There’s an emptiness here that is heavier than I’ve ever felt.

It’s just a little after 2:30, less than 24 hours after you died, Casey. I’m sitting here alone in our room, 701, that you and Kelsey called your own for so many years. No music plays, and I keep staring in the back area, behind my desk, where you and Kelsey always settled in.

It is darker than the rest of the room, for some reason, as if its light has been draped in shadow.

The sorrow runs deep here.

I am waiting for Kendall. She misses you terribly, and we both need to talk a little, share the grief, and just try to make sense out of this.

At this moment, making sense out of anything seems utterly impossible.

I wonder if you knew completely what you contributed to my life, and to the life and the spirit of this room where so many students have come to seek a little break from the tensions of the world, where priorities are not necessarily ranked by grades and things to put in bulleted lists on tightly-sealed transcripts.

I wonder if you knew that this room was as much a part of you as you were a part of it.

Where do I begin? Your kindness? Your gentle, giving spirit? How about with your smile that halted a bad day in its tracks? Or maybe with your beautiful eyes that radiated a love as warmly as two suns never touched by shadow?

It is impossible to choose any one of these, Casey.

All of you—every smile, every laugh, every kind word—contributed to this space that continues to allow others to feel that they have a place to call their own. A place where they will not be judged. A place where they will be loved.

And although this room seems a little darker today, I will not allow the glow of your spirit to fade away. You filled this space, our hearts, with genuine love that will continue to stay with me as I teach, as I remember that everyone in our room is an individual before they are a student, and that they have hopes and dreams to hold on to love, to happiness long after they leave high school.

In this quiet, heavy room, it is heartbreaking to know that you reached a moment where you couldn’t touch that love, where you lost your grip on that hope, even though it was as much around you as it still is around me in this room.

All I can do, Casey, is get out of the way and let your spirit and your love pave a path for others as they come and go in 701.

For me, the heaviness remains, and the light is touched by shadow. But if I have learned anything in your death, it is that each of us matters more to others than we might ever realize, and when darkness comes, we must wait for the light to return. With it comes the love we try so desperately to hold on to. With it comes a new moment, a new hope, a new chance to replace the shadows with the light of life and of love, something you gave to me and so many others without conditions or expectations.

Unconditional life. Unconditional love.

It’s all we can ask ourselves to give, to hold on to, in your memory.

I’ve been a Sirius Satellite subscriber for about 15 months now. It was free for the first year when I bought my Jeep, and I’ve become addicted to the 80s on 8 channel. It’s not that I’m especially in love with all of the music they play (although I’m keeping a list of the songs I’ve forgotten about that, when a few free bucks become available, I’ll stop on over at the iTunes store and do a happy download). In fact, much of the music they play is from the Hair Bands (Poison and the like), which I was never spending much time calling in for free concert tickets.

It’s not about what they’re playing; it’s about the fact that there’s a station that dips back into my high school and college days, happy days that I spent with so many good people and had so many good times.

It’s also about the nice engagement that’s going on with Facebook, where I’m reuniting with many of these good people and catching up on our lives, where somehow most of us made it through, relatively unscathed, and managed to settle down and build little family empires.

To be honest, it’s a blessing to be this age and this alive at this time in our history. Never before has it been possible to blend the past and the present so seamlessly, both technologically and in person, to create a clearer picture of who we are and how, although we have evolved into moms, dads, and specialists, so much of our true personality has not changed in that evolution.

All of this puts life in a more appreciative perspective for me. And by “life,” I mean that world that is bigger than my communities that include Facebook, text messages, email, chatrooms, IM, and even phone conversations.

I’ve somehow managed to appreciate the unplugged parts of my life even more.

I had to teach last night at Towson U, a very small class of students fulfilling their University requirement for an English course. Before I had to rush to find a parking space near Stephens Hall, I spent an hour with my family at our elementary school, trying to stay warm as the kids took turns flying down the snow-covered hills.

Seeing them–hearing their screams of fear and delight as they soared down the snowy hills, I felt like I was 10 again, playing in the snow with my sister and all of our neighborhood friends and their families. The Johnsons, Moudrys, Shanahans, Queens, and Birkmaeiers were all out there with us, turning a hilly street into an Olympic-like sledding track that looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Back at Cromwell. As my own kids communed with their friends (we met a few families–rather serendipitously–from our pool), I enjoyed slipping into an appreciative state, observing the beauty of the snow on the trees along the horizon, the distant echos of children making their own memories as they high-fived at the bottom of the hill, the taste of an air filled with fresh-fallen snow, and the clean feel of the breeze brushing over my cheeks.

