The Art of Straddling

 The  Art of Straddling

  Joan texted me yesterday to remind me that you"showed up" during group, the last time I ever went five years ago. I was numb with the pain of year one without you. Sitting in a circle with the others, I tried to open my mouth and tell them how it felt to put my beautiful son in the ground; to explain the unimaginable....

 I started talking about how you had said there are no mistakes, that everything was set in motion before time. Instead of the usual talk about taking care of ourselves and setting boundaries, I blurted out that I wanted all of them to love their kids as much as possible and not feel guilty about giving them anything and everything. Screw the rules of Al Anon. Just love your kid.  People were nodding and crying, I think. At the time, I didn't know where those words came from.

 Night was coming and a dazzling sunset suddenly lit up the sky,  playing across the wall of windows like nothing I'd ever seen.

It would not be ignored, so I got up and walked to the windows, followed by some of the group.  Kathy's dog Ryder barked at the corner of the room where no physical human stood. Ryder saw you the way Phoebe still does.

It was a moment that changes everything.  I immediatly drank the truth of it,  but didn't yet grasp what was coming from you.  It was just the beginning of many miracles from you, Ian. Yes, as Joanne said, you showed up. 

I've learned to dive into these moments as they come, letting the visits wash over and baptize me. When you make a scene for me, so to speak,  I pause and take it all in. 

These moments are always carbonated. I try to make sure to catch them as I go through the day. I hope I have not missed any, baby. That would be terrible waste of a beautiful gift, like not stopping to notice a young boy's treasures; like missing  him catching a butterfly or the wonder of art that he brings forth from within.

Each deserves a moment of reverent pause. 

They are not just gifts, they are my portal.

Since you have been slowly pulling back and giving me more reign, I am trying something new, attempting to meet you part way. Deliberately. I am taking moments at the end of my day, head on pillow and ready to sleep,  to invite you and Source to use my dreams to send me guidance and insight; to peel away more and expose the spiritual self.

It happens often now,  on long walks when nature refuses to let worry stand unchecked.

I can get soft and quiet. I feel a shift, my bones seem to give way. Something comes.

I go out for a walk or pause when I first wake up because these are the times I can be more general, more relaxed, unharried; not preoccupied by the crap of life. I think I am beginning to recognize what this process is doing.

(Just as I wrote this I felt you get excited that I am figuring this out!)

"Just release, Mom," I can almost hear you say, 

"And open up the space beyond your churning brain!"

Or at the dawning of the day, if lay still and try to go more general and warm in my thoughts,  tiny moments that taste good from previous days jump to mind, and I can linger there a bit. It might be recalling something sweet a neighbor did, or the visual of  Hudson swimming in my hot tub, or a dog that ran away to freedom. I call up the joy of seeing that he has gone, he is no longer chained up at that horrid house. It's like clearing up the static of my radio by softly tuning in until I hear music. Then I wait to see what inspiration pops in:

                Go to Medrone Trail with the dogs

                Add light and shadows to my lizard painting

                Make yogurt

                Take some pictures of forms and frosty things

                Remember that squirrel on the fence

                Recall the sunset that chased me on your day

                

The Akasha.... the Source all around me.....all the time.....and everywhere...... yet never arm wrestling me for attention,  just offering a portal......

Through the things I see that break me open in wonder......

And the people I love who move me.........

The portal is always there.

If I can just manage the straddle of it.

Why have I been gifted so many encounters with you, Ian?

Maybe it is because I have been casual about believing man-painted views of Source?

Also,  because I have been desperate to hold onto you and eager to know where the fuck you are. Letting go of you was never something I could do, no matter how hard I tried.

It was as unfathomable and putting my eyes out or stopping my heart, knit together as we are, you and I. This tenatious love of mine turns out to be the asset I needed; it kept me battering my head against the wall that divided us. From time to time, you kindly and persistently continued to reach through the barrier and feed me like a baby bird, with signs and gifts of love. 

Thank you for that my steadfast son.

Now I am trying to step up to your kind invitations, find your hand, and join you in Akasha. The place of everything else that is always reachable with a softened eye and a willing mind.....see how it

Swirls and Pops ......

Hums and Sings..... 

Sways and Sparkles..... and Feeds, and Feeds, and Feeds. Where I am fed.

Maybe this is all a part of the bargain I have made to keep you, Ian. Now I need the full Monte to keep life vital; to defeat the boredom and malaise of years. I need more. More data, more angles, more information. Living here as a human is no longer enough for me. I guess this is the price paid when one straddles two worlds. I want to be here and there too. 

