It’s five below zero out and we just got back from Bolton Valley. Tonight is the first night of the Wednesday Night Rider’s ski and snowboard competition up at the mountain. We’ve been going up there every ride-able Wednesday for the past couple of years with Sam. If you’ve never been to Night Riders, you should try it… It’s a great time.. .. the competition is fun and the prizes are great. Over the years Sam has won countless boards, bindings, goggles, hoodies, backpacks, annual passes, etc.. It’s worth checking it out.  This time Gabe competed for the first time  .. wearing Sam’s number and Sam’s lucky Spam lounge pants.    Most of us grownups were wimps and stayed inside because of the cold while the kids froze their tails off outside. The guys started tonight’s contest with a moment of silence for Sam. Our buddy Zach who runs the Night Riders program announced on the park loudspeaker that this years series was in Sam’s honor.. Everyone in the bar toasted Sam.. Oh.. I missed him so  much at that moment.  

 Even so.. it was good being up there with all our friends.  We’ve spent the past two months grieving with this same crowd.. and it felt good to be able to party with them a little on a different topic.  We’ve come to love all of Sam’s Bolton friends  so much that they’re like one big goofy extension of our family…  We slummed inside the cozy bar as long as we could until it was time to go downstairs in the relative cold  for the awards….. Gabe pulled a 3^rd in his age group.. (Yo Gabe !).. He had a great night. All the prizes were gone by about 9 and we left.

   On the way home I was thinking about Sam so much.. I cloned his IPOD unto mine the other day so I was listening to some of his music to feel close. I drove home with Sam’s death metal (Killswitch Engage) at full volume. Not the kinds of music that normally brings tears to your eyes.. but tonight it did.

   It was the kind of evening I needed after one of my first really busy days back at work. I was pretty much back-to-back in phone meetings today. Every one of them starts with a sweet and awkward ‘I don’t know what to say’ from the folks on the phone.  Same thing happens when I see friends in the hallway at work.  It’s strange to hear these brilliant and articulate folks rendered speechless by our loss. Our experience of losing a kid hits such a universal nerve. It touches everyone deeply.  I’m learning to recognize their struggle for what to say as a sign of their caring.

   Speaking of good friends at work.. I’ve been amazed at some of the cool tributes that some of my buddies at work have come up with. My friend Kerry., an IBM genius and a good welder has been talking to a few local sculptors about creating some sort of cool statue of Sam for our town. He’s organizing a group of welders and artists to brainstorm on the project.. let me know if you’re interested. Also, my  good buddy Jim in Poughkeepsie called me yesterday very excited with another really great idea.  A  college friend  of his has created a program for doing service jobs for poor rural communities in Nicaragua   (my grandfather and great grandfather lived in Nicaragua  for many years)  Jim is interested in organizing a group of 10-20 folks to go down as a team in early August  to do a project in Sam’s name.   I love the idea … if anyone is interested in learning ore about the idea.. please let me know..

   Well.. it’s going to be a another cold dark night.. I need to go stoke the fire. Stay warm everyone.. You too Sam.

-jc

ps. For the third (!)  day running, the lights in the IBM parking lot have blinked off over my car as I drove towards home.

Pss. Does anyone have a still picture of Sam doing the ‘Wonder Boy’ routine at Camp Abenaki last summer? It’s the one with him wearing a cape and sticking his stomach out. I need a copy because our friend Coco want to do a painting of it..   I have a video of the whole thing which I could capture a picture from.. but I don’t think I’m ready to watch the movie again yet..

When I got home this evening, Diane handed me an envelope from LifeLink, the organization that handled Sam’s organ donation. I was both sad and amazingly grateful to read the enclosed letter. :

     On behalf of LifeLink of Florida, we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere condolences in the loss of your son , Samuel. It is our wish that you and your family may find some comfort in the knowledge that your generous gift, the “Gift of Life”, has enabled many people to benefit from such a sad circumstance.
   As were your wishes, Samuel was an organ donor. We were able to recover his heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas for transplant
   The recipient of Samuel’s heart is a 54 year-old female from Florida. She has tow children and had been in a committed relationship for ten years She works part time in a billing department and enjoys her work. She needed a heart transplant after having congestive heart failure related to a heart attack that occurred in 2001. She has been discharged to home and is doing well after transplant.
   The recipient of Samuel’s liver is a 22 year old female from Florida, She is a college student, who enjoys her studies. She required a liver transplant due to a chronic liver condition that she has suffered from. She has since discharged to home and is currently doing well after her transplant.
   The recipient of Samuel’s right kidney and pancreas is a 29 year-old female from Florida. She is a mother of one daughter, and is currently disabled from diabetes. She has suffered from Diabetes, since the age of 5, and is extremely grateful to have received her transplant. so that she may return to her life and activities someday. She is currently recovering at home from her transplant and is doing great.
  The recipient of Samuel’s left kidney is a 55 year old male from Florida. He has been married for eighteen years, with a daughter and a son. He is a retired manager for a school bus garage. He needed a kidney transplant due to a hereditary condition that affected his kidneys. He is currently recovering from his transplant.
   The Lion’s Eye Institute for Transplant and Research Institute, Inc. was able to recover Samuel’s corneas. Due to test results, the corneas could not be used for transplant, but instead will be used for research. The research that is performed can potentially benefit thousands of individuals through the development of new medications and treatments for eye disorders.

