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..

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.