I need more cheats, except it isn't a cheat if it is given freely, right?

Here is the rub. I still want to be human, too. I want to sit with Henry and taste coffee, and hold a man. I want to exchange art with Kim, walk with Bridget, play with Coy, explore with Hudson, comfort my clients, teach my students, and watch a squash grow in a dixie cup. I want to always sit straight up in bed at the haunting cry of a screech owl and feel the excitement of getting up early to go on a trip. I want the unfathomable joy of hugging Chris, hearing Kenzie's voice, and watching Phoebe bound through tall grass. I want the goosebumps of hearing a new song; of thinking a new thought; of understanding something new and complex.

"I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!" As some head-banger once sang in a song that made me laugh so hard. 

Ian, I imagine you know all of this even before I say it. You track my wanderings like a quiet, interested beast following me sweetly through the woods.Tell me more! Show me more about how this can work; How I can straddle both worlds; have the human life with feet on the ground, tethered to those I love.

But also able to step to the edge of the well.....

Dip both my hands in.......

And drink deeply the Holy Waters.

     Love,     

              Mom            

Tommy Glen

 Tommy Glen

   Reading all this stuff lately about the relativity of the time/space continum in the Planck Epoc has got me thinking about whether time is real.  I dreamed last night that I was back in college, a weird montage of the past and the present. It was now, but it was also "then". As if there was no time and I could jump around like a photon blinking in and out of being, just before the Big Bang.

    And so, both as my current self and as college self, I was back there again, this time at some sports field or "dome";  outside,  but with large bleachers that were partially covered. This created an amphitheater-like back drop to my dream. Glen was standing before me there on a clear, bright day. In that strange cinematic fisheye zooming-in effect, the bleachers moved back and details of the dream became bleary as he became the only thing I could see. His face was so absolutely clear and so detailed that I could see laugh lines around his eyes, the olive tone of his face, and jet black hair, curly and tossled.  I stared at him transfixed by the clarity while he smiled broadly. 

    I said, "You're hair is so black, did you dye it?" (Seeming to notice that it could not be that black in the here and now. I was very clear that this was NOW). 

    "No", he said with warmth. He was amused.

    The image of him was an amalgam of everything I loved about my Glen; handsome Mediterranean features (I think his ancestors came from France, actually), beautiful  curly hair.... and skin that was both smooth and masculine. But mostly his beaming, laughing, mirth-filled eyes.

    As I looked at him in wonder, I knew in my dream that it was a visitation...a gift...an invitation to remember....I felt all that I felt with Glen 42 years ago, all the love, belonging and allegance we shared. It all flooded back in as I looked at him, and it was delicious.

  Already, college had been an awakening me; a time of remembering who I truly was; more that just the last, lost,  "afterthought" 6th child of two terribly unhappy people at the broken end of their own time here; unable to give me anthing but a basic sense that I was loved. (Love is quite a gift, I eventually understood, when a person is almost truly spent themselves). So in my escape to college, I started to feel the layers of bad stories slide off of me, 

like shed skin,
like a suit that does not fit.... 

Then in the nexus of my rmembering myself, came Glen.

    Glen loved me wholly for who I was; a newly un-tethered, scared young woman putting together the pieces of a broken and weird (but interesting) childhood. One where no one particularly noticed that I was smart at all. 

    Oddly we hardly ever talked about my past as "trauma", that is not how WE saw me. That aspect of life was of no import. It didn't matter that no one in my childhood saw much about me except that I was a member of the family and therefore did belong to our tribe. I was cared for in a basic way, mainly by my sister Nita and brother Sonny who were barely more than children themselves.....Glen didn't notice any of my insecurities;  he thought  I was just  bright, and independent. 

    I remember he once commented while I sketched Linus Pauling during a seminar on the healing powers of vitamin C, "Your biggest problem is that you are too talented. It is going to be hard to decide which path to take in life." It was the sweetest non-compliment of my life.  

In the movie Avatar, the two blue characters look into each others eyes as they pronounce allegiance and love and say "I see you".  

    Glen saw me.

            I was 22.

    His love helped me launch; to evade the lie that my childhood defined who I was and who I would become.

 Sometimes being seen is all a girl needs.

 I took flight

Found my true course. 

Because of how damned good Glen made me feel, I sometimes    get stuck thinking I need a relationship now to mirror back to me my worth. Maybe so, but in my dream I was gifted a reminder of that feeling  again.