…

With our greatest thanks

LifeLink of Forida

  I had many other topics I was thinking of writing about tonight.. but I think I need to sit here and think about this letter some more. We never needed to know who received Sam’s organs. Getting this letter, though, really helps us see how Sam’s last generous act gave these four families a Thanksgiving and Christmas that they might not otherwise have had.      In honor of Sam please talk to your family about organ donation. It’s a difficult topic, but it can make a world of difference. This is life after death…  I’m so proud of you Sam…

  -jc

“I had a dream… “seems like seems like and appropriate start for Martin Luther King’s birthday.. I did have  a dream last night about Sam. It was the first dream that I’ve had about Sam as a younger kid. It was a strange and scary dream at first.. A younger Sam and some other people had been kidnapped while visiting the Whitehouse (?!) . We were very worried about him as we tried to figure out the situation by reading newspapers . All of a sudden I go this sense of peace when I realized I didn’t need to worry about him because he had already died. I know that sounds awful and sad.. but there is a crazy peace that comes from  no longer being frightened of death..  Death has lost a lot of power over all of us now that we’ve looked it in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I know I still have much I could lose.  .. and I do still very much value my own life (which is not something I could could honestly say eight weeks ago )  

    Eight weeks ago.. seems incredible… Sam’s accident was eight weeks ago tonight. In some sense it seems like yesterday.. at times the pain is just as raw, the images just as fresh as if I were first hearing the news.. yet in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago.. So many people have come into and through our lives in that time.. So much in our lives has changed completely… My mental state is so much different today than it was eight weeks ago  … or even more different than it was eight weeks and one day ago… sigh…
   Actually I was thinking today that I might be making too much  ‘progress’ in my attempts to heal… the way a wound can scar if it heals too quickly .  I was thinking about how peaceful and ‘fun’ (relatively) this weekend was for me… I was almost to the point of congratulating myself for my new found sense of balance.. but then today I noticed something.. I went for my normal run with Chai this morning..  At one point stopped to pull off the socks that I had on my hands. As I did, my ‘Sam Forever’ bracelet came off my wrist and almost fell into the snow (again)  . I looked around and realized that I was halfway through my run.. and that I’d been thinking about random things at work.. and not thinking about Sam. That may sound OK.. but I’ve been keeping my time outside running or walking for Sam.  Thinking about him.. talking to him.. feeling him.  Today I realized I had unintentionally let go of that mindfulness.   I slipped the bracelet back on, shifted the weight of Sam’s presence back where it needed to be and did the rest of the trail  in a meditative trot. The rest of the day I’ve been thinking about how to keep the mindfulness and in-the-moment-ness that Sam’s death has ‘given’ me as I ramp back into my busy life. It’s going to be a challenge, but I am completely committed to keeping that thoguhtfullness and peace in my life for myself and my family…
    I am currently not being  so mindful of the time J.. It’s a 11:30 and Diane will be asleep if I don’t drop off now..   So.. g’nite all. See you on the trail tomorrow Sam…. 

-jc

Ps. Sam and Gabe would always wear their pajamas backwards to bring on a school snow day the  next morning. Everybody try it tonight….

Pss. I just heard from my friend Kerry that Coach Ricketty from lacrosse had a bunch of stickers printed so that Sam’s teammates can wear his jersey number (#10) on their helmets this season.. so cool !

We had a pretty peaceful day today. We woke to beautiful snow coming down. I remember how Sam would jump out of bed whenever he saw snow.. The memory made me smile. . I know it sounds strange but I’m starting to feel like Sam is sending me creative energy.    I goofed around the house most of the morning trying to hack a cheap linksys network attached storage device to run linux (no luck yet), figured out how to get an internet attached web browser to come up on my car’s navigation computer screen  and  went for a run with Chai. Later in the day Max and I went to see our friends Homer and his daughter Raye. The four of us talked about collaborating on an interactive sculpture piece just for fun. It feels good to be working with my hands and brain again..  Sam would like that …it seemed like he was always making things.
    I am always thinking of Sam as I work. I spend a good deal of time running over conversations he and I had in last several months of his life. Sam was a very wise and self contained being. The more I think about the more I’m coming to understand just how unique and strong his spirit was/is.   I spend a lot of time wondering what became of Sam’s strong spirit when he died. I so much want to believe that our spirits survive in some way. It’s hard to describe. but the more things I experience around Sam’s death,  the more convinced I’m becoming that they do. 
   Our friend Coco just passed on a message to us from her friend ‘G’ . G feels she is  able to read people’s spirits ever since being hit  by lightening a few years  back.  Though she never met Sam and has no other connection to us G said that she senses Sam’s spirit very strongly and  felt compelled to write us.. She sent us the following note via Coco:

He is a person of beautiful light.  His soul went right away with amazing brilliance to the place it was to be. His easy and smooth acceptance of this is a rarity and is much valued at this time for all of us. You can feel him in many things and see him all around. He is a light giver and helps clear paths for others who need him. What a beautiful loving person he is He is wonderful. Send him your love and all your feelings He is there for all of you too and sends blessings and protection and light to all of you always.

I like this message..  I know that it may sound pretty ‘out there’ to some of you, but it resonates with what I feel happened to Sam’s spirit.  I know I’ll never know for sure… but every day  I’m getting  more comfortable with my new  metaphysics, after all.. what  choice do I have ?
     Well not much else to report tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will really bring the snow storm we’ve been waiting for Sam.. please see what you can do there…
-jc
 
ps. We’ve heard that a few of Sam’s friends are still having real trouble coping with his death.  If you know someone who may need some extra help moving forward, please give them some extra  love and support . If you know someone who may need more help than that… please contact us, a parent, a school councilor or other adult. We all need to take care of each other. I know it’s hard moving forward.. but we all are going to get through this. Sam would want us to.. We love you all.