10 PM on a Sunday night… things are finally quieting down for the night. I’m in Sam’s room where I need to be. I haven’t given myself tiem to be with him enough yet today. We had a very busy weekend. Last night kids started showing up around 10:30PM for the post Winter Ball party.. By about 1AM  there were about 45 kids in the house.  Diane created some pretty funny signs for the party goers outlining the rules of the house including the line “not only does your presence fill our hearts up, our poor old septic system  gets filled up too …” and then went on to outline the rules against excess flushing, showering etc. We love having people in the house… but we don’t love having sewage backed up in the house.  I didn’t get a firm count, but I think about 30 folks spent the night in the house . I wandered off to bed at about 3 while folks were still doing Karaoke in the barn. By some miracle I managed to sleep until about 10:30. By the time I was up, the house was on the 2^nd or 3^rd shift of breakfast and many folks were sleepily drifting off to their own homes. It was wonderful having some many of Max and Sam’s friends in the house..   and at this point at least, our ancient plumbing seemed to be up to the task.  As always, the quiet after the storm is the hardest for us. I found I needed to be by myself a bit.   I ended up taking  nice snowshoe with Chai. 

Late in the afternoon I went over to my friend Paul’s house to play with his very cool computer controlled laser cutter..  I joke with Paul that when you have a computer controlled laser in the house that you know that you have the right job and the right wife.  . Gabe had had the idea of cutting Sam’s Mayan name in the grip tape for a skateboard.. and Paul had agreed to help us out. Dave from Talent Skate Park met me at Paul’s and we spent a few hours transferring the image to the grip tape. The results are absolutely amazing
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Paul’s son Nick also designed a really cool ‘Sam Forever’ logo that we also plan on transferring to grip tape.

I love doing this kind of stuff for Sam’s memory

   Paul’s son Nick also designed a really cool ‘Sam Forever’ logo that we also plan on transferring to grip tape.  I  love doing this kind of stuff for Sam’s memor On the way home from Paul’s I spoke with my parents in Massachusetts. .I love them very much and feel for them. Both of our parents are finding the situation to be very tough.  They are still in deep mourning for Sam and it’s really hard for them to be so far away. They both  loved Sam so much. and they love us so much, too. This mourning stuff is difficult because in the end, there’s nothing you can do for anyone else you can only take care of yourself.    My folks moved to Sherborn, MA a few years ago , , and are finding their community to be pretty supportive.  I’m glad that Diane’s parents have friends and family near them in Endicott.. .. really cool ‘Sam Forever’ logo that we also plan on transferring to grip tape.  I love doing this kind of stuff for Sam’s memory.  the way home from Paul’s I spoke with my parents in Massachusetts. .I love them very much and feel for them. Both of our parents are finding the situation to be very tough.  They are still in deep mourning for Sam and it’s really hard for them to be so far away. They both  loved Sam so much. and they love us so much, too. This mourning stuff is difficult because in the end, there’s nothing you can do for anyone else you can only take care of yourself.    My folks moved to Sherborn, MA a few years ago , , and are finding their community to be pretty supportive.  I’m glad that Diane’s parents have friends and family near them in Endicott..

     I got home around 6:30 just before my friend Bruce and his wife Martha showed up at the house. Bruce was my next door neighbor and close kid friend in Houston from the time I was 5 until I was 21. Bruce and his family were a huge part of my growing up in Houston.. I lost touch with Bruce after I left Houston.. Even though we hadn’t spoken in more than 10 years, Bruce decided that he and Martha needed to come up to visit us after Sam died. We introduced him and Martha to our kids (including Sam) and showed him around the house We had a really nice evening tonight reminiscing about growing up in swampy, steamy Houston, Texas. . . I don’t have many ties to my childhood.  It felt really good trading stories about catching poisonous snakes we didn’t know were poisonous, blowing stuff up in the back yard and catching his shop on fire. I’m s glad they came up to see us.. We’ll see them again over the next couple of days…
     I need to sign off here and get to work on the web page. We’ve started handing out SamStones with the Samstones.org URL on them. Folks who find them are still finding a half operational site.   I’ve got to get that working. I’m committed to having t up by early this week.   I wish I were a better web guy…  So much to do…. G’nite all. G’nite sam.

-jc

 

It’s another calm before the storm evening. Tonight is the Winter Ball at MMU and all the kids are converging on our house for a post Ball ‘sleep’ over. I say ‘sleep’ in quotes because I suspect very little of that will be done by anyone.. including us. 