Like an ember to carry along with me now. 

    I woke up and dug out my one album of our two years together. How funny that I remember every detail of him with only a few fading pictures in an album doomed to disintegrate on my shelf. I basked in going back and forth in time; stirring up all those truths about myself and my Glen. I felt it lift and  reassure me of who I am.

    Glen is happy about the visit too, I hear him saying saying, "Go back and grab those feelings and swallow them up. Feed yourself!"

      As someone in a movie said yesterday, "Everyone should know true love once in their lives". I sometimes wish I had not been too young and impetuous to hang on to it. 

    Glen would probably respond, "That is the way of things, Cutie."

    

    

    

Jennifer Said:

December 26th, 2022

Year 5

      "I know this is gonna sound weird, bit I feel like Ian is letting me know that you are going to get very close to a wild animal...a bird or perhaps a fish...it will be looking at you intensely and will be conveying a messge to you. He wants you to be still and listen. I think it is a whitish bird wit a pointy, long pinkish beak....although it felt like it was a fish at first, that almost beaches itself...whatever it is will be in the shallows somewhere."

,

Ian,


Nita and I started birding on your fifth leaving day at Edinberg Wetlands in South Texas. A lush little thicket with trails that wound around a pond,  with a thicket so thick that it was like one of those mazes in an English garden. Cormorant, Herons, Chachalaca,  Egret, and the sounds of Kiskadee could be heard everywhere. There were lots of people out enjoying a warm day after such a cold, cold week. Because of your cousin Jennifer's words, I felt expectant and light, instead of the familiar heaviness on my chest.

Three Kiskadees that I called up with my phone flew in and positioned themselves around us like a chorus. Aunt Nita and I stood at the rail and registered the moment, listening and laughing at their raucous bitching. Driving in the dark to South Padre after such a day, we had the most lovely discussion about the nature of all these things; the possiblities of who and where you are....what knits us all together in this grand tapestry.

The next morning, at the island Birding Center, something presented itself as an offering from you. Seeing it almost at the same time, we turned to each other and gasped.  It was a perfectly placed Great Blue Heron in white morph with a pink pointy beak...let me say it again....a large white bird, curiously close and statuesque, with a pointy white beak. It stood a few feet from me on the roof of a bird blind.  A bird that goes from grey to royal white, just like Gandalf did, after defeating the Balrog.  Nita and I both knew...the truth of it ran through our bodies like electricity.

You made your point....again.

I still get dark....I still miss hearing human words from you, Ian; the ones Elijah and Marie used to give me. I still do not want to let you go of the human version of you that walked this Earth; that sat on this sofa; that called Henry's name in the cute, high-pitched way. I don't want to let go of my son.

First I loved the human you. Then I loved the you that came after and taught me to see signs and mysteries as I chased after ways to grasp something that was left. Now, I am being asked to let even that part go and expand my view of things a bit more. I am being asked to love the you that is a part of a bigger story; to love you more generally.....to try to love everything.

Always and everywhere is an invitation you keep sending to peak behind the veil. This time it seems Jennifer found herself getting still and looking there. Perhaps is was just a gift for a beloved cousin, or perhaps it is because it has been a hard year for her. The people she loves (as I love you) are hurting and leaving and that creates a crack in a person's known reality; just like the crack that found its way into me-where the light now remarkably comes in. Perhaps it is simply her good heart that drew you to her to give me a little gift on the 26th. Perhaps all her quiet talks with you finally came to fruition.

I have so many signs from you. So many....but having regular people share them doesn't happen very often. Once with Debbie, and once with Kassandra; and yes Carrie finds feathers..... but that is just about it....this time Jennifer and Nita were pulled in. I can imagine it is fun for you to mess with us this way.

I am being called, as I have suspected for about a year, to become my own conduit with out Elijiah or Marie, but is it possible that there is more than this? Could my knowing now be expanded to those who don't generally swim in my pool of weird ideas?  Did you nudge her in the ribs and invite her to jump into the game with me? If you did, by now you know that she and Nita and I paid attention on the 26th:

30 hawks

3 complaining Kisskadees

1 Great Blue Heron in white morph, a curiously obvious metaphor of transformation

1 white scallop shell

An Ocelot....yes an Ocelot, pulling her dinner across the road into the thicket

Elijiah called on the 28th-he doesn't have much to say about you anymore-almost like an entirely different person who has awakened from a a dream state. He did clarify that "white winter tiger" reference he offered on Christmas Eve was about me and my work, not you. He said he thinks your withdrawal from him might be, as Marie suggested, that you have reincarnated again. You might be a baby somewhere, so messages I get will be from a distance...softer....that makes so much sense to me. So there is that.....and oh yes, this.....

