certainly don’t feel like I’m getting any younger when I look into the mirror.. but .when I look into my heart, I think T may be right. As strange as it may seem,. I feel like some of Sam’s spirit has come into me.. into us… since his death. The way Sam’s many friends and their families have come into our lives has been like a jolt of energy for me. I can’t remember a time I’ve felt more alive, felt more love.. or felt this creative. It just sucks that this ‘youthening’  for me. has to come at such a high cost. .It’s one of those strange gifts I’m finding in this tragedy… 

    The rest of the  evening has been  pretty quiet. Gabe had Will over and we all played Monopoly I find I’m no better with fake money than I am with the real thing It was fun hanging out, though. . Carolyn and Selene came by. Carolyn related a sad coincidence story from her recent  trip to Colorado. She was looking for a place to leave a SamStone when she walked into a store  in Colorado Springs. The store owner’s 17 year old  son Asher Crank had just been killed in a skiing accident on Jan 17^th.. The family was just beginning their own path through the journey we’re on.  My thoughts are with them…

   Hearing about Asher’s  family reminds me about the  poem which our friend Sarah sent me a few weeks back .

 

The Well of Grief  – by David Whyte

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.

Those small round coins are the gifts that keep coming up for me.. They’re not gifts we wanted.. but gifts just the same.. Thank you Sam..

-jc