Newtown tragedy

" I can't imagine what those families are going through," I keep hearing people say.  And I keep thinking, I can imagine it.  I can imagine because we have been through it too.  And there are probably hundreds of other families who have lost children this week, and every one of their losses is as great as the the loss each family in Newtown experienced.
"Senseless tragedy"  is also a word I have heard over and over.  But...every child's death is senseless:  cancer, car accident, drowning, chiari malformation...all senseless in the eyes of the families who have lost what is most precious to them, their child.

I know that I am sounding insensitive here.  Really I am not.  I am deeply grieving the loss of those children and school employees.  I would gladly have thrown my body over any one of my students to save their lives.  But I do know other families out of the public eye are also grieving tonight, and I grieve with all those unknown broken hearts too.

As a teacher of 7 year old children and as a grandparent who lost a deeply loved (not quite) 6 year old grandson, the wounds are deep and fresh.

Thankful for...

Today is Thanksgiving.  And all month everyone has been posting their daily little thanks.  I think friends, family and health are pretty well covered.  So, I am thankful for my electric tea kettle, my electric mattress pad, my Uggs, my Kindle, my Droid, Sirius radio and GPS in the car,  DVR, and this little laptop.  Oh, I can see frowns of displeasure forming on your brows.  We are not supposed to be thankful for THINGS, we are supposed to be thankful for those intangibles that we have no control over.  If all those things disappeared from my life, I would miss them, but I would be fine.  And if the intangibles disappeared from life, my family, friends and health, I would be in crisis.  But, we are living in amazing times.  We have so many THINGS that make our lives comfortable and fun and interesting, it would truly be a shame to not acknowledge how lucky and grateful we are for those things.  Every time I get in the shower I give thanks that I live in a day and age when I can turn a nozzle and stand under a streaming fall of hot water.  To say nothing of the essential luxury of an inside toilet.  A car with HEATED seats, for gosh sakes.  How amazing is that?  I LOVE them on a cold morning.  I am thankful for the creativity and ingenuity of the human spirit, all that brain power that has gone into the little things that make my life wonderful.  All of which is a reflection and gift of the Great Creator.  Thank you.  Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow.  Praise him all creatures here below.  Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

priceless

Good bye, God Bless, Good Luck and have fun pulling things out of the Afghanistan sand...love you Matt!

Obama at La Paz-Update

When I first saw the news release that Obama was going to be in Keene, I thought, Our students have to go.  Fifth grade needs to be there when the president comes to our little community. And a couple of days later, the announcement was made at school that yes, indeed, fifth grade was going to get to go.  Then Scott got a chance to go because one of the fifth grade teachers is a Limbaugh/Fox inflexible, and I want to say bigoted but I won't, Republican and REFUSED to go with the class.  HE WOULDN'T TAKE HIS CLASS TO SEE THE PRESIDENT DEDICATE A NATIONAL MONUMENT!! So Scott got to take his place (and this man now gets to spend his day on Monday teaching Scott's second graders...that will be an experience for him because he also thinks primary teachers don't work as hard as intermediate teachers...) and I thought, shoot, I want to go too.  So I went to the UFW website and filled out the application and got a sub and now I will be there on Monday too.  It feels like a personal visit, even though there will be thousands of people there, because it is not a fundraising campaign stop (although I realize that everything both candidates do at this stage of the race is done with an eye on the media) but to recognize the work of a man whose grandchildren we have taught.  So I am curious and excited to see how the day will unfold...

Update:  At 7:00 Sunday night, after I had my special bag packed and my clothes all picked out, I got an email that said, unfortunately La Paz would not be able to give me a ticket after all.  Scott still got to go with the school kids, and had a wonderful experience.  The whole community was talking about our visit from the President and all his secret service men.