Coy turned one year yesterday and I went to see him. Sweetest little boy, bursting with simple joy. He loves his brother Hudson; the bond between them clearly precedes this life. Hud looks after Coy without even being asked; and Coy is delighted by everything his brother does. It is clear to me they have done this before, just like you and me. Maybe soul partners.....and also,  I kept seeing and feeling a sense of amalgamation of personalities all at once but also such distinctiveness personalities. I felt you, Kenzie, Chris, me, Hudson, Coy, and Chase too.....such a soup of souls all flowing and swirling...being stirred and stirred and stirred. All individuals, all connected. It answered for me a question I have been considering. 

If we reincarnate, do we lose who we were before? 

As I was getting ready to leave, holding Coy and watching him laugh hilariously as Hudson road his bike in endless circles, Hud got off his bike and disappeared for a bit. When he came back and handed me a treasure he had just found....He said:

"Look Grandma, its a feather! what kind is it?"

"Its a dove, I think," I said as I felt a tingle run through me. What provoked him to jump off his bike and go get me that feather? As I thought of this,  I looked down to see a tiny yellow sulphur butterfly flutter around my feet and land, just so. 

Remarkably  it was still alive after two weeks of hard freezes; weak but able to fly. I picked it up and showed it to Hudson and it's color flashed like gold. As it took flight west off the back of the porch, Hudson said:

"Woah, Grandma!"

"It's magic....," I said, and I could see he got it.

So another year passes; the fifth since you started changing, my sweet Ian. As we all must..... boy and boy and butterflies and birds;

And you

And me.

                                                                                      Love,

                                                                                            Mom

For Kyle (and Jacie)

Ian, 

You already know that Kyle Holmes has transitioned;

I don't know if you were his friend, but he is loved by Jacie and his Momma and Dad,and by so many, 

So I love him too.

Once we found each other for a moment a few years back. He was panhandling at the corner of Blanco rd. and 1604 by the big HEB. I offered him five dollars.

 I did not know who he was, but he knew me.

"Ms. Ray? It's Kyle....I am so sorry about Ian, he was a really good guy...I am so sorry....." he said.  His kindness was like a soft punch in my face. I grabbed both of his arms through the window of my car and hugged the part of him I could reach. He let me cry and hold him for a minute, like I could not hold you.

His eyes were so blue.

He looked really healthy-almost radiant with the sun shining behind his mop of blonde hair. Just like an aura.

NOT a halo, they are false.....halos are too laden with expectation; They don't capture the realness of how hard this life can be to a young man finding his way.....No....... it was an aura.....an energy that was coming from every pore in his body. He seemed Whole to me.

How can a man be living on the street,

Using drugs, panhandling......sleeping under a dirty blanket

And still be so Whole? 

The truth of who he was seemed untouched by the tough circumstances in which he lived;  the ones he chose for himself. He had the look that I feel you have now;  the one I saw so many times as you grew from boy to man. Sometimes the clouds of human weariness, being lost and sad were there, too, but never for long. Those things pass.......Disappointments pass; betrayals, too..... Just like you, his Wholeness was the main thing I could see. You had the look of a beautiful, wild animal...lean and strong and free.......

Maybe it didn't mean a damn thing how clean his blanket was;

Whether the next meal comes

From a paycheck or a passerby.

                                                              

He was Whole when I touched his arms,

 And he is Whole now.

The door he walked through

 When he exited this human place

 Simply wiped away the unneeded bits

Of this physical life.

And he expanded back into a version of himself

 Both ancient 

And brand new.

Now, if he were my son here on Earth, this morning I would be in darkness. His Mom and Dad and Jacie must bear this. I would be filled with rage and longing and I would want to tear up this world and pull in the sky. I would be, as I was with you, furious and helpless, and lost. That is the burden of those who are not yet to the end of learning. The burden of letting go of beautiful Kyle. They persist, they wonder, they wait. They remember, with such bittersweetness.  Those blue eyes and the soft voice.

But not me this morning. 

Instead

I will hold the candle of his Wholeness.

I will remember how his goodness spilled over on me.

And I will be thankful for this perfect young man.

He is like a young wolf has been set free into the wilds of Canada.

