Coots

Good Morning Sweet Son,

This morning at Dorothy's I woke up happy- read for a long time about the history of the exploration of the Devil's river and I felt a deep urge to kayak. For the first time since you left  I felt a desire for something. I could almost imagine life again, maybe bigger and more bold, like my grief for you is making me want to jump off a cliff (figuratively speaking) and fly. Am I too old to live large? Is this a flash-in-the-pan kind of feeling  like has happened to me before?

I went outside with our dogs and binocs  to watch the dawn on the lake, and I sat at the water's edge and coots were about....they were 200 yards away in the cat tail rushes, feeding and moving about on the glass-still water. A singular coot began to move toward where I sat in a very deliberate way, straight at me.


 I mean, straight at me at a rapid clip, making a wake, if you can imagine it.

 He moved to within 40 feet of me and hesitated, came closer, then waited as a friend joined him, and they both came in to within 20 feet. Even with our two dogs pacing the bank, these wild birds just keep coming closer. Coots do not do this, they are NOT ducks, begging for a cracker. I raised my arms to the heavens, opened my heart and welcomed the notion that it was, again, YOU.

I have been told you are always around me. Sometimes I feel you-as I did the moment the coot came towards me. I smiled, hesitated and then welcomed the moment and it felt good. I have been told that these thing will happen-they are NOT accident, in fact they are "anything but" accident. My heart welcomes and embraces them but my mind resists. I have also been told you are excited  to communicate with me in this way. Well, ok.

Now, logically I think there must be science and some logic involved. So you are now "luminous awareness and bliss", pure love, pure energy devoid of any human negatives. You can move here and there-not confined to our laws of physics. God, how beautiful that must feel to someone who yearned for freedom from limits as much as you did? I am wondering about my many Ian occurrences..spectacular sunsets and sunrises? Animals that move close to me? electric  anomalies? Wind bursts?

If you move freely, maybe you can influence an animal's behavior in subtle ways. Buzzards already kettling  could be "shooed" closer to where I ran the other morning, like a feather you can blow and make it float a bit higher? That coot had no reason to approach me at all-none-did you murmur into his little bird brain and make him more curious of me? Could you still his fear of my dogs and urge him closer? Can you push a cloud?

Does your love for me remain?

Does it act as a force of energy that you can wield?

Does my love draw you in when I get quiet and listen or feel you?

Is this what remains as a our only bridge?


I can never touch you as my grief keeps telling me, day by day, minute by minute, second buy second. It obscures my journey to understand and keep my mind open to the bridge that you and I can still have. I feel this morning that I am trying to learn to suspend my longing for you...the bitter and constant MISSING YOU so that I can touch you in this new way.

Thank you for trying to pull me into this new world of loving without physically touching. I am not very good at it yet., but I am going to try, Ian.

You know, since the moment I first became your Momma, you have been a special challenge. You demanded more patience, more energy, more understanding, more open-mindedness than I had ever needed before. You and I had kinship and I was your champion and and touch-stone. I feel bad for many things, but NOT for loving you so damned much, because maybe our fierce love for each other was the the training for the time that is now before us.

Love,
Momma