Raise Our Glasses.

"We'll raise our glasses

To puzzle pieces

And the way they fit together..."

~ Tara Leigh Cobble

Here's where everything Shauna Niequist comes off the page and speaks like a balsamic reduction, moistening the quotes of her depth of parties and dinner and wine and friends and fellowship and lingering and farm-wooden tables...

Linger.

Tom walked back in an hour later and said, "Oh, you're still here!" And Kelsey and I just smiled.

It feels a bit glamourous, a bit couture, a bit home-grown, a bit simple, a bit exotic, a bit lovely, a bit full of all the things that are beautiful and good and rich with depth and satisfaction and pleasure and lust of all things present and lingering and tasteful.

It's the art of being.

It's warm, stove-stirred tomato soup from Metropolitan Market with its exquisite mixture of vodka sauce and carrots and cream setting to rest in placed blue bowls, matched with crispy slices of ciabatta bread and corners of brie cheese and glasses of Desert Wind Cabernet Sauvignon...

It's sitting at the dinner table, talking. Lingering. Gathered with friends and boyfriends of friends and food and conversations... It's the art of being. The art of lingering...

We'll raise our glasses...

Loved Well.

"You live, you love, like someone who has been loved well." ~ Trish Jackson, to me.

Trish, this comment, this compliment was the greatest gift...

Marking This Day.

Boy... this blog is a mess of rambling... yikes... :)

I've been thinking about marking this day for weeks now. What do you say? How do you hurt? Where is there room for joy? For looking, and weeping forward? For tasting sorrow and seeing joy?

I think where I start, is the mention of today. That I'm sitting in Seattle, cozied under a layer of an alpaca blanket and Cascade Camp sweatshirt. The morning sun stretches itself with strength against and through the clouds... I mixed a morning coffee blend of Starbucks and it rests beside me with blue mug coating. My cell phone rests on the farmhouse wood table and flowers stand brilliant and tall of colors and promise.

Then I add my obsession with checking Facebook and text messages, as if pulling out people's hearts of compassion, pursuing only my personal interest to gain their acknowledgement and wanting so badly all weekend just to know they didn't forget.

Because, at two years, some people forget.

A lot of people assume, perhaps, that with that one year, things settle and develop patterns and routines, and the need is no longer there...

What to say about that? And how to speak honesty into the space? To say first, yes, there is a softening. To be honest, there really is a gnarled pain in the truth that things just need time. And that I don't hurt most days, and I do move forward and live well. That I embrace the freedom, and really don't think about it every day. That I feel good, now, with assurance and contentment and peace of two years passing...

But also to say, as I quoted earlier, "...some sorrows in life will never go away. You learn to carry them with you..." ~ Paula Rinehart, Strong Women, Soft Hearts. My aunt says grief is like a lit stove, always on, but some days its a front burner issue, some days its a back burner issue.

I agree. But as I stated March 5, "But in it, I am finding myself coming out wholer, cleaner, clearer. Saddened, but made new. Able to rejoin sections and patterns of life, rather than continue to amputate. To live a fuller life now in echo of loss."

Another thing that changes as the year pass, is how to mark the date. Marking the "when" - to actually see it as April 17, the stamped calendar of splitting, of dividing, of life on one side or the next. Only. Always.

Or to forever be prevailed with that Friday night. With the association of thoughts, events, feelings, words. Plagued by it, and knowing it. So deeply it is slow motion, in every sense of the daunting.

And then "how" to mark it. To give forward? To sit in quiet? To surround with flowers? To connect heritage?

Some people carry flowers, some people visit graves, some people create monetary foundations, some people....

But what about for me, for her... the "how?" Ideas have marched through me, but none prevail, nor does the energy ....

But it must be marked, it must be shown. But greater still, is what I want to see, what I do see in the passing of two years...

I see growth.

I see compassion. In myself. In my friendships.

I see friends. Friends. Friends. Wow, friend... This, more than anything, will be the legacy of loss for me -- these friends who have shown, carried, known... I will never understand nor be able to articulate this view of friendship and of these friends... They are the GIFT of the legacy of loss.

I see time. It's the necessary, slow coaxing towards moving forward.

I see writing. The words fumbled onto page and how they've created in themselves a healing process in this space.

I see words, quotes, books. On loss and strength and finding wholeness in their empathy.

I see held. By friends. By faith.

Bleeds Inwardly.

"Tearless grief bleeds inwardly." ~ C.N. Bovee

Piano Keys.

My fingers touched the keys today.

All chords, swooning harmony.

A mixture of majors danced upon by minors.

It's life in the keys.

Touching the chords, mixing the melody.

Interchanging, tweaking pitch.

Plucked white or black.

Dominos create Song; life.

To Teach or Nanny?

To teach or nanny? That is the question.

Bones.

I went to a specialist today and saw x-rays of myself. To begin with, lets me just admit -- I nearly passed out. Had to lay down, then head between my legs; the works. Yes, there is a reason I'm not a nurse...

But more profoundly, was the intense reaction I felt to seeing my own skeleton. Like pictures of bones on a black slide, no different from those of ages past, decayed or pirated or piled as dried.

To look at myself, to see myself that way, was... horrifying, humbling.

Bones. Skeleton. To be seen as... such fact. Done. Period. When I looked at that, it was so minimizing to see my body in that... human and finite of a way...

And at the same time, it was... giving. To see my body as this physical object, this thing, this finite sum of atoms and parts... takes the pressure of the spirit to create and do and be so good and amazing and incredible and purposeful and life-touching and awe-inspiring....

Bones. That's it. Bones. Adam's rib. God's breath. But at the end of the day again, bones.

So what does that mean for the now, as I see my body break down in parts and take the toll of the last chunk of life, the physical perhaps taking the weight and strain of the psychological...

Does it matter, then, if I don't live a job that proves man money and benefits and lip service? Or that touches many lives? Or can that life be lived smaller, in remembrance of bones? What is the balance of spirit and soul, body and blood? The finite, and the infinite?

"Teach us to number our days, aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom..." Psalm 90:12