May 14 2010

I just ran a special errand as per a special request. I placed a lilac sprig from our yard on your grave from MBP and a small rock (happens to have a few sparkles in it too) on your headstone, Blue-Eyed Grandpa, also by special request from NAP-L today. A purple chyrsanthamum is still there too. Soon a new flag will be too, to replace the badly torn one from last year that I'd had to remove. I also said hello and prayers from all too, as I always do and hello to the Sake-Monster/ Pretty-Puppy too. Miss you too. Hope you are at peace with your loved ones. xos

When time gets bigger

The last time I spoke with you, two years ago this week, you were tired and sick. I saw you letting go and wanting to hold on. You wanted life and you wanted to keep going, but with a heart that could take you along with it.

I know what it is like to want to be better for others and it is a worthy fight to continue to live with the strength of those you love (who love you) when you feel your own hope is deflated. But in those your last weeks you could no longer even live for others and I knew it was time to let you go.

If I could have gotten you back with your laugh and your smile, without a cough or an exhausted face, I'd have given years of my life. But you gave me courage to take the years I have and do something more with them, because I know that what you believed in was stronger than this world and almost as strong as your love for the things on it. We were very different, but we shared in some things.

You always appreciated the beauty the Earth offered you and I think about the places I get to see with that adoration. (I know this is part of how you and Mom were alike too.) I hear you telling me how much you loved this country as I take in the rivers and the oceans and the mountains and the desert and the forest. I go beyond what is comfortable for me in part because you did not have that luxury. I appreciate my opportunities because of what you sacrificed.

I know you'd do it differently, and I love you even more for supporting me even though I did/do not do it the same way. It is what you lived and died for that instills strength in me when I want to make the world better but feel exhausted. It is your lessons on work that teach me to make an income but realize sometimes that is just what you do on the side so that you can live for real, and in the future, live for more.

I'm going to take you with me everywhere I go, Dad. As time gets bigger, further away from when you were here, I do not lose sight of you. I only see more clearly how I miss you and how I want you to live on.

~atp

What a difference....

.....a day makes! On this day we were a very happy, excited, impatient and curious expectant couple and on the next we were washed over with love in a new way....we were a family...with more members and even more love to share in follwing years....what a difference a day makes! Sweet memories of the best days ever. :-) xos

11/25-12/3/09

It's been a great week and I am wondering 'which day it IS ' after all the fun activities we've had. Priceless times shared that we will all remember and cherish. Now 'back to life' as we each know it. Everyone has traveled safely and soundly. Love you. xos

November 18, 1939

How to commemorate a life, 70 years after it began? I have been thinking that the answer is to celebrate the anniversary of the day you were born, a day we are all very happy for, much the way we'd celebrate it if you were still alive, but with the edges of sadness and loneliness for you that now mingle with the rest. We shared photos and songs and memories and you seemed to respond: through radio stations playing your favorite tunes, Natalie telling Michelle about your birthday party in heaven, the deer Maggie called Mom out to see or the one (perhaps the same) who came to see her at the church, the photo of our family that always shifts a bit in the frame of my bedroom mirror whenever something momentous is happening, falling to the floor, or the joke James told tonight...

It's still your birthday today, but without your presence, and all of these things, whether they are a comfort of the mind or spirit or heaven, helped us to celebrate you today. Your life has become magic, after only 70 years. (atp)

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. xos

November 18, 1939-November 18, 2009

This year would've been your seventieth birthday. We will wish you a Happy Birthday in our hearts and minds and prayers. You will be toasted and your life will be celebrated with music of course. Our Love and xos As Always