Love, Julia, Daniel, and Audrey

It's been a long morning already.  A. didn't sleep well and was clingy and quickly frustrated this morning.  I was feeling ready to get a few things done.  I ordered large yellow lollipops on Etsy as per her request for the favors for her upcoming second birthday.   I wrote our rent check and another dues check to the Music Union who apparently are holding a check for Dan.  I finished most of the application for state health insurance.

My productivity was thanks to a friend who came with bagels and cream cheese and juice around ten 'o clock.  She kept Audrey busy for a while.  Right now I've just discovered that giving Audrey some play dough along with the little pots and pans my mom gave her buys me quite a bit of time to myself.  She'll be getting a play kitchen for her birthday- something I'd planned to do long before this happened and will still do.

Even amidst this productivity, I felt so much sorrow this morning.  I wrote a thank you note to the friend who was watching Audrey- who had visited three cemeteries with me- and to her husband, who organized and preached at Dan's funeral.  I had been meaning to do this for some time.  I thanked them for being there for us during such a profound time and told them I would never forget.  And as I wrote, I wept.  I signed the card Julia, Daniel, and Audrey.  I feel I am Dan's voice now left in the world- and I want to be sure to thank those whom he would thank.

I found another journal that had morphed into a to-do list- very telling how many of my more recent attempts to express myself had that same fate.  In it I found a random poem written on 6/24/09:

They sky must have agreed with me
it wept when you left.
They call that pathetic
fallacy.
but the rain stopped
as your bus drove away,
the sky cleared-
now on with the day.

If only it were that simple now.