Just back in town from a day trip to Boston. I went down with my friend Paul to attend an IBM meeting in Cambridge. It was really good talking to Paul on the drive. He’s a man with many impractical hobbies.. That’s something I really admire in a friend J . One bonus of the trip was the chance to catch a quick lunch with my folks before the meeting. We met at the Middle Eastern Restaurant.. (Catchy name.. no ?)   in Central Square.. I don’t think I’d been in the pkace in more than 25 years.. but it hadn’t changed a bit. The place is excellent.   My mom gave me some really nice pictures of Sam and brought me a nice wooden frame that he’d once for her. It was great getting the pictures… though it really choked me up seeing them. Luckily, Paul is funny and smart enough to keep my parents amused and busy during lunch  so I didn’t have to talk much. It really was great seeing them.  I gave them a bag of SamStones to distribute for us.
    The IBM meeting turned out to be  very  interesting. We were down talking to IBM Research folks on tools for building communities. My experience with Sam’s and my  MySpace  and this blog have made me a big believer in ‘virtual communities’ I’m hoping to use what I’ve learned here to help other folks in my day  job life find their way to these technologies. Our meeting ended at about 6. We stopped by the food court in the next door mall to grab a byte to eat before the ride home. As I walked into the food court I realized that the last time I’d been there had been with Sam on his 4^th grade overnight at the Boston   Museum of Science. We had sushi that time.. Sam loved sushi….  We got the car and headed towards home. Paul was kind enough to drive me by MIT to drop off some SamStones. I dropped one under the window of my old dorm room in  Bexley Hall .. I then took Paul on a whirlwind tour of the main MIT building complex. We went up to the 4^th floor of Building 4 (MIT buildings also have creative names)   to see the Edgerton Center. Doc Edgerton was the father of strobe photography… and was one of my favorite profs at MIT.  They’ve built an open laboratory in Doc’s honor for folks who want to build things   I left a SamStone there  because Sam loved building things.
    The drive back passed quickly.. We spent the time talking about the meeting, Pails project.. our families, and of course Sam ..I’m in the habit of touching the button I wear with Sam’s picture whenever I’m thinking of Sam.. I realized I was holding the button nearly the whole way back  to Vermont. I got home at 10PM to a quiet house. Max, Scott and Mason were still awake, Diane and Gabe were asleep. I spent about a half an hour trying to coax the heat in the barn to start, but no dice. It seems that all the major system in our house are failing.. the barns heat, our septic system. The woodstove, the blinds… I think the house is ging through a mourning phase as well. It’s funny that these house calamities don’t even phase me these days.. I wonder if it’s resilience or apathy…?
   Tomorrow evening I am doing the first Mad Science show that I’ve done since Sam died. I don’t know what it will feel like to be in front of an audience again.. Sam used to help me do these shows occasionally just like Gabe helps me sometimes now. I’m hoping it feels good to be back in action. My heart tells me that working with kids is a good way to honor Sam’s memory..

   Speaking of Mad Science.. here are some more pictures that Max, Gabe, Scott and Mason made using time lapse the other night.. Cool or what Sam ?

Here’s Gabe:

Here’s Max

Here’s Scott

And here’s Mr. Robot (Mason)

ps. Hannah has been listening to Azure Ray’s ‘November’ and thinking of Sam. I think it fits.  Take a listen .. The lyrics are here.

We’ve just come back from Bolton after the normal Wednesday Night Rider’s competition. Before the competition tonight we had a short ceremony to officially open the beautiful new down-flat-down rail that Sawyer, Neil, Deb and Carter made in Sam’s honor.  It’s a thing of beauty !. The guys welded it out of 2×4 square tubular steel… Sawyer painted Sam’s name all over the both sides of the rail . Neal welded the year Sam was born, his name, and the year he died on the three posts that hold the thing up.   There were about 50 folks u in the terrain park …. It wasn’t too cold, ..but cold enough that my lips froze to the rail when I bent down to kiss it.  We passed out Red Bulls and everyone poured some of theirs on the rail. The stuff quickly froze into a funky greenish goo .    After some hoping and hollering, we all balanced our empty Red Bull cans on the rail and Chris Perron (Scooby) came flying down the mountain and plowed them off .  It was beautiful and surreal. . Sam’s spirit is so powerful up on that mountain. I swear I could hear him up there tonight… Here’s what it looked like”

     After the ceremony, we all  hung out and watched the competition then slithered down to the bar  to refuel and wait for results. Gabe took 2^nd in his age group (yee-ha) and won some mighty nice white and purple boarding gloves.  It is such a great family scene up at Bolton.. It feels like a second home, now with all the tables full of our friends…   people are continuously hugging us.. buying us food or drink.. Today someone recognized Sam’s picture n Max and offered him a free glass blowing lesson.  We continue to live in an extended state of grace.. Maybe it can’t last forever, but the kindness that people extend to us now truly fills us up.
   Tonight we saw Ralph and his dad Mark. Mark, Ralph’s Mom. Mark’s wife Robin just came back from Mexico a few days ago. While they were down there they got a friend to go to Chitzenitza and had several  more of Sam’s Mayan pendants made for us. They are jus tlike the one that Sam used to ear… beautiful . We plan to all wear them. Whule they were there they placed SamStone in Chitzenitza, Tulum and the Gulf of Mexico. These things are starting to cover the earth. It’s a nice thought.
Well.. I gotta get some sleep tonight. I’m off to Boston for the day tomorrow for a meeting. I get to see my folks  for lunch which will be fun. We’re going to a Middle Eastern restaurant I once tried to belly dance in when I was in college…  Can you picture it, Sam ?

