Six Months...

It has been six months...

Will I always count?

I drove up to Oakmont today, brought new flowers for October and November. I bought giant gerber daisies in cream, blood red dalias, orange and yellow sunflowers and a couple yellow tulips.

Fall colors
silk flowers
the same music
a cloudy sky
half a moon
wind blowing through the oaks
me sitting above
her buried below
and God someplace just not here

I meditated there for about an hour after I played a few of her favorite songs. If she was here she would have new favorites, I can't even guess what they would be. I took deep breaths, I closed my eyes and I just sad quietly believing for one moment that God was listening to me.

I looked up at the sky and said, "Hey Stevie if you are OK make it rain" The sky was full of clouds but not rain clouds and I didn't think that trick would work again. It sprinkled and I smiled, then I thought "Gee Wiz if you can make it rain can't you simply tell me your are still you? Wouldn't it be easier?"

This has been a week of making art that I have not made before, missing Stevie, hiking up big hills with Aly and trying to feel happy for Mary who just became a grandmother. I am happy for her I just have this sadness that makes happiness a different color. Sierra, a big baby with a soft bald head and sweet little lips. I remember when Briana was a little munchkin running around my house eating ice-cream and dancing to lollipop with Carrie and Davey. Davey is gone, Carrie is in college and Briana is a mommy. How did that happen?

I know I shouldn't but I think of the daughters Stevie could have had. I think about my turn to hold her hand in a hospital while we wait for something wonderful to happen, tears of joy, new beginnings...I think about her graduating from college and me standing up and clapping until the palms of my hands burn and tingle...I think about her calling me late at night to talk about a fight she had with her husband or teenage daughter. I think about...

It won't happen.

Instead I am here and I have to pretend to feel pink happiness when it is really dark blue.

Mary lost her son, he was only 21, now she has this new baby to hold, to fill her empty arms and her broken heart. Does it work that way?

I have Aly and Noah who need me and love me.
I have this broken family.
I have memories.
I have friends.
I have a life that needs living.

I have so much yet I feel so alone and empty.
Too much is missing.

I am going to pray tonight that I find a way back, connected to source, connected to my kids, connected to myself.

I am lonely for my daughter, my faith, and my hope.

Each day I heal, it is physiological. I am genetically programmed to survive. I just wish I could stop time and walk backwards through it until I find her. I would just breathe her in, love her. Then I would walk forward until I found her again, then I would know. After that everyone could go back to buzzing and whirling.

Time it just moves and moves and it drags me along with it.

God hold me close, don't let me fall in and disappear.