We had a good day today. It was cold outside so Diane and I just puttered around inside. Gabe was up on the mountain and Max was busy sewing blinking electroluminescent wire onto the edges of his $5 thrift store jacket for tonight’s dance.   I didn’t get to do the welding I’d planned today as I found that I was out of shielding gas. It was just as well.. its was 20 degrees in the barn. Brrrr.
    My puttering was mostly directed at getting the Samstones Web page up and running … it’s not yet. (For those interested, I’ve decided to use the WordPress Wiki system to run the site. I should have a new design up early next week.  If anyone is  a WordPress expert, please let me know)  I have spent a bunch of time looking at Sam’s pictures as I start to integrate the web site.  That can be very hard.. it can also be very sweet. I find myself smiling and crying at the same time.. we have some really goofy pictures of that boy.. Another thing  I’ve been doing is looking at other memorial sites on the web. It is a pretty sad  but interesting way to spend a few hours. When you find one, it’s impossible not to get drawn into a person’s memorial site. Each one gives you a glimpse into a person’s life, their story, and a connection to the many people who miss them. You find yourself wondering.. ‘were they happy ?’… ‘were they popular ?’.. You never need to wonder if they were loved … it’s is usually very obvious from these sites that the person was dearly loved and missed. After all.. it’s an act of love building a memorial site like this.
   Diane and I spent some time talking about these websites and about the LA Times article I posted yesterday. The article had made me feel uncomfortable but I wasn’t exactly sure why. I didn’t like the tone of the psychologist in the article who said that ” .. writing on a dead friends MySpace page is similar to visiting a cemetery… .. all are attempts to maintain a relationship with someone who has died”. That struck me as somehow cold.   I decided to post it anyway. I realized this morning that the article forced me to consider that some aspects of our tragedy are played out in other families and in other towns. At the same time,  I know that Sam’s spirit and its effect on our community has been unlike anything  I’ve ever experienced., heard of or even imagined. I’m now realizing that each loss like Sam’s is totally unique. There’s just no way to compare them.  This is just one more lesson on this very tough but interesting journey.
     Oh.. I need to jump back into the here and now.. I hear major activity downstairs as the first wave of tonight’s kids are arriving (and it’s ‘just’  11:53 PM !)  I better get down there and start shoveling food.. it’s going to be a long and fun night… Sam.. I feel you here.. enjoy the party ! 

-jc

ps. Sawyer’s mom Deb asked me to give folks a heads up that  we’re goign to have a special  celebration at Bolton Valley on Wednesday night. to mark the unveiling of the custom rail that Sawyer’s family made in Sam’s honor. We don’t know the exact time, but it will probably be right before the start of the normal Wednesday night ‘Night Rider’s” competition which is always a blast. I’ll fll everyone in on the details as soon as I know them. Ya’ll come !

pss. I may have already posted this picture.. but I love it so here it is again. He’s wearing his favoirte ‘boomstick’ shirt. .. I love that guy so much

Ahhhh back after my trip to. It’s so good to be home. The house is warm and inviting even though its getting pretty cold outside. So cold that  when Max went out to kiss Sam’s big rock,  his lips froze to it.. It was -14 when I got in bed a few minutes ago.
I had a good drive back from Connecticut with my friends Mark. Dave and Geordie.  We talked about all sorts of stuff on the drive.. Luckily we exhausted most of our work talk on the drive down, so the ride back was mostly about kids, family and music. We ended up listening to Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsises for the last part of the trip… not sure why, but ‘Hear my Train A coming’ brought tears to my eyes.  Sam really liked Hendrix…
As soon as I got home, Diane, Gabe and I went up to Deb and Barry’s for dinner. As always their house was full of kids.. full of life. We  grown-ups had a great time talking over one of Deb’s wonderful meals. We  started talking about that first night we came back to Vermont after Sam died. As soon as we got off the plane that night, we dropped our bags at our house and went up to Deb and Barry’s. I’ll never forget walking into that house and seeing 30 or so of Sam’s friends gathered there… I was sitting in the same seat tonigh at their table  where I first watched the musical slide show that Brittany and Sumner had made of Sam’s pictures.. (the one that’s linked at the top of this blog). I can still remember the overwleming love and saddnesss I felt sitting there surrounded by a crowd of Sam’s crying friends. Looking at those pictures and hearing that music. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life and cemented me forever to everyone in that room….  I can’t believe that was already two months ago..  
    As we talked, our friend Wendy brought up a quote she’d sent me last night from an Eve Ensler book she’s reading. The quote is  from Cindy Sheehan. The women who protested outside President Bush’s Texas ranch after her son Casey was killed in the Iraq war.   Cindy was quoted as saying :

 “Everything for me now is out of love, not duty. Since Casey’s death moved me to action, I know I am on the right path. I hardly ever get sick. I have energy. Just need a few hours of sleep. I have never been more alive. My son brought me here. We all know Casey was going to be a great man; we just thought he would be alive when it happened. I had no idea what a great man he would be. All this is happening now because of Casey. Casey and I gave birth to each other. His death forced me, freed me, to be the best human I can be, to be a true mother. If hundreds of women got free like this, there would be no war.”

