Sam, three months ago today you left this earth my son.. and I still can’t believe it. You are in my thoughts every waking minute… Though I miss your physical presence beyond words, your spirit inside me comforts me.. and so it will have to be for now on.    
    I’m lying here alone in my sisters house trying to make sense of this.. trying to figure out what to say… These last three months have been  the most difficult and emotionally charged  period of our lives.  We felt pain so deep that I marvel that we have survived.. at the same time, we’ve felt more love than I would have ever believed possible. I want to take a moment to thank all of you: our friends, our relatives and our neighbors  for the wonderful love and support you’ve shown Diane, Me, Max, Gabe . and Sam over the last three months. The pain and the love are still with us .. yet with all of your help, we’re  able to integrate them and step back into our lives a little more each day.. 
    I woke this morning  in my sister’s house in Minneapolis to darkness. I was thinking of you , Sam. I couldn’t figure out why it was so dark.. it was because the power had failed in the whole neighborhood. Of course it has.. You have to pick the ways you can to send your love.. Well I feel it buddy… I had to shower and dress to candlelight this morning. It was great being there in the dark with your spirit. Here I am at 6:30 this morning thinking of you.

   You were on my mind the entire day, Sam.. I was in an all day set of work meetings.. Through the whole day I held on to your pin.. and saying your name silently. Tonight I went out to a dinner with work friends.. I felt like my mind was in two places at once.. half of me was in these meetings and half of me was in this quite place with you. After dinner.. I fried a pickle in your honor using two forks and an extension coil.. it was the only electrical tribute I could come up with. 

I love you Sam.. you will always be with me..

  -jc

Ps. Diane reminded me tonight.. If you  are heading anywhere on school vacation, please come by and pick up some SamStones to spread around.   We’d love for you to spread some love around for us.

Pss.  On the way home I passed this sign… not sure it’s a message for me.. or for everyone.. but I’ll pass it on here.

Tuesday night – somewhere over Chicago

I’m writing from somewhere over the Midwest. I’m on a flight from Chicago to Minneapolis for a 3 day work conference. I’m not too happy about being away from home for that long. I am happy, though, that I’ll get to see my sister Mary and her family while I’m there.

   It’s still hard for me to be out in the world far from my family. There is no place more alone than a busy airport or a crowded plane. I’ve had a few good conversations so far this evening with folks. I’m finding that I need to practice talking with strangers again. I have always loved talking to people when I travel. It’s such a cool way to learn new things. Now I find I need to be a little careful when talking.. Already tonight I’ve had to find the right way for answering ‘how many children do you have?’   Of course, I always answer three.. then tell them about all three of my great  kids, including what happened to Sam. There I find that I need to introduce the topic carefully as not to make someone feel bad for having asked. I want to be honest and open.. but not shocking.. It’s an interesting balance. I almost always find that if I introduce the topic in a loving way that people respond with compassion and interest. I want to talk about Sam… and most people are eager to listen.

    I got an email from Diane as I was sitting in the airport waiting for this flight.. In her mail Diane told me some good stuff:

• Gabe had a great drum solo at the band concert tonight !
• Matt T got his leg cast today (bright pink) .. It looks like he won’t need surgery  (Gabe and I want to put lights on it)

.. and some bad stuff.

• A good friend of Diane’s brother Joe was killed in the line of duty this week. He has a wife and four kids.
• Several of our friends have had serious health issues of their own.. or in their families in the last week
  

Right after reading Diane’s note, I read a great letter we got today from Patti.. A friend of a friend in Austin who’s son Daniel was killed in an accident in December. In the note, Patti talks about how her family is doing and what life is like for them now.  I loved that she wrote us.. At the same time. it was hard to read the  while sitting by myself on the plane.  

   Diane and I have talked about how we can feel other people’s sadness or pain so acutely now.  To me it feels like there is some sort of string connecting my heart to theirs.  It’s like we are tuned in to the ‘pain of the world’ (in German they call it Weltschmerz).   When folks know our situation they always approach us like ‘who am I to complain?’ ‘how can I be saing this to YOU ?!”…  but they tell us anyway.. For me, I am finding I can take it. One thing Sam has done  for me is to make me so much stronger.  While I feel other people’s stories, their pain doesn’t make mine any worse.. Sometimes I even feel better for having listened if it lightens someone else’s load.

