Writing About You: Shadow Days

Quote of the Day:

Grief does not change you, Hazel.

It reveals you.

~John Green~

Current Local Weather:

100% Chance of Showers. The lighter side of

revelation only to be seen through curtains of tears.

Currently on Spotify:

"Shadow Days"

John Mayer

Currently Reading:

"The Fault In Our Stars"

John Green

For Kathy, Wes, Matt, Jenny, Jordan,

Penny, Steve and everyone else that is now a bit too lonely without her.

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends,

This is probably the hardest blog I've written to date. I sent my mother a sympathy card today. I could barely pick it up at the store, I could barely write in it to send it. I did it anyway. She lost her best friend last week. I lost my "other mother." The only way I can even pretend to deal with anything like this is to write about it. So please, bear with me.

This blog isn't all about the fault of grief or the way it molds and shapes and changes the way you look and see and feel day after day as your soul absorbs its damn impact, it is about the way that letting go of the soul that once was is more about letting go of an idea and opening up to a new one.

The concept of letting go is one most of us have to learn despite ourselves. Truth be told, I've always been the kind of person that deeply mourns when someone leaves my space. Sometimes, I mourn the loss of company and the natural "high" a friend's smile or laugh can bring to you just by taking up relative space...sometimes I mourn the loss of my own space. (We've all been there...own up to it. As Ben Franklin says...Fish and relatives smell in three days) But mostly, I have to just call myself a "people" person. I'm happier with people than without. I'm happier when my tribe is all around me, whether they like it or not. That's why I started a writing retreat program.

**God Bless the survivors of my first retreat...**

Selfish, really...Those retreats gave me the perfect excuse to have a week long house party with accommodations fit for kings, queens and those miscreants known to the civilized world as "writers." There should always be a purpose and reason to everything you do and betcha by golly wow, there was a very deep purpose to my retreats. There still is and they'll be back up in business before any of you can say, NANOWRIMO!

But that's neither here nor there. I regret most that I didn't have one last fall when my ill-health took me down yet again. I had to cancel what was going to be my last one for a while. My mother and Kathy arrived in Denver anyway and came to see me at the hospital. Just like mothers should do. But Kathy wanted so badly to be at that retreat house...to just go...I wanted to help her get down her stories about "Cluck..." and all the characters from day one in her life that gave her reason to laugh and live. I'm so honored that she shared so many of them with me and that alone gave me reason to love her even more. They will always remain with me.

But learning to let go of the physical being, not the metaphysical that can be held in the palm of your hand...not the memory...as that will live on for as long as your brain allows, but of the body of another person in the forever of our eternal todays and tomorrows and yesterdays isn't something I'm very good at doing...at all. I've had to let go of all grandparents, too many friends, pets....and now someone so close to me, she was a very essential part of my soul and a very large part of my funny bone. How do you get rid of a bone in your body without having chronic or even phantom pains? How do you get rid of the feeling of loss? Is it ok to just let it go? It will be ok? Right? It doesn't matter how you cope with this, it is what it is when it is...what it is. And Kathy wasn't an "it." She was the only one that could even come close to being a mom without being a mom.

As I do with most of my coping skills, I set the "it" that's plaguing me, to song. I am just one big, phat episode of Glee away from having my life on Broadway/T.V. But everything is better when set to song. Everything is much more understood when you can sing about it. However, when trying to find the tune that could only deal with this kind of marrow-level loss of the soul, I found one that dealt more with letting go in the way I would expect Kathy to do and certainly in Kathy's honor and it seemed to fit. John Mayer always seems to have the right words even when they're not always immediately fitting. He's the pair of jeans bought at the boutique store that you pray, will your ass and hope to fit in time for a date on Saturday, and it's only WEDNESDAY!... Three days to lose that extra 10 lbs...but then remember that you've never been a size 8 but who cares, you'll squeeze them on and make it work.

I picked John's tune, Shadow Days.

This Kathy, is for you. Your Shadow Days are over. Thank God, you're living in the right place now. There is no pain. There is no loss of feeling...there is, I'm assuming and let me know if I'm wrong, chocolate that doesn't hurt your sugar level. And thank God for your comfort...for the level of living you're finally in, it's right. Hard times always helped you see...you were always the good soul that learned to let all that bad shit go and taught me and everyone else in your life to let it, whatever it is, go, too. And with a smile and a laugh that infected even the most resistant.

Did you know that you could be wrong
And swear you're right
Some people been known to do it
All their lives

But you find yourself alone
Just like you found yourself before
Like I found myself in pieces
On the hotel floor

Hard times, help me see

I'm a good man with a good heart
Had a tough time, got a rough start
But I finally learned to let it go
Now I'm right here, and I'm right now
And I'm open, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over
My shadow days are over now

Well it sucks to be honest (honest)
And it hurts to be real
But it's nice to make some love
That I can finally feel
Hard times, let me be

I'm a good man with a good heart
Had a tough time, got a rough start
But I finally learned to let it go
Now I'm right here, and I'm right now
And I'm open, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over
My shadow days are over now