I woke today feeling much more peaceful… I could still remember the deep pain I felt yesterday … but it let me be this morning. I lay there for about awhile thinking about Sam and sending him love.  Diane woke up and it was her turn to wake up sad. It’s like that now.  I’m so grateful that we have the love and closeness that lets us talk about where we are in the moment and be there for each other.  We talked each other out of  bed and downstairs to start the morning routine:, start the fire, open the shades, feed Chai, made tea … I find that starting our day is a bit like trying to get a rusty lawn mower started.. some days   we can start on the first pull… some morning we try and try and can’t get started.. This morning our day sputtered to life on the first pull.   … The snowstorm promised for last night didn’t deliver.. so we pushed each other outside for an early morning run. It was cold and wet.. but still felt great to be outdoors…  As we ran Diane told me about a grandfather’s clock in the Harry Potter book she’s reading with Gabe. The clock has a hand for each member of the Weasely family that shows what’s going on in that person’s life… where they are and how they’re doing.  (e.g. Mortal Peril)   We decided that we needed one of those to keep track of the different emotional roller coasters the four of us are on.. On ours the each person’s hand would point to words like  peaceful, in denial, angry, very sad, optimistic, spaced out, preoccupied, buoyed by friends, etc….   it would help us and our friends figure out the shifting emotional weather of our house.   

   These different emotional cycles are one sign of just how much of the healing journey you have to take on your own… You do it with your loved ones and friends… but you heal on your own.. one moment at a time.. one thought at a time.. We’ve gratefully fallen into the arms of friends and family just to get through the past five weeks.. Our job now have to learn to stand on own two feet again.   To that end… we’re spending the day preparing for some sort of party that Gabe has planned for tonight.. Like last night’s snowstorm, we don’t know whether to expect 3 friends or 30. It’s will be a mix of Gabe and Sam’s friends.. but those are mostly the same people anyway. It will be fun whoever shows up…    and fun is good for us we’re told J ,

    Oh.. Speaking of friends, a cool thing happened yesterday. Our friend Keith came by yesterday to say hi. Keith splits his time between Bolton and St. Petersburg , Florida… He helps run the snowboarding program here in the winter and works on boats while in Florida. Keith just happened to be in St. Petersburg when we went down after Sam’s accident. He came and visited us in the hospital which was a great comfort to us.. He’s up here now for a few days visiting friends. Last night  he came by with a plain white snowboard that he’d had all the kids at Bolton sign. He’s taking it down to Florida to create a small memorial to Sam near the site of his accident. It will be good to have a memorial to Sam down there. What made me even happier was that Keith told me that he and a buddy are starting a program in Sam’s honor to take inner city Florida kids to the beach. We really, really love it when we hear that people are being moved by Sam’s spirit to help other folks. 

    I hear the house stirring.. it must be close to 11AM…   I’ve got a cool idea for something I’m going to build today for Sam if I can get to it…    Now I’m going to go shovel out the barn to make way for the party tonight.. Whether it’s 2 or 30 it will be fun to have the house filled with gross middle school humor again… Be there or be square Sam..

-jc

ps. One of the spotlights in our kitchen got really bright.. buzzed and burned out just as we came in the house after our run.  I think these coincidences… or ‘connections’ (better word) are a result of us being so open right now… Open both as in exposed and raw.. and  open as in receptive. I hope I can hold on to the receptive part.

