Late last night Diane reminded me that I had a Reiki appt at 9 this morning.   Somehow I hadn’t remembered to put it on my calendar, so I had to start rearranging my calendar the moment I woke up. To do that. I had to turn on my laptop, which exposed me to several urgent/unpleasant emails waiting for me in my mailbox.   By the time I got to Marci’s for my Reiki session, I was already pretty grumpy  She managed to turn that around pretty quickly. . The thing I like about Reiki is that even though my brain ‘knows’ it can’t work, it does anyway..

Marci is trying to help me be more resilient/resistant to the day to day pressures that are building back in my work.  I left there feeling much more balanced. 

 I worked through the morning trying to prepare for a large meeting next week which I’m excited/nervous about. Mid day I met my friend John M for lunch  at  Mexecali. I love that place.. I don’t even have to tell them my order because  all  the folks there know what I like. John is a great guy. He sought me out after Sam’s death to talk to me about grieving. He lost both of his parents in an accident several years ago. He wanted to share his own experience and path towards healing in the hopes of helping me.. and it has.. Even though our situations are very different, My  experience trying to ramp back into life seems to have some similar challenges to John’s . He described it pretty well.. even though he looked ‘back’ to his colleagues… he didn’t  really feel  all there. He said that his memory was fine.. but when it came to problem solving/, there were times he just couldn’t do it. That’s exactly what I’m going through now. I don’t have any trouble remembering facts, people or connections.. but  I get so muddled when ever I have to synthesize… or work something out.. It’s really hard because those are some of the things I always felt that I was good at..    John and I also talked about spiritual growth.. again.. our  experiences and backgrounds  are quite different.. but it really helped to talk about it…   I’m so grateful that he is taking the time to talk to me at this point…

  The rest of  the day was a mix of short telephone conferences and emails.. I bugged out early so I could go down to New Haven  to help Homer unload the milling machine.  I got down to Homer’s shop a little before he returned.. so I plopped down on some rocks and started at the beautiful clear sky…  When Homer got back we unloaded the pieces of the mill and started to work on the table we’re planning to use as a new base  for the machine… It was grubby work.. but it was a beautiful afternoon…

We then shifted our focus to getting the mill reassembled.. we did a lot of head scratching and giving each other dumb looks.. there is a manual with the thing.. but neither of us wanted to be first to have to resort to it J … We got pretty far.. but In the end.. we did have to start reading   

.. About that time, I had to head back to Richmond…

    Diane was already up at Townsend’s so I went directly  there.. they were having a big bonfire for no particular reason.. They had another feast spread out up there.. and lots of our friends were there.

Deb made an interesting observation tonight.. their house  was always full of  their kids’ friends.. now.. since Sam’s passing… it’s also often filled with their kids, friends parents.. we’ve all become so close over the last 5 months.   I did spend some time staring into the fire.. I love watching the parks fly into the night sky. Someone said that each spark is a soul. I wonder.. I tried taking a few time-lapse pictures of the parks and got the following  If you look closely you’ll see a big ‘S’ traced out by one of the sparks.. if you look closely you can trace out other letters.. take a look…. !  ( I traced them to help you see)

   We got home around 11.. about 30 minutes later I had to dive to the airport to pick up Max… He’s just finished up his last semesters classes down at Pratt. His plain was about 30 minutes late.. by that time I’d fallen asleep on the floor of the airport terminal. I woke just as the plane landed. I could tell the moment that I saw Max that a great weight had been lifted off of him.. it was now summer vacation for him !.. I’m very proud of how hard he’s worked the last several weeks…    It’s wonderful to have him back home…

All my kids are with me now… you too Sam.

-me

ps. Max just reminded me that today is the one year anniversary of the day that our pet bird Gabi died. I remember that day so well. It was one of the hardest day my family had ever had together.  Sam loved that bird.. so did I.