Thanks to family and friends for your cards, thoughts, prayers, lit
candles, e-mails, and phone calls.
Today was a quiet sunny blustery warm day. I went for a 22 mile bike ride and gazed out at
the azure Lake Michigan thinking of Teri and
how much she loved water … watching, swimming, snorkeling. I talked to the kids who were handling the
day in their own contained way.
Many of you have asked how I am handling it. I think of her daily, have flashbacks, fond memories
big and small, dreams … and today is no different. The memories are vivid, seemingly
recent. But today, there is an abiding
emptiness, which food and memories can’t fill.
Two weeks ago, Rachel, John, little Jack, Ben and I gathered at Lakeside
MI at a bed and breakfast where Teri, I, Lyn and Subbhash used to stay. Situated on a bluff, we walked down 104 steps
to a private white sand beach, stretching to shallows over sand bars 200 yards
out. We swam out to the sand bars that
Teri and I used to conquer. Jack played
endlessly in the sand and knocked down little sand towers we made just for that
purpose. We had a little ceremony and
spread some of Teri’s ashes in the water.
Teri was with us.
We let one of Dad’s caregivers go and his favorite also had to go. Involved story. The last two weeks, I’ve done everything. I have a professional agency providing two
women, but I’m still doing the evening cooking and care. Next week, after I give grand rounds in Kansas City, I will take my father back to the Kansas to visit the
friends he hasn’t seen for more than 3 years.
They will have a luncheon for him at the Nelson-Atkins
Museum where he was a research curator
and a dinner at a KU faculty home in Lawrence. It will be a homecoming.
Rachel is 8 weeks and counting down.
She and John move into their new home next week in Mendham, NJ.
Keep in touch.
P.S. Someone sent me a tiny glass bluebird, but I don't know who.
P.S. Someone sent me a tiny glass bluebird, but I don't know who.
