the heat of all those words we had not spoken.”
Owl Moon
“You don't seem to have updated your blog for a while...”
“Have you grown weary of writing?”
“Don't you post at Liberaland anymore?”
I'm surprised and humbled by the number of people who noticed the hiatus. Thank you. Your encouragement is energizing. I'm grateful you spend some of your precious free time reading my snippets when an abundance of choice exists. Again, thank you.
I managed to break the hiatus at Liberaland.com but it proved to be more difficult here. See, every time I hit my own blog I cried. I hadn't been able to do more here than re-read my last entry...the one commemorating the life and death of my DeDe. I'd log in, full of wrath and fury over the latest wrath-and-fury issue and I'd be hell-bent to scream-write and speak-my-mind and give-'em-hell, and then I'd retreat: weepy and panicked and oVeRwHELmEd. I fussed about this writer's block – writer's choke – with a friend who said, “There is nothing wrong with saying, yah, I miss my dog, so my words have dried temporarily, but they shall return.”
“There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.”
Jonathan Swift
What happened with DeDe made me sad and scared, and worse, it surprised me. I don't like surprises. I like consistent predictability (it's not as boring as it sounds). But what happened with my Dede was not consistent or predictable or controllable; it was a blur. She was here one minute – snuffling around the kitchen, barking at leaves, yipping in her sleep – and she was gone the next. Ten days from routine exam to anguishing euthanasia. Ten days to baby and princess her. Ten days to contemplate the crushing, looming ache. Ten days. Ten days. Ten days.
Then a few weeks ago, I realized The Ten Days reminded me of The Thirty Days.
“Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.”
Not true, Jean, not true! My father was wise, and his death took us both by surprise. He was here one minute – shuffling around the kitchen, raking up leaves, sleeping through the news – and gone the next. Thirty days from massive heart attack to the second death. Thirty days to stand by the hospital bed and cry. Thirty days to avoid the crushing, looming terror that he might actually die.
And he did. And I had no choice but to deal with it. And I did, until The Thing That Ate 2004 arrived.
“Serendipity is the art of making an unsought finding.”
Pek van Andel
Let me just say that life has a way of handing me stuff I need to know in the most awkward ways. The most non sequitur ways. In the end, the corollary between The Ten Days and The Thirty Days let me see just how stuck I was in The Thing That Ate 2004. I was stuck in its craw – in the Blob-like, jellyfish-tentacled, sucking quagmire of OPD (Other People's Drama or Other People's Dharma – take your pick). Let it be known that I used my writer's chokehold on The Thing and it spit me from its craw and departed...bruised, sore-throated, and protectively clutching its testicles.
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter
I think there will be two significant parts to my life; halves defined not by chronology but by evidence of choice. One half driven by the needs of others, one half driven by the needs of me. The only thing connecting them will be change, because, as I've realized on this most auspicious eve, change is the only thing that stays the same. Chapter, next.
When you go owling, you don't need words or warm or anything but hope.
Owl Moon
