A friend is helping me “re-home” many belongings as I dramatically downsize the physical accouterments of my life in preparation for taking up residence in the new tiny monastery the bank and I jointly own. Among them is the first real bed my beloved and I purchased over 40 years ago. At that time, it
I don’t schedule much in the morning because it takes me a while to get up to speed. Meditation, journaling, stretching and strengthening, wandering with the dogs, time with whatever two cents I’m writing. And while I try not to get sidetracked, I also want to stay open to whatever surprises the universe is itching
For more than six months I had been anticipating that I would be leaving Vermont after living here for 27 years, roughly a third of my life in the only place I’ve ever considered home. My beloved and I arrived on Halloween 1993. For the sake of a good story, I planned to officially
My beloved, A year ago at this time, just shy of 3 AM, you might have been awake, sleepless, knowing that, if at all possible, this would be the day you left this incarnation.
Erupting from new depth, the volcanic sound of my heart’s desolation. Seismic enough to raise eyebrows on other planets I shouldn’t be surprised. My dogs sure looked at me funny. Ten months since Dear’s suicide, I got why some people are pulled to follow their beloved in death.
“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” wrote the recently departed John Prine in one of his many songs that illuminate the landscape and humble those of us who attempt to speak by written word. That sliver of Prine puts him among those generous souls from whom I have received a
Instantly upon my beloved’s suicide, our home fell silent as an empty recording studio, a familiar sound-proof space in my career where even the roar of a hundred low-flying elephants can’t penetrate. The quiet I’m speaking of, however, was not so much in the home itself as it was in me. Some fraction of
My beloved and I had a child who never assumed human form, in our lives at least. We felt he was a boy, though the name we gave him wasn’t dependent on that eventuality. Theoria Star. Theoria meaning in union with God. Theo for short. One of the things we loved about his name was