…and I think you’d like to meet her as well.

Her name is Christine Kane, and she’s an inspiring artist who does a phenomenal job of keeping in touch with her fans and friends through her blog and through email.

She’s a reminder to me of just how important it is to stay grounded in your relationships. Taking the wild, great trip to stardom–even in your own little community–means little if you don’t remember that it’s people who bring love to you, to others.

I often find myself “too busy” to keep up those contacts. I see people like Christine and I think that, if she can do it with the schedule she has, I can too. Really, there’s never a good excuse to not put people first.

The other day I was at the pool and I heard “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. I remember when my first daughter was born, how I swore that I would never be that kind of parent to my children. Hearing that song again made me do a 12-year check on my promise to always be there for my kids. For the most part, I’ve kept to it. But I realized something that saddened me a little. In my efforts to be there for my own family, I cancelled too many times with my own mother because the “new job’s a hassle and the kids got the flu.”

It’s hard. No doubt about it. I’m not beating myself up about this, because Mom and I had plenty of wonderful times together. But there’s a danger in not keeping in solid touch with your family, your friends, and yes–your fans.

We’re all striving for more love in our lives, and the recent economic challenges are putting us all in a situation where, if we’re not careful, we’ll be hamsters on the wheel (thanks, Christine) doing everything we can to stay afloat, driving ourselves crazy in the process.

I, for one, would rather be driven crazy with love. :)

Greetings, all:

First, let me thank all of you for your kind words, your emails, your cards, your everything. I am honored to know all of you, whether it be in person or online. All of you have made this passing much easier to bear, and I am very grateful.

With each day that has passed since the funeral, I have felt the rush of emotions coming and going with no rhyme, no reason, no warning. But today, I immersed myself in myriad projects that made me feel good. I constructed the trampoline for my kids. We bought various yard ornaments and bird feeders to bring some new life to this once-tired yard.

In other words, I began my return to living fully with my family, to writing genuinely for me, to working on the final production needs for my book.

I’m emerging from the sorrow and am living my life a little more simply, a little more purposefully, a little more beautifully.

It’s a good feeling.

I’m taking a step back, though, and taking inventory of a few things. My health, my career in education, my general workload, what brings me energy and what takes it away….I’m taking a step back and thinking about how all of these things work together–or don’t.

I don’t know. It’s a good time to do this, though. It’s not like when I was 24 and my father died and I went charging through this life barbarically yawping Carpe Diem up and down the east coast. Times are different now. I’ve got a family, and I’m 42. When Dad died I could have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Today, I struggle to make it around the block without feeling some kind of pain in my back or my legs due to my excessive weight.

So, times have changed, and they continue to change. But, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to make a shift in my thinking and in my actions to bring about a better life for me and for those around me. I’d like to think that I still have a lot of living left to do, and taking care of myself is the first step in making it easier for me to do everything else.

So, I’m back. Back to the blog, back to the daybook, back to the classroom. I’m back to living, and I’m back to loving. I’m resurfacing with a new look on life, and with a greater appreciation for this time we have here on earth.

Let’s all enjoy it together as peacefully and as fully as we may be able to do in the coming days, months, and years, God willing.

Love to all,

Rus

Eileen Westervelt, May 12, 1926 — May 17, 2007

I don’t think I have ever been so sad, yet so honored, in my life.

The passing of my mother was not an immediate thing, nor was it ugly in any sense in these past two years that she battled cancer and lived more fully than I can imagine ever doing. She passed away as I believe she deserved: a graceful, peaceful journey where she left this world slowly, gradually, and entered a new peaceful world on the other side of all that we know to be true here on Earth. We all had our chance to say goodbye when she was aware of what was happening, and then we had our time with her as she left us slowly, breath by breath, until her final exhale at 12:10 yesterday morning.

My brother and I had a very special hour with her less than three hours before she died. The room was dimly lit, quiet despite the sound of the oxygen generator running in the next room. In this, my final hour with her, there was a greater, almost indefinable spirituality that I experienced, where we spent much of the time in silence, wondering where she was in the journey, what she was experiencing as she left this world and entered a new one.