He is a sea turtle that has been saved from tangled fishing lines and is quietly descending into a cerulean sea.

He is a bird set free into the vast morning sky.

I send this.....

 Into the Universe and to everyone who loved him......

He is Whole as ever he was; 

From a babe in his Momma's arms, 

To a man showing kindness to me 

Through my car window.

Maybe he used that dirty blanket!

 He bundled up

 All the knowledge and wonder

 He found as he lived the life he decided to live, 

And took it with him

To a freer place.

To the best place for Kyle.....

Into the wild

Beyond.....

And he will make such interesting use of it,

Just like you.

                                                                                                          Love, 

                                                                                                                Mom

 

Aufusa (on simple Gratitude)

Dear Ian, 

I won't write about Halloween because it is still too hard to open that jeweled box and recall the joy and fun of "Us". Maybe someday I can, but not yet. Probably not ever. Those good, good days belong to another chamber of my broken heart, and the rhythm of her beating is just too tentative to rattle and disrupt her. 

 Leave her be, I say, 

 to the fragile process of building new memories

 and learning to love again.

Autumn eases in with an extra blanket, and I held my breath last week, as my old heater cranked back to life. It was a nice moment....Almost as if the heater kicking on was a promise that this season will be ok afterall.

It is year 5 without you

and my heart still beats despite it's utter brokenness,

and my heater still kicks on when it is cold.

and I feel gratitude for in this.

Spontaneous gratitude, 

The kind that comes in on it's own with no prompting, 

Is showing up for me lately. 

In other times my gratitidue was more obvious, harried, formulaic-

"Thanks you for my children"

"Thank you for my business; for my family and friends, for my health".

Yes, I feel real gratitude for all these things, but as life becomes bleared by so many years zipping past, like I am in a speeding car; the way spontaneous gratitude finds me in smaller, softer, more intimate ways.

She finds me when Mariana calls me to say the sunrise is beautiful or that she was touched to hear Chris's voice that sounded so much like yours. Gratitude comes.

She finds me when my Henry stops sleeping to look up at me with cloudy eyes and licks my hand; 

Or with a chill of frost in the morning and I pull an extra blanket over us both, and we warm each other at the beginning of the day.

Gratitude always leaps from my throat over a remarkable soldier-like grasshopper, exquitely armored in color that lingers so that I can get a good picture or a snake doesn't seem to to be bothered that she shares my fish pond

Or as the dogs and I walk quietly through silent woods, and as an airplane flies over, a pack of coyotes is scared into raucous song; old gruff grandpas and the tenor-sounding puppies yipping and yowling. Im instantly covered in chills and amazed at their song. It makes me feel so happy that we are in the company of nature brings an audible "thank you" to my lips.

And there are human surprises too.

Mixed with the pain and disappointments I so often feel about people; the 

things I want..... but cannot have from them, 

is here everyday

that is  surely true......

and I must bear the loneliness of  being "Me" without "YOU" as I finish out my years....

I feel all of that, but that is not the whole story.

Sometimes there is a surprise from one of my human that causes a firecracker of gratitude, small and tender, to rise up and POP inside me.

Callie's expression

So ripe with joy as she slid an ultrasound across the table

To tell me she is finally pregant. So exquisite.

Ashley sending me a picture of Ian's grave...the place I cannot go, and a rush of love I feel at the thought that she would do that and that he comes to her mind.

Disclosures from my students of husband's  suicide; a brother that overdosed; the abuse and pain and disappointment that they carry, as I do, each day and into each session.

 I feel a door open and we are all suddenly in the same room together, and gratitude comes too.

And then there are the sweet moments when my kids and grandkids show that they still possess pieces of our original “US.” 

Chris's humanity as he tells me how much it bothers him to kill butterflies as he drives, or that he murmers an apology when he kills an imaginary animal in one of his video games. How kind he is to Mariana or his friends.

How he serves others. 

He does not know, as I do, that he has great moral depth...He does not see how very good he is and that this is the measure of a real man.

And my daughter, 

My wonderous Kenzie...who loves her boys with a fierce and steady eye. Blesses and accepts them as their glorious self as she lifts and holds her family together, loves all around her and is a force of nature. I am grateful that she is actually stronger than me, has more wisdom to bear....I feel gratitude that she has become so steady and self assured. 

And she’s wicked funny, which is just a bonus.