The Voice

I hate to say this, but I do believe The Voice has overtaken Amazing Race in my "can't wait to watch it on the DVR list".  Now, if the woman with no legs had won the first leg of Amazing Race, maybe things would be different!  (hmmm.  If she won the first leg, would she now HAVE ONE leg? ) The problem with The Voice is that all these wonderful singers are going to go home so soon in the season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UlX1hod4Lk

dreams

I dreamed last night that Aiden had been in Talladega with Papa for the last six months and I was picking him up to take him home.  It was so wonderful to hug him and hear his voice.
At one point of the dream, he was driving the car...in a KMart parking lot and Dad was telling me that he wasn't a good enough driver and I should be more careful.  I was helping steer around the posts.
 But then I was driving again and Aiden was telling me how he likes to order burgers at Sonic, with just mayonaise and no special sauce.
Before that in the dream, I tried to apply to be a substitute teacher in Talladega.  It didn't go well.  The office lady was rude and I tore up my application.

Misunderstood?

Ok, everyone, stand down.  I am not ready to jump off a cliff.  Really what I meant in my last post, and did not say very well, was how humbling life is.  You think you have the answers, and cliched as it sounds, life throws you a curve and you have to figure everything out all over again. I am just in one of the figuring things out stages.

Legacy...hmph

Well, a few years ago, I might have thought that I might have some kind of legacy, some life wisdom to pass on to the generations, but not so much now, maybe just a legacy of discouragement.  Luckily, no one is reading this anymore, so I am free to write whatever I want.  Mary gave me a book called Legacy, a step-by-step guide to writing personal history.  So I thought I would just open it and choose a question at random and write about it.  Here goes.  I will now open the book and point.  Question: What have you kept and why is it meaningful to you?
The question is in the chapter called If Your Partner Died.  Really?  Back to that old grieving thing again?  Oh, well.

Ok...pertaining to the death of Aiden, not my partner, but still...

What have I kept?  Well, there is the little green glass piece of a Squirt bottle, with the picture of a little blond boy that looks just like Aiden that I found laying in the path up at Red Rock on our first venture out of the house after Aiden died.  It is significant because I felt that it was some kind of extra spiritual communication.  I had such a hard time during those days in the hospital because the doctors were telling us that he was brain dead, the Aiden we knew was already gone, it was just a body, heart still beating, but that's it.  But then the nurses would come in and talk to him, saying things like:  I am just going to give you a little stick, it will only hurt for a second, as if he were still in there, able to hear.  If he was gone, I did not want to have to "talk" to his empty shell of a body.  So I never said good-bye. When I found the piece of broken soda bottle, it made me think that it was ok to talk to him, that even without his body, he is still around. If I keep my eyes open, I will see the signs that he is still with us, his soul is not gone.

CS Lewis said in The Great Divorce that those who have moved on to the next stage of their eternal life do not have knowledge of what is happening down here on our physical planet.  Because there is perfect joy being in the presence of God and watching our sufferings would interfere with that joy...But heaven and eternal life, life without time, is such an incomprehensible topic to our limited minds, that I have to decide that connections are forged in this life for a reason and that they are eternal.

Come

Today is one of those wretched days when all I can say is "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"  The sooner the better.  I am tired of this life.

Summer's End

Off for a couple of days to recharge our batteries before school starts.  It has been a BUSY summer.

over and done

Well, the wedding has come and gone and I don't really know how it all went...I hope that Abby and Nate and the guests enjoyed the day.  Everyone worked so hard--Ian and Louie on the fabulous food (Oh my gosh, that smoked pork was so tender and smoky), Gita on the flower arrangements, Leticia who drove all the way to LA to get the flowers, Dani and Susie and Rachel and mom on the yard decorations, Brian and Sarahbeth on the BEER!, Scott and Ian on the shade cover--Hopefully Abby and Nate will have special memories.

I know that I blew it.  I know that everyone was just trying to help.  I know that I overreacted to feeling criticized.  I also know that I function on a thin tight rope of emotion and it only takes a whisper of breath to knock me off.  So I am very sorry that I hurt the feelings of the people I love the most. I hope that I am the only one whose day was ruined by my own lack of self control.  

And now I have a couple of weeks of summer left to relax and unwind. And do nothing for a day or two.