-jc

Very sleepy tonight, so I won’t write much.  I’m back to the habit of getting about 5 hours of sleep a night and it’s taking its toll. This is just one of the signs of my returning to ‘normal’.  I know that ‘normal’ is probably not ever going to happen or at least it’s a long way off at this point.  At the moment I find that I am having to think of myself as two different people.  One of me (A) is amazed at my own strength and resilience. My family and I have gone through one of the worst things that can happen to a person.. and we’re surviving.  Not only are we surviving but we’re taking care of each other, functioning in society pretty well and finding cool ways to honor Sam’s memory. I feel powerful, creative and full of energy. I’m proud of the way I’m deliberately moving forward.  The other of me (B) is fragile and drained.  I need to be careful to to sink into a quiet sadness that’s hard to shake. My energy levels are low and I need to take things slow.  The trickiest thing is that I never know which of me I’m going to find. Sometimes I have A’s energy in the morning and B’s sadness in the afternoon… Other times it’s the reverse (e.g. as it was today ). Sometimes I flip states many times in the course of a day. This is so new for me.. I’ve always felt like I could tap into nearly infinite energy… even to the point of burning myself out.. Now I have to plan extra time to account for periods of low energy..  It feels like the gearshift is busted.. Sometimes I can get into gear.. other times, I can’t. It turns out, there’s a funny upside to this. I am finding that having to plan for these lows is keeping the pace of my life a considerably slower than before.. so far, that’s keeping the stress levels way down and allowing me to keep myself on gentle cycle a bit longer. Diane likened our current reality to a Dali painting.. our normal reality and sense of time is twisted and stretched into a weird version  of  what it was before.  Life imitates art.
   Speaking of art… Max and Gabe have been also been bubbling with  some great creative energy in the past couple of weeks. Over the past few nights the tow of them have worked with friends Scott and Mason on some time lapse photography.. They’ve come up with some amazing images.. I’ll try to post some of them later this week. Right now I’ll leave you with the following two images they made with colored lights and a digital camera…

 What do you think Sam ?
-jc

Ps. We’re going to have a short celebration tomorrow night around  6:30ish at Bolton Valley to unveil the new rail that Sawyer and his family have built in Sam’s honor.  (We love you guys) , We’ll all be up on the mountain toasting the rail with Red Bull’s .. Be there or be²

For some reason today was had more emotional ups and downs than usual.  I kept getting surprised by my own mini-meltdowns throughout the day. Thanks goodness my office has a door. Diane calls these ‘leaky eye days’. We were talking about it tonight.. We both get the feeling that  these tough  emotional days are the ones when we do the most powerful grieving work with Sam. It feels like we’re getting something done.. working through things… It may sound funny.. but it feels like progress to me.
     Just after lunch I picked up the phone and called ‘P’, a friend of my good friend Lori. P lost her son Daniel on Dec 28^th to a freak accident with a BB gun…  Like Sam’s Daniel’s death came without warning. P and I spoke for about 30 minutes about our new lives.. It was really good talking to her about her son and her experiences. We shared some ideas on keeping our boys memories alive. Daniel was evidently quite an artist.. P is going to send me one of his drawings.. which I’ll post here.  I turned her on to this blog. 
    When I got home, I found that Diane had also reached out to a woman ‘J’, who several friends had steered her to. J lost a daughter 3 years ago in a car accident. Diane feels that J is on the same spiritual path that we’re on in terms of coming to feeling attached to our kid’s spirits as part of something larger . J shared some great stories of  ‘seeing’ her daughter in nature. She gave us a wonderful photo of the moon and a poem one of her daughters friends had written. There is great comfort in sharing stories like this one on one  with people like P and J.   So far, neither Diane no I have felt drawn towards group support organizations. though we may feel the need later. Many folks have told us that groups like Compassionate Friends have helped them.
       I managed to get home in time to catch Diane’s 6PM Yoga class int the barn. It was so wonderful seeing so many friends up in the barn doing Yoga. My friends Bruce and Martha from Houston even showed up. Diane is such a wonderful teacher. The class was exactly what I needed to chill out after an emotional day. Bruce and Martha joined us for dinner. I love talking to Bruce about our lives together as kids in Houston. His and Martha’s  accents sounds like home to me.  Around 9 they  bundled up  and headed out into the cold. I don’t think my Houston friends have ever been anywhere where it’s 6 below.      
     About that time I had a good call from my Mom… She and my dad are also making progress in their mourning… I know the great pain of losing Sam… even so I don’t know what it would feel like to be his grandparent Everybody experiences Sam’s loss in their own way.
     My hardest moment today came about an hour ago when I was going through my cell phone messages. Nice again I came across the last message I got from Sam    I love hearing his voice thought it truly breaks my heart as well to hear it… Tomorrow I’m going to record the message so I’ll always have it… which means listening to it again.. which means….   Oy Sam.. I miss you so much my son. Can you call me one more time ?nite
-jc

Ps. my friend Jleigh’s grandfather is in the hospital this evening.. Please send him soem love..