    OK.. We’re about to land.. So I need to wrap up.  One quick Sam story for today: This morning Diane went to get a massage from our friend Marcia B. (we have lots of good Marcia’s in our lives !)  As soon as Diane walked in, the heater in Marcia’s studio went out.. though it had been working all day. Marcia brought in some nice warmed stones to keep Diane toasty during her session.  As soon as Diane got up and left, the heater came back on immediately. I know it was Sam’s crazy energy. !. Diane felt like Sam wanted her to have the nice warm stones anyway..  Sam.. keep those power surges coming..

-j

Ps. I am now at my sisters house.. I had a great talk with her AND a great cheese quesadilla. The world doesn’t need more than that. We talked for an hour when I should have been sleeping. I finally did get to bed.. here I am all cozy in their third floor apartment ready to fall asleeeeeezzzzzzzzzz……………

Woke to another beautiful morning. Waking today was different because it’s the first day in 3 months that I know that some aspect of my work ended up in my dreams along with Sam, .   I got outside as soon as could and snowshoed up through the loop that Diane and I trailblazed yesterday. Once again, Chai was too wary of the deep snow to come with me.  It was much easier going with the packed trail As always it was beautiful and peaceful in the woods. At the top of the loop, I decided to make a another snow angel,. (This one clothed.) .I  launched myself backwards into the snow. And took this picture…

Picture taken I tried to get up to go home.. It was about 5 below.. so I was getting pretty chilled.. Lo and behold .. the snow was so deep I couldn’t get up.. I flailed around for several minutes until I was able to pull myself up on the packed trail I can imagine this is what it’s like being a moose on one of these snowbound days. Anyway.. once free.. I managed to catch a picture of the snow angel just before I dropped my camera a foot deep in the snow..  

I recovered the camera just as I received a work call on my cell. I don’t know why I took the call but I managed to have a good short technical discussion while standing out there in that beautiful queit place. Was that good or bad ? I hung up and  spent another 10 minutes stomping a large version of Sam’s name in a snow bank  At that point I had to hightail it home since my hands and feet were frozen and I was late for work.
   I got to work and spent the entire morning trying to come up to speed. .. No matter how hard I tried.. I couldn’t get beyond first gear. I found myself apologizing to many colleagues about my spaciness.  I started asking myself today if I am using my reaction to Sam’s passing  as an excuse  at work. not to other people.. but to myself.  I know that no one would begrudge me any time I need .. All  the same.. I’m wondering if I have lowered expectations on myself more than I should at this point.  I just know that my capacity to focus is really diminished.
   I had an early luch with my very good friend Kerry. Kerry is a real mench.. a really, really good guy. He’s been really looking out for me. He’s also been hatching a scheme to construct a memorial sculpture for Sam.. He’s managed to pull together quite a network of artists and artisans who are interested in helping us build some sort of fun memorial to Sam. We were going to have our first meeting on the project on Wednesday. But turns out I need to go out of town. He’s got so much energy for this project. His energy and passion for this are an incredible gift to our family.
    The end of the work day came mercifully early.. I zoomed home for Diane’s 6PM yoga. It was just what I needed. Diane brings such a sense of peace when she’s leading a class that you an almost forget that your hamstrings are about to snap. Early in the class she commented on the view of the moon outside the studio window.. It was a close conjunction of the planet Venus with the crescent moon (like this)
   I could see it from my yoga mat. The particular alignment of these two jewels  of the night sky really hit me.. (now this will be hard to explain)   About two years ago I was doing a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)  session with our friend Marcia. During the session I came up with a ‘picture’ in myself of the balance of my mind and my heart. My mind is a bright white light to my upper right.. and my ‘heart’  is a moon shaped thingy to my lower left.. They are connected by a straight line that pivots around my center. My normal configuration is like this.:.
which means to me that my head always rules my heart.  (note: I am also in touch with my inner pirate)  Tonight’s conjunction of Moon and Venus is the opposite.. as in .. heart dominates head..   I took it as a message to follow my heart for awhile.. I also took it as an excuse to lay flat on my back  and stare out the window. while the other folks in the class were grunting through  difficult yoga postures.
    After Yoga, we had dinner with my friends Leon. Anne Marie and their three very   beautiful kids: Emmanuel, Melissa and Fredrick who were up from New York. These kids are pretty amazing.. They all speak three languages.. (English. Dutch and French).. even the two year old.  They all took SamStones with them to take to their Grandparents houses in The Netherlands and France..
   Sam.. you’re Stones are really getting spread all over the word. That’s pretty cool
   I’ll end tonight with a poem called ‘The Dash” by Linda Ellis. Diane found it today.. please take a few mintes to read it.  

