I haven’t blogged much this summer. More accurately, not at all.
It’s been a stormy time for me. Part of it has been a heavy travel schedule. I was gone most of July and and almost another week in August.
Part of it has been emotional. I kept remembering year-ago milestones. This was the date of his first emergency surgery. That was the second. This was the day he went into hospice. That was the date we told his family to expect the worst. This was the date he died, one year ago, August 12, 2010. Will I ever be casual about that date?
I’m sitting here now looking out the window at the far edges of Hurricane Irene. It’s grey and windy and raining on and off. Much as how I’ve felt the last months.
Bits of sunshine when I’ve been out and with the Pagan community at various events and venues. I enjoyed being with CUUPS at GA in Charlotte. Chrysalis Moon in Indiana was a very nice intimate event where I met some great people. Spent all-to-little time with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone at The Occult Bookstore. Saw old friends at The Bristol Renaissance Faire up by the Wisconsin border, including Melissa who used to hang out at my store in Peoria almost twenty years ago. (Visit the Faire Labor Day weekend and say hello to my sister who will be helping out at Melissa and Jesse’s Enchanted Chains booth.)
Bits of sunshine when I saw my family up in Chicago in July. My son flew up to be with us for a week, and it is always a treat to see him. My eighty-eight year old mother is still a pistol. My sisters are looking good. My nieces and nephew are doing well. (Valerie, I hope you will be safe through the storm in your new home in New Haven!)
Bits of sunshine, a hot, hot time, in Houston at a CMA fundraiser and with appearances at The Magickal Cauldron and at Galveston’s The Witchery. Saw old friends and made new friends.
And then I was home, with nowhere to go until the end of September. The cat was unhappy with me. The death anniversary was looming. I crashed and burned. Got sick and spent a week in bed. Moped around and played computer games until my mouse hand got stiff.
Somehow, today, with the anniversary past and the hurricane outside, I’m more awake. I’m writing. This is good. Maybe it helped that I actually got myself to a doctor a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s the long talks with friends, like the one we had driving through bits of outlying hurricane last night. Maybe it’s Mercury going direct. Maybe it’s that pot of good, strong coffee instead of my morning tea. Whatever. I’ll take it.
May those of you in the path of the storm be safe. May those of you in the midst of your personal storms stay safe.
Hope to see more of all of you.
You ask, Will I ever be casual about that date?
There have been a number of dates-of-trauma in my life, and some still trip me up now and then. However, in general, the intensity fades as the years pass. There may be some years where the intensity is greater, when previous years have been easy on you, or vice versa. Your truest friends, and family members, will understand, the rest can go hang if they don’t.
Some say that a particular year, other than the first, after the death of a spouse, parent, child, or other very important person to you, will be harder. It was, for that person: you are you, and I hope that you will reach out at any time when emotion is intense and hard-to-endure alone.
When my trad, NROOGD, calls a circle up, we invite the ancestors of blood or mind to join us. I often see a gallery box, around the top of the sphere that was cast, with my beloved dead, and a few guests who poke their noses in now and then, sitting around the railing of the box. Every few months, I see Isaac looking down from the seating, to see what might be up, especially if the flavor of the coven is mischevious that night.