All of this blended into a gracious appreciation for the timeless joy of playing in the snow, the reconnections with old friends, and the awareness of love flowing through these decades. I remember when AOL was first on the radar, and we all jumped on it like it was that great, undiscovered world we never believed possible. It consumed our lives, just as the World Wide Web did when it was emerging in the early-to-mid nineties. It was a period of great imbalance; many of us became lost in that seemingly endless web of information and entertainment. We were addicted to sitting in our chairs, in front of our 14-inch monitors, believing that it just could not get any better than this.

But we know better now. We use our time online more efficiently now, thanks to social online groups like Facebook and Ning. We reconnect, reflect, and share our most immediate, and sometimes inane, updates of what we are doing. We even use our phones to stay connected to these communities. But we are getting out more again, re-emerging from our techno-cocoons, and returning to the unplugged worlds that we remember just before the birth of MTV. It’s not necessarily a return to innocence as much as it is a return to how all of this started for us 30, 40, and even 50 years ago.

We get the chance to do what no other generation before us has been able to do: embrace the relatively new technology as a means of blending the Then with the Now, yet with the appreciation and the giddiness that comes with having something that wasn’t available to us when we were younger.

Times are tough for all of us with the changes this world is going through. But at least I feel like we’ve got the chance to get through it with a younger heart, a brighter mind, and an appreciation for the things that matter most in this world.

I don’t take these moments lightly. They are gifts to me, opportunities to see a little more clearly when the waters are muddied.

And lately, I’ve allowed the waters to muddy to an unhealthy state.

Schools throughout the region are closed today because of an impending snow storm that wouldn’t make most other states even consider a late delay. But this is Maryland, and on days like this, I’ll take all the drama it wants to dish out over a 3-inch snow storm (really, for those who don’t live around here, you would have a good laugh at the “Team Coverage” for this so-named Winter Weather Event).

With the school closing comes a gift, a chance to breathe a little. A chance to write.

My daybook entry this morning started out as they usually do: filled with some frustration about various areas in my life, none of which I need to detail here. What’s important is that the frustration and the angst has become a self-feeding monster, feasting on its own drama and emotion, creating its own dangerous whirlwind that has consumed me.

Not healthy at all.

As I continued to write, though, I could feel the angst leaving, obviously stuffed with its own emotional feeding frenzy satisfying its appetite once again. Here’s where I usually stop writing, and that angst rules the rest of my day. But I kept writing today in its absence, and the clarity and purity become apparent in simple phrases and (re)discoveries. Suddenly, with the angst gone, I could resume my focus on moving on, living and loving a little more genuinely.

Living and Loving. Now, there are two things I want to be feeding every day. Not the angst and the anger and the frustration over not being able to change some things out of my control.

Living and Loving. Simple, clear, pure.

I picked up a book on my shelf that I started reading a while ago. It’s called The Little Book of Letting Go, by Hugh Prather. I’ve probably blogged about this book before. It’s a 30-day program to “cleanse your mind, lift your spirit, and replenish your soul.” Sounds just right for where I am in my life.

Before the first chapter, Hugh opens with a little story, called The River and the Lion. Here’s how it goes:

After the great rains, the lion was faced with crossing the river that had encircled him. Swimming was not in his nature, but it was either cross or die. The lion roared and charged the river, almost drowning before he retreated. Many more times he attacked the water, and each time he failed to cross. Exhausted, the lion lay down, and in his quietness he heard the river say, “Never fight what isn’t here.”

Cautiously, the lion looked up and asked, “What isn’t here?”

“Your enemy isn’t here,” answered the river. “Just as you are a lion, I am merely a river.”

Now the lion sat very still and studied the ways of the river. After a while, he walked to where a certain current brushed against the shore, and stepping in, floated to the other side.

Such a simple message, isn’t it? Stop fighting what isn’t there and live your life simply, using the path before you as a gentle companion and not as an enemy.