There was no fighting on her part, nor was there sadness beyond the immediate realization of losing our mother. Instead, there was a certain honor to be with her at this time as she let go.

When my father passed away 17 years ago, I struggled on so many levels with his death. But Mom has shared with us the greatest of gifts in her final days. She has allowed us to be a part of her passing, and it is an experience that we will never forget; it is an experience that will always fill us with a greater love for life, for family, for all that is genuine, for all that is true.

hello, all:

whfere to begin. . . .

I’m listening to the LOVE soundtrack from Cirque de Soleil show featuring the remixed work of the Beatles. I’m in my classroom still, as I have not yet had the chance to set up my little e-world in my office in our new home.

It would be ridiculous to list all of the challenges my family and I have faced in these past 5 weeks. Just ridiculous. I might be a deep person, but I’m not the type who likes to go on and on about the things that aren’t going my way. We all have our stresses, our trials, our tribulations, and I know it’s what we do with them that defines who we are.

I’ve been gone for this block of time simply b/c I didn’t want to write about these things. I don’t want to go on and on about the stress, the sadness, the grief. Too much good goes on all around us regardless of the hard times that fall upon us; I choose to see those good things as often as I might be allowed.

So: We’re moved into our new house. Our scaredy cat is over with us now, too, after having to trap him like some wild beast. Our boxes are still filling the back porch and family room, but that’s ok. I’ll unpack more tonight.

Mom’s in her second week of hospice, and she is straddling that veil separating this world from that other heavenly place. I wonder if she will make it to her birthday on Saturday and Mother’s day on Sunday. Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of when she became a DNR patient. We were sure we were going to lose her that morning. She proved us wrong for two good years, God bless her. But the cancer has spread too deeply within her, and she is letting go.

My brothers and my sister–we’re all going through this a little differently. Someday, this will make a good post.

Through all of this, the lives of our children continue to move in wondrous directions. I couldn’t help but smile last week when, on the ride home from gymnastics, my oldest daughter (she’s almost 11) asked me if girls ever teased me when I was her age.

“Oh, yes. Very much so. They would chase us around the playground, and when they caught us, they would either kiss us on the cheek or claw us. There never really seemed to be any reason to whether we got a kiss or the claw.”

She giggled at this and proceeded to tell me how she and another girl hide various things of some of the boys in her class. She tells this story like it’s a wonderful secret, and she giggles with an excitement, an electricity that only the coming of adolescence and puberty can bring.

And in that moment, I was reminded that the tough times are always present. Sometimes they are a little closer to us than we might prefer, but the same is true with the good times as well. Sometimes, they might be a little distant, but with an open heart they run to us, wrap around us like that warm blanket just out of the dryer.

Comfort in the smallest of places.

keep finding the good, friends. There’s a lot of it out there that’s just waiting to wrap itself around you.

I’ll tell you what makes me happy (Lush lovers, please pardon the steal of this happy, happy phrase):

Finding another small, small, nature-lovin’, happy hippy kind of home business that compliments Lush products, which i have fallen madly in love with over the past month or so.

Enter Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Never before have I found such a magic(k)al one-two punch in the world of feeling and smelling so, so good…. :) BPAL uses essential oils to create the most exotic and often sensual blends, and they are completely vegan.
Let me back up here just a bit… Lately I’ve been realizing the powerful calming effect that certain scents can have on you, and I’ve added it to my growing list of helpful items that help me hold on to my center a little longer each day. It’s not an easy thing to do these days, and I’m finding greater peace in refining my selections of scents to work with my other practices of meditation and musical therapy.

Eventually, in perhaps the next 2-3 years, I will attend the Baltimore School of Massage and earn a degree as a therapist in deep tissue, myofascial, and Swedish massage. I am fascinated with the various ways in which the body responds favorably to the senses, and I am eager to learn how music, scents, and massage can be woven together for a transcending experience toward balance and inner peace.

