~:: Blue ::~

It’s been a blue-soul day today.  Wet and chilly outside; corn snow and sleet.

This is how the world appeared at about ten thirty this morning.  If you look close, you will see the giant wet flakes of snow mueshing down.  Dark.  So dark, you wonder why you get up out of bed.

We’ve had a death in the family.  Gin’s father-in-law.  A restless, brilliant, funny, and very good man younger than we are.  And a good friend.  A really good friend.

A vicious, aggressive cancer had a strong hold on him even before he knew he was sick.  The irony was that he was in the best shape of his life, working out regularly, hiking up mountains in Iceland.  But it couldn’t be stopped.  And a few days ago, we lost him.

Snow out front, too.  I know, because I looked, hoping the world would be different on this side.  Almost noon.

It’s not death that bothers me.  In a lot of ways, I have to envy him; he’s finished.  He’s lived a great life, provided for his family – no longer has to worry about the IRS or unrest in the middle east or paperwork of any kind.  And since I believe entirely that we don’t stop at the death of the body, I’m pretty sure he’s spent the last couple of days walking the halls of the universe, looking at all the stuff back stage and saying, “This is SO cool!”

Now he knows the truth of everything.  How could you not envy that?

How I have been seeing all day.  This photo is lousy because the focus is on the muddy door.  So everything behind it is blurry.  In this case, what’s behind it is a wet, hopeful dog.

It’s the hole that a death leaves in the fabric here, down here, that is so impossible.

The it’ll-never-be-the-same that makes the heart sit down.

Ah.  When the focus is right, the wet hopeful dogs are very clear.

Max has taken this hard.  But I would say to him, “This is what it’s like to be a grown up.  Children can pitch a fit and at least have the hope somebody will change his mind about things.  But when you’re a grown-up, you learn that pitching fits when you come up against natural laws gets you nothing.”

Still, I feel like pitching one.

Gin wrote a nice tribute to him.

We are all unsettled.  This morning, I had a hard time doing anything.  Turning in little blank circles, trying to get my bearings in life.  Pretty soon I will start believing in my immortality again and things will be all right, but for now—meh.

This is a better way of seeing: a stormy sky, and a dark prospect in the yard—but blazing light erupts just behind the shadows, in relief against the heavy gray of the storm.  This light is real.  You can see by it.  It’s just a little removed for now.  Calling your attention to what’s in front of you.  Maybe calling you out of the shadow, because—I could have gone out and stood in it.

In the end, the only lesson to take away is that life together is a precious gift.  We shouldn’t be wasting a moment of it.  We should see and hear and love.  We all know that already.  But sometimes, it takes losing something to connect us again to that truth.

He will be all right.  We will be all right.

Just after a little time.