There is the big gasping gratitude, that I was lucky to share with my dear friend Kassandra......when I saw an eagle rock with a young man climbing it, just as we placed a box  for your 28th birthday within a grotto....the cosmic serendipity of these things,  laid out before me like a trail of crumbs toward pure unbridled joy. A granite rock that seems sculpted just for you and I in such an intimate way that only gratitude can possibly come. There is no room at these times for anything but wonder. She and I felt it and it was palpable and hilarious.

And within myself, I sometimes find gratitude for how I have managed to untether my soul from most bitterness; 

from some of the neurotic thoughts and judgements. 

I have forgiven.....

I have felt the relief of it.....

and I have found some joy, even though my heart is real and truly broken.

There is no concealing that fact and I am glad that I have the courage to say so.

To pronounce to the world that I am a Mother whose heart is broken; Who lost what is most dear and still seeks to find it again....and has come some way in pursuit of this.

I, too, have climbed the mountain of grief and I am alive,

Actually more than alive....I am softer, more accepting, and sometimes I release butterflies into the lives of others. Gratitude smiles on my withen I talk to my dear old friend Sherry now, or when I play with Hudson and Coy and the love I never thought I could feel again pours forth with no constraint. 

Love I hardly knew I could have again.

Gratitude tells me then,

With pride in her voice....That I still love God.

                                                                                                              Love, 

                                                                                                                           Mom      

On Begetting

Begetting

Your birthday  is coming

like a thundering train;

 like Fall's first brutal blast; 

like a lump in my throat that never leaves. 

This morning I got up, put collars on our dogs, and let them out. I could hear the tinkling of their tags as they tripped across the porch and into the dark of pre-dawn. I drank my coffee and read, as a mosquito buzzed nearby; swatted it away and considered whether to try to catch it to turn outside or simply let it land and kill it. Instead, I just let it be; decided to let it have a drink of me if it comes back to my spot on the couch. Nothing should be hungry today....

Not so close to your birthday.

I've been reading about the value of kindness in "Spiritual Literacy". It said that the word generosity comes from GENEROUS, which is close to GENIUS whose derivative is the Latin root word GENERE, which means to BEGET. I looked that up too.

"To bring something (a child, for instance) into existence.

To give rise to; to bring about".

To me that sounds a lot like creation .

To be a generous heart, a genius heart, in fact to be in the act of creation and expansion. As I chewed on that thought,  a memory burst into my brain like a solar flare.....

Sometime after you expanded, a woman contact me to tell me she had met you several years before. Your Dad had built them a house in 2002 when you were about 7, and then later when you were about 16, she reached out again and asked him for help digging rocks out of her back yard. It seemed her husband was now frail and dying, languishing his last days in a hospital bed in their living room, and she wanted to build a garden for him to enjoy as he lay bed bound. 

I guess you were in high school and doing some work for your Dad; probably paying off some sin or infraction. I don't even remember.

She said you were so polite and gracious while you worked removing all those rocks and building a flower bed. From the big windows they watched you work, moving back and forth hauling rocks and building something for the old man to look at in his last days. 

She brought you water from time to time. She remarked how sweet you were, and how big. 

One day, she said she came in from shopping to find you sitting at her husband's side, listening intently as he told stories of his life, asking questions....paying attention to him.... and comforting him through a rough moment. Maybe he was lonely and struck up a conversation when you came in for water? She said you were dusty and and sweaty as you sat there chatting the old dying man.

It touched her to see a big kid showing such generosity; such genius of spirit. Your begetting of the moment. Yes, begetting. Knowing when to stop and listen.

I knew all of that about you, it was apart of your DNA.

You knew how to love generously.

You knew how to open up your heart and fucking SHOW UP for people.

This was not something you were taught; it flowed out of you like a spring from the Earth. It was not contrived or showy. In fact, you could mask it quite well under a blanket of being a bit of an asshole to people who were not really deserving...You are  just a crisp and clever in that way......  

Always finding that kindness and generosity are best delivered in secret and without a show. 

You, the person sitting dusty and hot with a lonely and sick old man....that was you....the one I always knew. I saw it in you as a small boy in the tender way you treated animals; in your fierce protection of underdogs and your brother and sister.....and me.

That lady's loving memory didn't surprise me in the leas, t even in that first dark year of longing for you, but it did remind me of the truth of who you are. She ended her story by saying she tried to hug you that day as you got up to leave his bedside to move more rocks. You wouldn't let her.

"I don't want to get you dirty, ma'am"

was all you said.

You never could do that, 

My beautiful boy,

You are exquisitely clean.

   Happy 28th Birthday beautiful boy,  

Love Momma