How can it be?

Time just keeps blasting us forward. Dan Paik died 5 years ago today. Five. I spent only five years with him. Soon he will be gone from this earth longer than I knew him.

I live on the 5th floor now in a brand new building in a new city. I'm weary and disoriented. I have a different car and changed to a different purse. I can't find things. I have no sense of direction. I'm lost every time I go anywhere more than a few blocks away. But the dead loved ones are here. Dan. My mom, my aunt Millie. They are constants, easy to navigate to.

The Mississippi River curves through this city. Sometimes I'm on one side of it, sometimes the other. The river Styx divides the living from the dead. I'm still here, living.

How to Party When You're Dead

My niece got married yesterday, and I loved how the wedding decor included those who are no longer on this earth. While I don't really believe that they were watching from above, literally, the way that we were all watching when the bride and groom danced their first dance, they were there through us. People say I look a lot like my mom these days, and my brother's resemblance to our father is almost uncanny.

parents of the bride watching the first dance

So there we all were. All of us. Present in our earthly bodies. Present in the stories told, present when we catch a glimpse of one another out of the corner of our eye, and think, whoa, for a second, I thought....

At one point in the evening my youngest grandniece came up to me out of the blue, and said, "I remember Great-Grandma Ethel." And I said, "Well, let's go look at her picture." And so we did.

Wednesday Morning Beach Report: Found Art, Summer in Paradise, and News from the Wizard of Many, Many Jobs

the minotaur

The Getty's is below.

It is summer here in paradise. There  are 33 people in the cluster of beach-goers pictured below. But I think it might be that some people are getting an early start on 4th of July weekend and the "crowds" will be gone next week. 

Report from the Wizard of Many Many Jobs: (currently wearing Ministry of Death hat):

I received this message from my brother's wife in Iowa yesterday--

.....in the mail today we got mom's death certificate . Came from XXXXX (the credit union) of Baltimore. No check. No note enclosed.

I sent the credit union the death certificate. It was required in order to close her account. I sent two other copies of the death certificate to Baltimore as well. I forget why, but I could remember if you insisted. I'm just not in the mood right now. It seems that it should be easier to wrap all of this up that it has been. The dead get mail, they haunt our dreams, the possessions of the dead fall out of closets and onto our toes. Sometimes we almost forget that the dead are dead. I can walk the beach for hours now if other obligations permit, but instead of feeling the pull of the waves out to sea, I sometimes feel the tether of my mother here in my house, sitting in her room or at the dining room table, reeling me back inland.

Friday Morning Beach Report/ Report from Pillville

Sometimes I smell the bodies before I get close enough to the water to see them. A couple of days ago, I came upon four in a walk that was barely a mile, one so emaciated it looked like a sea serpent.  Sea lions are starving. Last year I saw quite a few pups and juveniles awaiting rescue. This year it's mostly bodies. Someone told me about the northern elephant seal pup that washed up yesterday. It was alive, she said, but didn't look good. This morning I came across the sign and the orange tape. Normally, elephant seals aren't this far south.

Also on this morning's walk, I saw a back hoe dig a big hole and mound up some sand. I guess this is how the dead ones are buried. It being Easter weekend and all, I suppose there's some concern about freaking out the tourists. Maybe we should put up signs marking all the spots where sea lions died. So people know and we can all freak out communally. There's a large sea lion colony in the islands. Maybe they'll survive this crisis.

As for life in Pillville, we have an assessment scheduled with a hospice nurse. Nothing has changed dramatically with my mom, but her slow motion slide inches downward. A walker instead of her cane. More pain. Less energy. But odd as it may sound, we're happy enough here in Pillville. Yesterday friends came by to drink champagne. They're all so pretty, my mom told me afterwards. She wanted to know if they all had husbands. No, I said, oversimplifying things quite a bit. I knew where the discussion was headed, so I changed the subject. I think if I hadn't, she would have told me once again I should have a husband--or at least a man in my life. I'd love to fall in love, but I don't think I'm ready. And I absolutely can't imagine how a man would fit into life here in Pillville. He'd have to be a saint. That's not exactly what I'm looking for.

"I'm no saint. I got papers to prove I ain't."-- fragment from one of Dan's songs.

So thanks for visiting and taking time to read about the dead and dying.

Here's a pure white dove for you. Peace.

Day of the Dead

After visiting my favorite dia de los muertos exhibit at The Folk Tree last week, I bought some supplies and made my own altar for Dan.

I dreamed of him a couple of nights ago. We were camping on a big fluffy air mattress tucked in between some boulders in a canyon. The sky was still blue, but we were already  in bed, watching the clouds, marveling at the blue wide-openness. A cop pulled up on his motorcycle, asking to see our permits. When I rifled through a box of stuff, he saw our clump of pot. "It's medical," I said to the cop. "Show him your scar," I said to Dan. Dan didn't pull up his shirt. He smiled and shrugged. The sky turned an even more brilliant blue.