Derek should have been thirty seven today, but he died three years ago. Those words still seem so strange to me, so unreal. How could someone so full of life die? They say time heals, but it doesn’t. It does make the pain a little easier to live with, make the memories seem a little further away, both the painful and the happy ones, both the ones I want to forget and the ones I want to hold onto.
Later today we will go to the cemetery and put flowers on his marker and then have birthday cake tonight at my cousin Carol's house. Two nights ago Colin, Sarah, and Oran stayed with Nonna and me at a beach rental house at Westport. We had birthday cake for Derek there, and sang Happy Birthday to “Uncle Derek” as Oran calls him. My emotions go up and down like the stock market and to say that I feel any particular way would be true, and wrong. Still, life goes on.
I was in Shiprock for two weeks recently, and planned my trip to Hong Kong; a flat on Lamma Island for three months starting in February, round trip frequent flier free air tickets, and a hotel reservation for the first night. Nonna will buy her ticket later, when she is more sure of the arrangements around the anticipated birth of our first granddaughter in January.
My time in Shiprock was great, working in the hospital and visiting friends. Milan had his last regular monthly opening at his Crashing Thunder Gallery in Gallup, entitled “Fading Into History,” and I was happy I was there for that. He had created a large collage of a number of announcements from the past thirty years, and that brought back many great memories. He will still do the occasional show in the gallery; I plan to have an opening there the first Saturday in December - the Iceland pictures.
The last weekend in New Mexico I stayed at our cabin in Chama with Paula and Milan. The weather was incredible, black skies and bright sunlight creating a perfect double rainbow, followed by a sunset that seemed to set the entire sky on fire. We sat on the porch drinking white wine, soaking up the show, solving all the world’s problems.
Tonight Nonna and I will stay here in Salem; Monday we will stay in Port Townsend, and the following week end we are hoping to visit friends in Vancouver BC. Then it will be September, and maybe we will slow down a bit. Maybe.