Still sick.. Fever.. Sore throat.. Thick head.. That on top of the general fog  that we all live in since Sam’s death .. and my  built-in  spaciness.has me running at about  10 %. .of normal consciousness.  Being so zoned out has a helpful anesthetic aspect. .. unless  of I have something that must get done. … like work I spent the day in telephone calls trying to catch up with everything that’s been happening at IBM in the past 6 weeks. Whatever I do, I find myself only absorbing about half of what I hear. I hope it’s just because I’m feeling sick.
   In the middle of my work day I finally started going through the many emails I received in response to  Sam’s death. It was so nice.. And so, so hard reading all of the heartfelt sadness and good wishes from my work and other email friends .There were hundreds of notes.. Some were 1-2 lines.. Others were pages. By the time I got to the end of the list I was basically lying in a heap on the counter. So much love.. So much sadness.   While looking through the mail, I also found some of my speaking notes from  Sam’s celebration. I am getting the feeling that I’m not doing enough to make good on the promise I made myself up on stage at Memorial that night.. I wrote that day ” I’m going to choose every day to honor Sam’s memory. To move forward, not backward. To do something good for the world. I’m going to try to take his (Sam’s) passion into my own life and become a better person for it”  Today I feel more like I’m being swept along and not getting to chose anything. I feel like I need to find a place to stand solidly before  I can start moving forward…  and I’ve yet to find/build that solid place.  I’m going to make some  time to meditate on that over the next few days/
     Right now I’m going to crawl into bed with a hot cup of tea.. Sorry for such a short post this evening. I’ll pad it by including a beautiful poem that our good friend Avery wrote about Sam…  This is for you Sam.
-jc

PS. I jacked up the font size on the blog so I can write without glasses. Hope that’s OK for everyone

Ugh..… I’m lying in bed with a fever and sore throat. Not bad for my second day back at work.. eh? Sick as I was, I did manage to get a full day of catch-up work in. I managed to weed my original list of 1770 non spam emails down to 16 important ones. What does that tell you? 

Again it was interesting in a detached sort of way to stumble through all these correspondences and see all the stuff that had been keeping folks busy and aggravated for the past 6 weeks. Many of the notes had requests for stuff that was now late.. For each I had to write a short couple of lines explaining why I’d been derelict in my response. Sam has provided me the ultimate ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse. Even so, it is so hard to have to tell people what happened to Sam. Each time I do, it’s another small land mine that goes off on the page. Each time I relive the whole story in 1-2 lines again.  I always write something like.. “I apologize for being slow to respond. I’ve been out since the death of my beautiful son Sam 6 weeks ago.” Is that too much information? “I’ve been out due to a death in the family” is too generic and cold.. ” .. due to the death of my son” is too impersonal… I’m not out to shock anyone… but I want to say/write Sam’s  name… and I want them to know that he was/is beautiful.   In addition to the tough job of telling new people about Sam’s death.. I’m finding that many folks who already know the story are not sure whether they can talk about Sam.. or even mention his name. I had a good friend tell me that he didn’t want to upset me by bringing up Sam’s name…  I’ve got news for you folks…1) I’m upset already.. nothing you say is going to make it worse (or, sadly… better)… 2) Sam is all I think about.. Not mentioning him denies Sam’s existence… it starts to erase him.  Mentioning his name helps me keep his memory alive. I want to hear stories about him. Please let me hear them.

    Another work thing I did today was that I decided to take that first business trip next week. It’s actually to Tucson .. not Phoenix..(Chris… eager to see you)  and I’ll be gone 2 days, 3 nights. This will be a big step for me.. so I’ll let you all know how this goes. 

   I also did an interesting non work thing today. I went to see Marci Taft, a massage therapist and Reiki healer. Let me tell you.. this is a big step for me… I’ve never been particularly open to non-traditional healing methods like Reiki. .. but Diane and Max have gone to Marci and have gotten great relief through her hands on approach to energy balancing. It was during one of these sessions that Diane got her vision of Sam’s Mayan necklace and the bird image on it. I went in hoping to also get some glimpse of Sam’s spirit.. even if it was something locked away in my head. It was a very cool experience.. very relaxing and energizing.. but I got no distinct visions. I think the kind of ‘sign’ I’d love to see is not something you find when you go looking for it.. Well.. actually.. I did get a brief mental picture of Sam smiling on a yellow and red backdrop holding a key out for me… OK.. I guess that’s pretty wild. .. but what does it mean.. and where did the image come from ?  