As I continued to write this morning, I started to get flashes of images I’ve seen over the last few weeks: gentle waves bathing the shoreline, a sun setting over a mountain-lined horizon, a rolling pasture of tall grasses waving in the invisible winds, all beautiful reminders of the beauty of life, the simplicity of nature, and the communion of our souls, different heartbeats, but a synchronicity that is more powerful than any other.

I know, I know. What happens tomorrow when I don’t get the snow break? When the whirlwind kicks back up? I’m still working on that…I ended my daybook entry this morning with that very question: How do you hold on to this? Right now, I have to believe it is done by remaining focused on what is most important to me and placing my energies into the areas that will strengthen my resolve to live more simply, more fully.

It’s a lifelong struggle for so many of us, and it’s easy to relinquish control to the angst, giving it the fuel it needs to be, once again, self-serving.

But awareness is a mighty defense. All I can do is keep writing, keep focused, on the things that breed life and love more deeply along my path as I take the next step forward or flow with the river next to me.

I had the great fortune of watching the inauguration in its entirety with my advanced composition students today. For the most part, they took the event quite seriously, writing excerpts and reactions in their daybooks as our 44th president delivered his inaugural address.

Class began about 36 minutes before the president-elect was to take the official oath, and I seized the moment to pronounce this occasion as, quite possibly, the most significant moment of their lives that is not the result of some catastrophic event. I do believe that at least a few of them grasped the meaning of the moment, and they were the ones who immortalized their experiences in words. I asked them to take care of those entries, for someday, when their own children might ask what they were doing or thinking on this day, they can share their written thoughts as if they were expressed just moments earlier.

I was struck, personally, by the significance of this day, but not for the same reason that some of my students might have been. My own children, ages 12, 7, and 4, will think nothing of the importance of an African-American becoming president of our country, just like I, at their age, could not comprehend what the big deal was to have best friends who were black. When I was 7, it seemed like ancient times when there were actually separate eating and sitting areas for blacks and whites.

Not in my lifetime, I always thought.

And so it will be, thankfully, for my own children and, for the most part, the teenagers that I teach.

But there’s something deeper that I felt, too, as I was preparing my students for the remaining minutes leading up to the swearing-in ceremony. I may not remember what segregation was all about, but I do remember many broken promises by our former presidents and other leaders, both national and local. I’m old enough that I’ve been through seven presidential transitions, where I’ve heard the dreams and the hopes and the prayers of a brighter future, a greater day for America just over the horizon. I’ve heard the stern statements of a stronger, more united nation that will not give in to the tyrants and the terrorists around the world who threaten our own democracy. I’ve welcomed the promises of a stronger economy, better health care, and thriving classrooms. And I’ve believed in the beliefs that this time would be different; this time would be real change; this time would be like no other.

And I thought: why is this new administration any different? Why should I believe just one more time, when my heart has been broken repeatedly, a sorrowful cycle that seemingly knows no end?

The answer is in the eyes of my children, the words of my students, and the voices of my children’s best friends. There is hope because, for this generation, they know nothing else but a life where African-Americans can become presidents and speak of dreams that, in their hearts, are not broken.

Just a few moments ago, my buddy’s son, who is 8, read for me an essay he wrote about the inauguration, and why this day is so important to him. As I listened to his high-pitched, innocent voice recite the reasons why President Obama is both inspiring and better than any president we’ve ever had, I heard something resonate through the words: Belief, filled with hope and with love.

I am 43, soon to be 44, and I am not too young to be surrounded by cynics who believe that this is all smoke and mirrors, that no great change can come so swiftly to our country and our people. But these are the same people who, 30 years ago, believed in peace, and hope, and love. We imagined, along with John Lennon, that anything was possible with love. We believed that, together, we could make a change that would be long-lasting and beneficial for the world. We believed in ourselves and our country. We believed that love and fairness and justice would prevail.

Many of us have had our hearts broken since then. But all it takes is to look into the eyes of our children and see that they, too, have dreams that, with these new promises, peace and love are possible once again. It is this spirit, this belief, this faith that we must embrace, the faith and love from generations young and old, that will give this great nation the chance to realize the dreams of a more peaceful, more confident, and more loving world, where our children’s children will be born wondering what all the fuss was about, so so long ago.

testing to see if this comes through.