Wedding Week

Yay!  Abby's wedding is almost here.  I really need to watch Father of the Bride so I can appreciate how well it is going, and how much easier this has been--not having a wedding planner and all.  Abby is very relaxed about it all, now that they have the marriage license!  I trust that Ian and Louie will make fantastic food and Gita will do beautiful decorations and Leticia will spiff my house up (she wants to clean the china and silver doodads in the curio cabinet...I looked at it and thought, who will see THAT, behind the door?)  Abby will look like a princess and Nate will look like a (Scottish) prince.  How fun is that?  They love each other and have been through so much already in their year together.  It will be a fun day and the beginning of their commitment to a life together.

heart deflated

I know that I have not been writing anything.  (No one else has been either...!) But every time I sit down and open up the 'new post' tab, nothing important comes to mind.  Everything just seems so...trivial.  Not that there isn't lots of good stuff going on.  Namely weddings and grandbabies...but my heart just feels...deflated.  Although the loss of Aiden, and of course that is the overarching loss of all, is huge, the loss of relationships with people I had cared for and felt pleasure in and committed to is a big part of my apathy about writing on a blog.  Even as I write that word, blog,  the intonation in my head says it with a tone of dismissal..."blog"...I feel let down and disappointed and who wants to read that?  My surface mood is up and down and very normal, enjoying the company of my grandchildren and the flowers in my garden and breakfast with my friends, but the underneath mood is very flat and not very interesting.  A lot of mental energy is being taken up with the struggle to put my faith into some kind of sense.  Heaven--just can't see it as a streets paved with gold surrounded by our loved ones who have gone before us kind of place.  God--personal? Just how involved is He?  Does he really orchestrate every detail of our lives?  If that is true than why, why, why the bad stuff?  I have in lately years come to feel that God set everything up, put the rules in place, the conductor of the orchestra, but each musician is playing the music themselves, free to follow or not.  But then I can't figure out the role of prayer.  Do we really have the power to change the will of God?  I want, want, want to believe that this earthly life is just a tiny part of our eternal life.  But I can't come up with the shape of that eternal life.  We are made in the image of God...and that has got to mean the spiritual image, the emotional image.  The being who recognizes beauty in nature and love for each other.  And anger.  And disappointment.  And humor.  He KNOWS us, but we don't know Him except through our own window.  We see through a glass darkly. And so what IS the point of this brief life?  Why not just skip it and go directly to the eternal life, the one that counts? I hate to let my thoughts go down that black hole, the one that says this is all there is.  But I have to let my thoughts occasionally  slide down there in order to reaffirm that yes, I do, I HAVE to believe that all of creation has meaning. And purpose, even if I can't grasp what the meaning and purpose are.

Oh my goodness, whiny, whiny, whiny...and questions with no answers.

One year ago tonight was the last time we got to hear his voice.  I do not like this new reality of the world without Aiden.  But no one ever gets to choose their reality...

It never ends.

Twice this week I have had to endure conversations with kids at school about Aiden.  Although I like to talk about him, even when it makes me sad, these conversations are so hard.  I was on playground duty and a little boy who was in Aiden's class came up to me and asked me where Aiden was.  This is a little boy who I have spoken with many times about Aiden and I tried to brush him off, change the subject, but he just wouldn't drop it.  Where IS he? He was in my class last year and he is not here now, so where IS he?  He was very insistent. Finally I said, He is in heaven.  The little boy said, That is creepy...and ran off.Then one of my own students, a little girls whose brother was in Aiden's class in preschool and in kindergarten, met me first thing this morning at the door to the room and said, Mrs. Newkirk, my brother's friend died yesterday.  Oh, no, I said, what happened?  He was in my brother's room and he had something the matter with his brain.  And I am scrambling to pull my thoughts together, thinking, how could something like this happen again.  In Mrs. Phillips room? I ask.  Yes, L says, he was my brother's friend.  Finally, I ask, what was his name?  I don't know, she says.  Are you talking about Aiden?  Yes, she says...He was my grandson, I say.  I know about him.  It is sad she says.  And into the room we go. It turns out Abby ran into her mother at Home Depot and she asked how Aiden was enjoying being a big brother.  She did not know about Aiden.  So Abby had to have this conversation with the mom in Home Depot.