The day after Christmas. I woke today in deep sadness. Christmas and its preparations are past. I was so proud of myself and my family for the real joy we were able to bring to our Christmas celebration yesterday. We found many ways to honor Sam and bring him into our observance of the day. It could not have been a better day given where we are.  I have tried to be optimistic and uplifting in these posts when I can, but I also want to be true to myself about what I’m experiencing.   The reality of Sam’s death comes into my life a little more each day. Christmas brought me a little relief because I was able to focus a little on getting ready for the holiday.  I know it sounds crazy… but  I realize now that we all carried  a secret wish for a  Disney style Christmas miracle would let us be closer to Sam somehow  yesterday… maybe we were. 
     My parents drove in from MA yesterday afternoon. It’s very good to have them up with us. Our friends Joan and John (Max’s girlfriend Jessie’s parents)  had invited  all of us over for Christmas dinner. It was so good of them to share their Christmas with us.  . It was a really nice evening.. good company.. good food.. family games.. and gifts.   We understand how brave and compassionate someone needs to be to offer to share their time with us during these holidays. We deeply appreciate it. The later it got the more quiet I became. By the time we left around 10, I was deeply sad.  Diane drove us home because I couldn’t  because I was crying too hard. When we got home, we took our lead from Max in creating a closing moment for the day around Sam. We held hands around Sam’s rock outside, lit a lantern and spoke our Christmas wishes to Sam out loud.   Diane and I then quietly walked up to our favorite rock in the fields above our house. We sat there for a while looking down at our house.. at our lives.. and cried. We had to just be in our sadness then.  We walked back home and went to bed.
    Now that the day is past, there’s nothing to punctuate the unfocused sadness I feel at many times during the day.   Nothing external, at least…. I realize that I’m going to have to create my own reasons for getting out of bed in the morning.   I think being ‘here’ for Max, Gabe and Diane is going to be my main drive for the next few months.   I’m also going to try tapping into the creative urges I’ve been getting to ‘make stuff’ in Sam’s memory. (If anyone has any cool ideas please share them with me.)
    Speaking of making stuff… We’ve received many amazing gifts in Sam’s honor over the last week. Last night Jessie handed us a gift wrapped box… Inside it was nearly $300 she’d collected from kids at the High School for Sam’s Fund.  The day our friend Grit’s daughter Lindsay donated the money that she was going to spend on Christmas presents to the fund. We heard that only thing on Sam’s friend’s Sawyer’s Christmas list was a rail named in Sam’s honor at Bolton.   We’ve also had trees planted for Sam, goats and chicks donated to hungry farmers, magic rocks, paintings, poems, songs ….  all offered in Sam’s amazing memory.   It really helps fill up our hearts.  Well… the house is beginning to wake up ( it’s 11AM 🙂  I’m going to go and build this day from scratch.. Help give me strength Sam….. Peace.

 -jc

It’s 2PM on Christmas afternoon..  the day has been really peaceful and good.  .. Our expectations about the day were so painful that it was pretty easy to surpass them.   Again.. it’s showing me that worrying about the future is pointless in our situation.

Last night we went to friends Lou and Kathy’s Christmas party. Lou had arraigned for everyone to bring their potato cannons to give Sam a Christmas eve salute.. The twenty or so of us took turns shooting spuds into the starlit sky in honor of Sam. Highlights included a successful launch of a potato launched with a lit sparkler stuck in it.. and a four gun volley fired simultaneously by Diane, Max, Gabe and me.  It was just the sort of tribute Sam would have wanted.. I hope he saw it… We then made a quick stop by our good friends the Kenny’s before going home. Diane gave Jen a ceramic wind chime that she’d helped Sam make at a school program in 3^rd grade. That exchange brought tears to everyone’s eyes… As we drove home from the Kenny’s at about 11:00 we all talked about how to close the day in Sam’s memory. When we got home, Max and I built a large fire outside.. the four of us came around the fire and sent our thoughts and prayers to Sam.. we each wrote him a Christmas  letter and threw it into the fire. We also sent best wishes to Sam’s pet bird Gabby who died this past spring.  Gabby’s death was the saddest thing we’d ever had to face as a family until now.  We put some chemical salts into the fire to create some color and sat there watching the blues and greens of the fire burn up the letters.. It was very peaceful…

    It was 12:30 in the morning before we got back to wrapping presents. We’d had so many visitors that day that Diane and I had barely gotten started on that task. Neither of us had had much energy for shopping since Sam died.. but somehow we still had a huge pile of packages that needed wrapping. .  Sam’s physical absence and his spiritual presence were both so strong to me. I bounced back in forth between peace and deep, deep sadness as we arraigned stuff around the tree. The final scene:  the tree, stocking, presents  looked almost like any other year .. but it was so very different. I will never forget the way I felt as I walked back upstairs.   We finished up at around 2:30AM… and fell in bed exhausted.    