    We are now trying to take a Sam walk or run every day just to spend time concentrating on Sam, thinking about him… and sending him love. Tonight Diane and I took a beautiful walk in the full moon. We went up to our rock and sat talking about how ‘unreal’ it s not having Sam in our lives. We keep coming back to the ‘why’ questions.. Why Sam ? Why Us ? Why Now ? .. those are such hard questions.. I really struggle with ideas like Kharma that would lead us to believe that Sam or we did something in this (or other) life to ‘deserve’ his loss.  I also can’t buy the notion that a knowing G-d chose to take Sam for a higher purpose.. or to punish him or us.. I don’t think that nature is either merciful.. or malicious Any more than a hurricane or earthquake or sunset is merciful or  malicious… So why then ?       I get the feeling I’m at the very beginning of a long spiritual journey where I try to make sense out of what happened to Sam..
   Anyway.. gotta sleep now.. G’nite Sam.. we love you

-jc

 ps. Thanks to my good friend Clint for howling at the moon with us last night

 pss. Jen K. asked me to pass on that many folks left dishes up at her house last Saturday.. Any dishes not picked up this weekend will be made into dangerous art (she didn’t say that.. I just made that up)

 psss. Friend Avery told me that she and Sam’s friends Morgan and Brian were talking about Sam and Bolton night riding today  in Health class when the lights blinked off and on … Sam again

Here’s a picture of Sam that his friend Brittany took this past summer. She just sent it to me. What a beautiful kid…  I love you Spam !
-me

Last night was a mix of fun and sadness. We had a quick dinner at the Kenny’s then checked out Richmond‘s Celtic New Year festival. As I said, this first one is dedicated to Sam’s memory. It was really nice… we wondered between several of the venues and checked out some of the great local music. It was great  running in to everyone from town.  We got lots of hugs  It was nice having to make the schlep into Burlington to do First Night.  I hope this local celebration becomes an annual event.

   The Townsends then gave us a ride up to Bolton to see the fireworks. Lots of Sam and Gabe’s friends were up at the mountain enjoying the new powder. The fireworks started at about 9:30. They were so beautiful.. The fireworks were back-dropped by a cool hazy sky. The moon had a double halo (moonbow ?)  around  it for the second straight night.  I yelled Sam’s name as loud as I could during the finale… he loved fireworks.   From there we went down to the Townsends for a combined kids/adults party.. There was wonderful food there as always and many of our friends were there.. Try as I might, though.. I couldn’t get in a party mindset…I just didn’t really feel like celebrating.  I talked to a few folks did a few science things (I brought one of my tesla coils) then sat quietly until midnight. As midnight approached Deb handed out pots. pans and spoons.. The four of us got together and at the stroke of midnight we banged our pots and hugged and kissed with everyone.. The first thing I said in the New Year was Sam’s name…   

     Just after midnight we all piled down to our house for breakfast…  I felt pretty lousy at that point. My experiments have verified that since Sam died I can’t drink any alcohol at all without getting a hammering headache  the two glasses of wine I had 4 hours earlier did me in.. bummer. …  I actually ended up falling asleep when we got home at about 12:30.. when I woke up about 30 minutes later the house was full of people, food and music.  . By about 1AM we had roughly 40 folks in the house and boom.. another party ! This time I was into it. It really felt like New Years… Somewhere in there freezing rain started to fall.. by 1:30 it was pretty clear that anyone who was at our house would be there all night.. we dragged out spare blankets and air mattresses and settled in for a nice big sleepover.. There were many folks still partying when I drifted off to bed at around 3:30..

   Miraculously, I managed to sleep until 10 Diane was already up and pushing our eggs, potatoes and sausage to the 30 or so folks who were still around… People kept eating in shifts for the next 2 hours. Around noon everyone cleared out….   I was the only one home. I think it was the first time that I’ve been home alone since Sam died. I spent the time thinking about Sam.  I was really feeling sad.  New Years Day without him… I just can’t get used to that.. I’ll never get used to that..

I spent some time trying to hack an IPOD interface into my Prius. It was fun working with my hands, but I was so distracted… the job I planned for 1 hour took four. The sun was setting when I finally got Chai out for a run.. my first time outside for the day. We ran by the light of the beautiful full moon .    Diane, max, Gae and I came together for dinner   the first time we’d all been in one place today. We had a candle circle for Sam which felt good.   After dinner we got a nice call from my folks friends the Alexander’s.. who lost a their 30 year old son Eric 12 years ago.  I hadn’t spoken with the Alexander’s in more than 20 years.. but it was good talking to them about their path through loss and healing. It’s funny, . just being able to talk to someone who’s survived what we’re going through now is a great comfort.

 I’m sitting here now thinking/worrying  about the future.. not months or years.. just tomorrow. Tomorrow Gabe goes back to school. Tomorrow’s also the day I’m supposed to go back to work…. or at least that’s the deadline I’ve given myself. I’m having a very  hard time imagining how I’m going to function back at work. After all… it took me more than an hour to organize myself sufficiently to take out the recycling this evening J I know that it will be tough to ramp back up at work   I have nearly 1800 unanswered emails in my inbox and have practically no idea what’s happened at work in the past 6 weeks.   I’ve certainly missed the people at work.. but can’t honestly say I’ve missed the stuff I was working on.  I think this reflects the very drastic shift in priorities that Sam’s death has given me. Will I be able to get my head around work  again ? Maybe it will  feel  good to get my brain active again. We’ll see.    One of the cards we got when Sam died had a picture of a wash machine with a caption “put yourself on gentle cycle” that’s certainly what we’re going to have to do for awhile. I’m planning on going in to work a few hours at a time for starts.. I’ll also be working from home. I’m going to see how much I can concentrate.. and how much I can take. I’ll also need to be tuned in to how the rest of the family is doing…   This will be slow, hard going for awhile.  Wish me luck.. I’ll let you all know how it goes…We’ll I’m a working man again.. better get some sleep.

  Happy New Year everybody.. Happy New Year Sam..

-jc