So…what makes me happy? Lush, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the right blend of music, and the transcending experience of total relaxation and peaceful meditation….

to a mix of 127 JT songs…

I did not know Jenn See. She died at such a young age from an apparent heart aneurysm just a day or so after returning from Bonnaroo.

I learned of her death rather serendipitously following the links of one commenter, Carl V., who stopped by Janet’s site and left a comment the same day I made a visit.

The entire experience for me has been much like driving in reverse. Carl leaves a comment, I am intrigued that there really are other guy-bloggers out there. I go to his web site, scroll down through the posts, and find a eulogy written to a person I never knew.

But here’s the rub. He didn’t know her either. At least, not in the traditional sense. Carl V. knew her only in the online world, and his post on such virtual friendships sent me revisiting my own thoughts about online relationships and their unprecedented significance in our lives.

In his reaction to Jenn See’s death, Carl V. wrote:

I cannot begin to express my sadness. It is hard to describe what a relationship is when you do not meet someone in person but converse solely through the internet. Are they a friend, an acquaintance, what? There is an absence of completeness to a relationship in which you do not see the person face to face and yet there is a depth of relationship that is achieved when you share of yourself with others and have them do the same with you. . . .I don’t know what Jenn See was doing during her last hours on earth but it hurts to think of a book laying by the bedside table never to be finished. Poems not yet completed. Pictures on her camera that were meant to be posted. Treasure life people. And treasure your relationships with others in person and online. You never know how much you can touch people with what you say and do. That has come home so strongly today. Love those around you and live, really live, because no matter the years you have on this earth life is short..

Carl’s words hit home. For years I have struggled with this question of the depth of online relationships. Like he writes: …a friend, an acquaintance, what?

After reading his words, I felt as if I had known Jenn See myself, and so I had to read some of her own words and see her photography. I first went to to mysfit’s post that announced her passing. After reading the many comments left by friends, I went to Jenn See’s two main blogs, followingmyfish (which she kept with mysfit and oldben) and then to touristofeverything and scrolled down to the days just before and after she died. This was a first for me: A death in the online world, and oldben, mysfit, and Carl V., among countless others, shared their grief and celebrated her life with all of us, as if we were just in the next room, nursing a Jack and Coke to somehow stem the flow of the shock, the inevitable pain that was waiting to hit us all.

Like me, I am sure that it hit such outsiders in different, but personal, ways. One common feeling that has coursed through all of us, though, is this power of love that these people felt for her — not just those who knew her best in person or who took that last great trip to Bonnaroo with her, but to those who knew Jenn See through the power of her words, her photography, even her selflessness in sending CDs filled with music to make others feel better.

Jenn See’s death and the celebration of her life by the myriad people in this world who never held her hand or kissed her cheek confirms for me that we must all recognize the transcending power of love. Establishing friendships and relationships on line is not a superficial and recreational activity that can be compared beat for beat with the more traditional aspects of love we are used to. For thousands of years, it was all we knew, though, right? With the exception of the rare correspondence through letters between two once-strangers, most people know of each other intimately through physical meetings only — at least in the beginning stages of that friendship or romance. It was from that foundation that we kept our emotions grounded and called to them when our loved ones could not be around us. The adage that distance makes the heart grow fonder has always been based on the premise that, in the beginning, there was a physical closeness to establish that relationship.

This is no longer the case.

Love has evolved. It has freed itself from such a physical foundation that once needed to be built, and we are faced with understanding, embracing, and appreciating such love and opening ourselves fully to all it may mean to you, to me, to the world.

We keep looking for ways to bring a greater sense of peace and love throughout this world. Maybe the greatest power of them all — love — has risen to the occasion once again and is leading the way to better times.

I did not know Jenn See, and I do not know Carl V., oldben, or mysfit. But I do know this:

We have much to be thankful for in their shared experience of love for a beautiful and gifted young woman who passed from this Earth much too early.

And in her passing, may we all understand a little more that love knows no barriers, and to open ourselves up to it in ways that were once unimaginable is the greatest gift we can give to the generations of lovers and peace-seekers yet to be born.