Paako I love you.

It is now 2pm and it has been raining drizzle out all day. I am finally writing again after having been back in the UK for nearly 3 months. A blog friend said she missed my blogposts and that meant a lot. So here I am. Our dog Paako died not long after we got back. It all happened so fast. I'm still hurting. I keep being irritable as hell with my husband. He said maybe it's the anger. That's a good point. He's being so patient, as ever. And Paako was his dog. He had Paako from a pup for 11 years, I had him for 6. You'd think it was the other way around. Anyway I miss him so much. He was the best dog in the world. No really. He brought so much love into my life and that has been a huge help to me since Pam died. I hope he's with her now, she'll just love him. Everyone does. I can't believe he's gone. Here we are bonding when we first met.. 6 and a half years ago..I took this photo to send to Pam..

Journal Entry July 28 2011

"All I want to do is lie quietly with my eyes closed and let the tears drip from my eyes. Try to come to terms with the death of my sister. The idea of her life slipping away rips me apart and tears me to pieces. Her hair, her beautiful hair gone. That hair that was her crowning glory that clogged up plug holes wiry, wiry hair. Now we won't see her aging like Angie and me. I'm going to watch her more from now on on videos, I'm going to look at her ashes like Angie who has held them in her hand. I'm going to look at it like those buddhist monks who meditate in burial grounds and face it."

I haven't looked at her ashes yet and I haven't watched her on videos hardly..

4 years

photo taken by Ron in Taos. Last night we watched the documentary The Woodmans which was sadly fitting..

Margot December 25th 1960 - April 19th 2012

Margot skyped me some time back, maybe a year and a half? No more. She told me she had a brain tumour. I'll never forget her face telling me on the computer. It was horrible to have to hear and so shocking. My friend Jayne who found me through Facebook had just died of cancer and now this? It was scaring me. Margot said, 'we'll come to visit you in Santa Fe when I'm better.' I just found out on Facebook that she died last week leaving a husband and a ten year old daughter. She had been my agent once in England and what a lovely lady she was. Her sister died last year of cancer and her brother died before that age 43. Death is scary to me. I'm speechless... rest in peace dear lady..

Duino Elegies

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• But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
• It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.
• Didn’t their fate, whenever you stepped into a church in Naples or Rome,
• quietly come to address you?
• Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission,
• as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
• What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance of injustice about their death—
• which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.

• Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
• to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
• not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future;
• no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
• to leave even one’s own first name behind,
• forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
• Strange to no longer desire one’s desires.
• Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction.
• And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.
• Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which
• they themselves have created.
• Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead.

Pam's Birthday..a desire to merge..

3 years

Today is 3 years since Pam was killed. As usual (as usual?) I would have gone up the Sandia Peak and put flowers at the foot of a tree. But it's closed as fire danger is extreme.  So we will go to the cabin and I'll sprinkle some flowers into the river. These family photos were taken a year before her death. Doesn't she look beautiful? She is wearing the cardigan that I clung onto the weeks following while my heart was breaking. I keep it in a plastic bag as suggested so as to try to preserve her smell. This weekend I feel like all the life has gone out of me.... again.. 

My parents were just over for the wedding. I asked dad to bring some old journals of mine. I found this entry..

Jan 4 1994

How protective I was today when Pam left to go to the station. I couldn't resist saying, "Don't ask a strange, horrible man for directions." Pam said, "I'll find a man and say to him, 'Are you horrible?' and he'll say, 'Yes,' evilly.  Then I'll say, 'Can you direct me to the station?' and he'll say, 'Yes and let me stab you horribly.'" I must stop being so protective it makes Pam have no confidence in her own abilities. Nice to see her so fun-filled and excited last night. She has been so irritable and snappy of late.

There is a sadness in Pam's face in these shots I think.  Like so many photos of her, a sadness, a suffering. She was unhappy so much in life. Sometimes I would say to her, "You wouldn't DO anything would you?" I meant to end it. She would say, "No Jane, I would never do that to you lot." But look what happened, her life did end early. Perhaps on some level I sensed something coming..

Born on the Fourth of July

"Your fight is just beginning. Sometimes no one will want to hear what you are going through. You are going to have to learn to carry a great burden and most of your learning will be done alone. Don't feel frightened when they leave you. I'm sure you will come through it all OK."

Said to Ron Kovic by a priest in Da Nang.

Pam died on the third of July.

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

William Butler Yeats.

No Pam

I wrote this quote on a piece of paper in the months following Pam's death.  I found it in a file where I put all the hand-outs on grief that were coming my way.  I don't know who wrote it.

"When all the family members are alive, the family system is carefully held in place.  When one member dies, the system is thrown into a chaotic state destabilizing each family member.  Old ways of coping are no longer effective; those left behind feel exhausted.  This exhaustion combined with a sense of disorientation and disillusionment make room for new awarenesses to break into consciousness..awarenesses that at other times a person could keep at bay."