I understand this sentiment so deeply.  .  Sam’s death has pushed me over an edge into  a different world. Even though I’m incredibly sad.. I feel galvanized and energized. The line  “Everything for me now is out of love, not duty  rings so true to me. I feel a great need to find the best way to pass on my love for Sam.. and his great spirit.. For Cindy Sheehan, the path is resisting this unjust war… what is my path  to be ? I realize that it may take awhile  for the answer to come. Diane has told me to put my intention out there and the idea will come to me.. this is helping me build patience.  . I’m beginning to think my work with kids and science might be the right way to channel my energy…   but I’m not sure this is ‘it’ yet. I’ll start doing science shows again beginning next month… and I’ll see how that feels.   I know it may sound funny.. but as sad as this journey is and as much as I wish I never had to take it… . I’m finding the journey  exciting..

   While I may not yet have found my true purpose, I do I know that at least part of my path is going to be working with kids. I’ll be doing a little of that tomorrow when Sam’s friends Hannah and Avery come over to learn to weld. I’ve already warned them that I’m not a very good welder,  I’ll let you know how that goes  tomorrow.. Sam… bring your goggles

-jc

Ps. my freind Kevin M. sent me this very interesting article from the LA times about how others are using MySpace for grieving.. Check it out here.

 

 

 

Sigh… I just wrote a longish post, then lost it all when my browser failed. I’ll try to re-type it from memory. This is a pretty Zen exercise…

I Just got back from to the hotel from my all day meeting. On the bus back, I was telling my friend Wolfgang that I felt funny several times today because I found myself feeling ‘normal’. sometimes .  It wasn’t that Sam was not on my mind. I was thinking about him all day. It was just that I found myself getting really into some good technical discussions, and it felt pretty good to be enjoying my work again.
   On the people front, the day was amazing. I must have been hugged by about 50 friends. Our sadness of losing of Sam hits such a universal chord in people that it cuts right through the normal business protocol of quick handshakes. On top of that, I didn’t feel like running around trying to say ‘hi’ to everyone as I would normally do. The combination allowed me to have good, long conversations with several friends about Sam, their families, life priorities, etc. Even though I normally find these meetings exhausting,  I found today strangely relaxing…
   I had an interesting intersection between work and life this afternoon. There was a talk and panel this afternoon which touched on on-line collaborative communities such as MySpace and SecondLife. After the session., I talked to two of the panelists, my friends and mentors Katherine and Irving., about our experience with MySpace. I told them how Sam’s MySpace had turned out to be such a wonderful way for Sam’s friends to come together to mourn, and heal… I also told them about how much my MySpace blogging had meant to me during this hard time. I think it would be fun to help companies like mine create something like MySpace to use too help build their own internal communities.  I was just starting to play around with SecondLife just before Sam died. In Second life I look like this:

     Wow… I just spoke with Diane and she told me that our very close friend Mason was in a car accident today on the Richmond-Huntngton road. Thanks g-d Mason was not hurt, but his car was totatled when it slipped on a patch of ice, spun out and hit a tree. Mason told Diane that he had a vision of Sam as the car hit the tree and the airbags came out. I was so freaked out when I heard about  the  accident that I was shaking. Mason and his family are so close to us.. I am so glad that you’re OK Mason.. we love you !  Thanks for protecting him Sam !

-jc

ps. Diane also told me that while she was up at Jen’s painting SamStones today a part of my blog from yesterday came up. I had said: 

I’ve had several people ask my why we’re choosing to be so public about our grieving.. I really don’t have an answer.. we’re just doing what feels right to us. Our friend Jean suggested that people grieve the way they live.. .. and I guess we’re public people…

I guess the part about us being ‘public people’ didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean that the  outpouring of love from our community was because we were public people.. That was because Sam was who he was…   All the folks who are wearing  Sam’s picture or  helping us make SamStones.. or writing his name in the snow are publicly showing the world how much they care about Sam and miss him.. . And I’m missing him very much right now.. Here’s a picture of him as ‘Wonderboy’ at Camp Abnaki last Summer. I love you so much my son..