The Dash by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth…
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own:
The cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard…
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
You could be at “dash mid-range”.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real,
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile…
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash…
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

Sam.. ou had one hell of a good dash my son.. I love you
-jc

We had a great day at home this morning. I managed to sleep until 9:30. I woke realizing I’d been talking to Sam in my dreams. I lay there awhile resting in that feeling. I finally dragged my lazy bod out of bed and downstairs. Diane had been up and buzzing around for a few hours. After breakfast we pushed ourselves outside into the beautiful morning to snowshoe. The snow is still amazingly deep.. Even with snow shoes it was very slow going.. It was like working out on nature’s Stairmaster with the resistance turned up high. It was such hard going that our original goal to do the lower loop in the back woods with Chai had to be revised to a much shorter loop.. without Chai. Poor pup fell into her belly whenever she went off of our trail. She finally gave up and went back to the yard.   It was so beautiful and quiet up in the woods.. nothing was moving, there was a light snow falling No wildlife  about but  I managed to catch sight of this elusive creature… Beautiful, no ?

   We huffed and puffed our way up one of our shorter hikes .. Basically taking an hour to do what’s generally a 15 minute hike on a normal day.  As we were coming down we were talking about the mindfulness that Sam’s passing has given us. I’d been beating myself up a bit over the last week in my conversations  and in this  blog about having trouble resisting the rush and distractions of my old life.  Diane pointed out  that I may be holding myself to the wrong standard. She said that being completely grounded just wasn’t me.. that I needed to be a little spacey and distracted to really be ‘me’.  maybe shooting to be the Dali Lama was the wrong goal.. she suggested that I aim to be someone that the Dali Lama would find fun to be around.. Now that’s a fun thing to ponder.  Diane is a good and wise soul.
   We got back to the house around noon and the kids were still sleeping. We woke them up and had a great family breakfast. After that, Gabe and I retired to the Lab to work on  a school project, while Diane and Max worked on his Pratt coursework. Max is going back to Pratt in a week to start finishing off some of the make up work he has from leaving mid semester.
   Gabe’s project is a ‘motion machine’. A kid contrived contraption that illustrates the laws of motion. Working on this particular project brought back great and strong memories of having done the same project with Max and then with Sam. I really love seeing how these kids think . They are all so creative..  Each one has approached the problem with a different style. I remember how adamant Sam was about using a golf putter to swing in a certain was and hit a ball. It took him hours to get it set up.. but in the end it worked great. I was thinking about Sam as we worked today..  Sam would sometimes call me on his school projects when my own impatience would take over. He had a good and  way of telling me  when I  needed to lighten up. I made it a point to listen more and be more patient while working with Gabe.
    Gabe had some really cool ideas on what he wanted to do for his project. We spent most of the day working out the mechanics of a pretty complex gizmo that had one marble hitting another marble which rattle through a funnel, into a pipe  which  then launched it at a stick, that pulls a pin that releases a blade that ….cuts off a clay figures head…  So much for not letting them watch scary or violent movies as small kids. 
   I loved working all day with Gabe.. he’s creative and very good with his hands.   He did all the cutting, grinding and welding on his project himself.. I certainly couldn’t do that stuff at his age… Here are some pictures of the young inventor at work.

He  did his  first complete test run of his project at about 10:30 tonight.. and  I’m happy to say.. it works pretty well.
      Sam. .. I realize just now that I never taught you to weld…   I hope you  were watching us today…

-jc

 ps. never trust a spell checker 🙂