It's been a lot longer than I had anticipated. I took a break from writing on the blog, in part because I was super busy starting my new job and in part maybe on a subconscious level I wanted to keep my reflections and thoughts more private. Call it a move to conserve energy during the always unexpected California winter chill. Call it a way to preserve my energy at time when our immune systems are down and we are sun-deprived and fighting the inevitable pull of depression that comes with the long darker days of rain and clouds.
Whatever it was that made me hibernate from writing, I am glad that is over.
Today is Easter, always a bizarre holiday to me since we are not religious. I never understood how Jesus could just wake up from being dead in a flash of light from the heavens or something. I will forever think of the oversized bunny suit with that fake painted smile on it creeping out all the kids at Grandma's senior center as the kids dash to "find" all the fake candy scattered about the courtyard. I miss you Grandma, but don't miss that bizarre experience.
Today we are going to mom's house. Nancy and her family will be there. Vicki and Shaan won't as she has to work. I am hoping we can get up to Sac this week to see them. As usual, there will be a hole in all of our hearts as we prepare the meal and sit down to eat. Dad will make a toast to Ned. We won't have any particular traditions around Easter or around remembering Ned, but we'll be together.
I just finished a book called Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. It's "a father's journey through his son's addiction." I couldn't put it down, even though, being a parent of an almost teenager, it freaked me out.
I read it mostly because of the familiarity of it - what my family went through with my sister's addiction.
I thought it was a beautiful testament to a father's undying and also crippling love for his son. Funny thing is that both the author and his son spoke at the Athenian School when I was substitute teaching there one day two years ago. I looked it up and it was two weeks before Ned's accident. I can't remember if I couldn't go hear them because of the schedule that day or what was going on. It was pretty crazy that the dad had a brain hemorrhage - literally an explosion in his brain.
After reading the book, I love this family. They live in our neck of the woods, so to speak. I also just realized that I read the Playboy interview that David Sheff wrote with John Lennon and Yoko Ono back in 1980 just months before he was shot and killed. I was 14 years old and that Christmas, my dad gave me that interview (I thought it was a book, though) and I got the album "Starting Over." The title of his book is from the song, "Beautiful Boy" on that album where Lennon sings to his then four-year-old son Sean. Now when I think of it, I think of my brother and how much he loved being a father to his Shaan. Anyhow, I am into the degrees of separation.
Here is a quote from the book that I particularly liked. The whole book is a focus on his love for his amazing son. This quote is from when father David is recovering but I think it can apply to anyone in life, recovering or healing from trauma or grief.
"I am getting out more now. I take long walks in the solitary, mysterious woods, tranquil and silent, and see more intensely the color - still more greens, an infinite number, and the shoots and buds on the woody branches before they open. I see a darting rabbit and, overhead, red-tailed hawks, great blue herons, and an osprey. God or no god, this barely ponderable and impossible-to-understand system of complexity and beauty is profound enough to feel like a miracle. Consciousness feels like a miracle. The constellation of these impulses that we call love feels like a miracle...."
Today I welcome in that miraculous complexity. I wonder a lot about addition, recovery, life death, rebirth and transformation and how the world outside all of our private worlds relates. There's another quote in the book about the struggle to connect with others - the difficulty and necessity of it. I wonder about the alienation of white society and how to articulate this dire need for us to connect but to struggle against a world that has falsely separated us from and put us at odds with humanity. More later.
Looking forward to the salmon, yams and greens, the chocolate ice cream cake for Ron, the walk on the muddy horse trail surrounding my parents' home where Ned's spirit lives amongst us. We will always miss you and you will always wake up our spirits and remind us of the miracle of life.