    At about 7AM Diane woke to a knock on our bedroom door.. she thought it was the kids.. but there was no one there. Diane felt it was Sam knocking.  She got back in bed and looked out the window… at this point I was awake, too.. Outside there was the most beautiful sunrise.. the sky was filled with reds and pinks.  A few minutes later we heard  Max and Gabe getting up.. they came into our room and sat on our bed for a bit. We all then went down the stairs together just like in all years .past. but without Sam for the first time. . This time we carried a lit lantern with us. The lantern has was given to us by the Haunted Forest folks and has Sam’s name engraved on it.  We kept it lit all day. Instead of digging into presents first as we normally would do.. we all bundled up and walked up into the woods behind us.. We took with us a big box of stale bread, peanut butter, birdseed, peanuts and old apples all strung on bits of string. We hiked up to the same tree we decorate each year for the animals.. It’s gotten so much taller over the years.  We first all came together in a circle and sent our welcome to Sam.. then had a blast throwing  the food up into the tree.   It looked really beautiful when we were done… We had a cup of hot Chai tea .. then walked home to continue Christmas. The rest of the morning was about 90 percent fun and about 10 percent tears… Sam’s stocking was filled with ‘sam stones’… rocks we’d had sandblasted with his name. We plan on leaving them at places that Sam loved…  As we opened presents, we came together several times to think of Sam…  . Several friends came by to check on us throughout the morning… so we’d stop to be with them.   We were in no hurry to be done. We finally finished  opening everything by about 12:30..  We sat down to a wonderful lunch that Jen brought by. At 2 I crawled away to take a nap..   I know now that all of our Christmases..  all of our holidays …  are going to be different without Sam. I learned today that they will not all be totally sad.. but will have a mix of emotions  I can see that we are going to have to abandon some old traditions and make up some new ones.. I think we did OK today. .. The whole morning was bittersweet to be sure..… but much more sweet than bitter ..   I hear my parent have just arrived downstairs.. so I’ll stop here.. Merry Christmas everyone..   Merry Christmas my son.. please send us snow tonight… I love you so much !

 -jc

The house is quiet. Max and Gabe are up trying to ski/snowboard in the rain. They feel close to Sam up on the mmountain no matter what the weather is.  We’ve just come home from a really nice evening at the home of our friends Gretchen and Marshall. Gretchen’sparents, Ed and Sue Gannon are in town. Gretechen had a  sister Stephanie who died in an outdoor accident at age 18 which was 27 years ago. It was both wonderful and sad to talk to the Gannon’s and Gretchen about Stephanie and their path through her loss. It was so clear how much Stephanie was still in their hearts and minds.. It was also clear that they’ve been able to move forward and have lived rich and full lives since her death. That was good for us to see.   We talked about how loss like ours changes your whole view on the passage of time. Sue told us that although it had been 27 years since her daughter died.. it seemed much shorter. We see that too. I can’t believe that it’s almost five weeks since Sam’s death.  The entire time seems like only a week. I think it’s a trick of perspective.. just like driving away from  a hugh mountian.. It always seems to be about the same distance away. Sam’s death is so huge in our lives that it always feels like it just happend. I susupect it will be that way for a very long time …if not forever.. . The good thing about that is that we will not forget him…
    We spent today almost preparing for Christmas… I say almost because there are many things whcih we would normally do that hurt too much to do now. We’re trying to figure out what old traditions we can keep,.. and which ones we can’t . We have also given much thought to what we should ‘get for Sam’.. He doesn’t need presents … but not including him somehow in the gift giving seems so wrong . We have done several things which we think Sam  would have liked. I spent a few hours today welding him some chubnks of metal with his name on them . I’d llike t give these out soe people can leave them in places that Sam loved. We had another idea we liked. Sam had a favorite necklace  which has  a pendant  with his name written phonetically in Mayan glyphs. We had made when Sam  Diane and I went to the Yukatan last June. Sam wore it almost constantly  for the last 5 months of his life. You can see it in many of the slideshow pictures from his celebration.  The image of the Mayan script came to Diane very powerfully during a  Reiki session last week. We knew the symbols were very important to Sam.. The middle symbol is a bird.. which has always been Sam’s ‘totem’ animal . Diane and I traced the gylphs  and gave them to Chris Cleary.. a very cool stonecutter we know in Jericho . Chris sandblased the symbols into the side of a 300 pound boulder. On the other side we etched: “you have your wings – fly free – we will love you forever” . We plan to add his name to in the Spring. We picked up the rock  from Chris this morning.It’s really beatuifull. This evening Max, Mason, Abbot, Rusty and RJ helped me muscle it into place near the barn door. It looks good there… We also  made a donation in Sam’s name to the Seva Foundation to support training of a midwife in a Mayan village. Seva, which means service in sandskrit has some very cool ways that you can give gifts that support health and nutrition across the world. Please check them out.
   Well.. that’s all for tonight… I’m going to go up to Sam’s room and read. Diane and I finally got around to putting up all the posters and pictres we have from Sam’s celibrations up in his room. It’s a very comforting place now… Please come and see it…  Pray for Snow !.. pray for Sam…

-jc