Amazing Race

Ok, I have applied for Amazing Race...AGAIN!  This is the fourth time.  I didn't really intend to apply, though.  This is how it happened.  On Tuesday, Denise was in the teacher's room sharing stories of her fun trip that she just came back from...10 days in Hawaii.  She went ziplining and tubing and everything you can do in Hawaii.  And I have known Denise for 16 years and she is CRAZY!  So I said, Denise, I want to go on Amazing Race with you.  Then I forgot I even said that.  Now the thing is, Denise's husband just died after a motorcycle accident (she was on the back...I told you she is crazy...) so she needs distractions and she went home and looked up the application for Amazing Race.  Guess what?  WEDNESDAY was the deadline to apply. She came to school on Wednesday and said, Jen, I have the application all filled out, you just need to come to my room at recess to film the video.  The next thing I know we are sitting there doing a video (which wouldn't upload).  Later she came over and we did the video again and uploaded it, and now we are waiting.  We kind of played up the grieving aspect...maybe it will work.  I am a l i t t l e nervous about not being able to physically do the Race.  I don't expect to ever hear from the show.  Having been through this a few times before...

Beannacht by John O'Donohue

Thank you, Sheila, you didn't know when you handed me this beautiful blessing how fragile I was feeling and how much it would help my heart.  Here it is for anyone else who might need a blessing...

                                                                         Beannacht

("Blessing")

 

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

 

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

 

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

 

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

 

~ John O'Donohue ~

 

                                                                       

Graduation

So, Gita's big graduation day is here.  I am so glad that she found the thing that makes her happy.  Nurse Gita!  I remember reading all the Cherry Ames books and the nursing life seemed so exciting and full of possibilities.  I hope Gita finds adventure and satisfaction, making in a difference in one life after another. Congratulations sister!

Transfiguration Sunday

Almighty God, on the mountain you showed your glory in the transfiguration of your Son.  Give us the vision to see beyond the turmoil of our world and to behold the king in all His glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

This prayer from last Sunday expresses, I think, most clearly my prayer right now.

Another day

Every day I get up and watch the sun rise and think, Today is another day that Aiden didn't get to see.  I would just really like an explanation of what happened to Aiden that night.  We are dogsitting Goober right now.  He is the only one who was with Aiden, when I found him on the floor, his face was all scratched up.  I think that Goober tried to wake him up.  It's like the murder mysteries where the dog-or cat- is the only witness and the clever detective finds a way to get the animal to let them know what happened.  Goober, what do you know?

Only small miracles

Chach says there are no coincidences, only small miracles...Yesterday Donna, Chach, Mary and I went to the Gene Autry Museum and PF Chang's and Ikea...a big day for us small town girls.  The museum was empty and I sat on the saddle and got to chase bad guys, or be chased...I am not sure which.  I did not fall off, that I do know!  But small miracle #1...I am reading the book Halfway to Heaven, about a man climbing all the "14ers" in Colorado...mountains over 14,000feet.  One of the first ones he climbed is the Mount of the Holy Cross.  He gives all the interesting background and I was intrigued so I looked it up.  It had a big cross of snow on it and a photographer named William Henry Jackson took a famous photo of it, then Thomas Moran painted a famous painting.

We walk into a gallery and there is the Moran painting on the wall.  I had just read all about it, and now here it was. live and in person.  So fun!

Another book I read this week was Gold Mountain, Lisa See's book about her family's journey from China to America.  Her great grandfather started the F. Suie One Co in Chinatown in LA.  And guess what?  Small miracle #2--The Autry Museum has an exhibit showing the F. Suie One Co!  I had just read all about it and now here it was, (almost) live and in person!  So fun!

Thanks Donna for driving your big red truck all over LA and even in the parking garage