checking in again
Friday, February 9, 2007 -- 3:10pm
Posted by Bar


Hi everybody, 

It's a beautiful but cold, cold, cold day here in Woodstock.  I gather 
that west of here they're getting upwards of 7 FEET of snow, but here 
it is just plain cold.  I've taken the day off to celebrate Forrest.  
It's five years since he died.  In fact, just looking at the clock at 
this moment, it's pretty much precisely five years and about 13 
minutes.  I remember in the early days and months after he died, I 
counted every moment and knew exactly how long it had been since I saw 
him.  These days I have to stop and think and figure to come up with 
that calculation.  So, I guess I'm getting better!  

Surprisingly, I feel very good today.  The deep sadness lifted about 
two months ago and it seems to have stayed away and for that I'm 
grateful.  

Wednesday night a friend called to check in with me.  She is a 
minister and I knew that some of the stuff that I was thinking about 
required the attention of someone else who had probably given the same 
things some thought, so I asked if she had a few more moments to talk 
with me.  We talked about loneliness and aloneness and grief and life 
and death and a whole bunch of great subjects.  She confided that she 
had spent a recent week in solitude at a small cabin near here with 
the express intention of meditating and quieting herself for 
reflection.  She also confided that it was difficult and also 
wonderful.  I was amazed!  She spent 7 days with nothing but her own 
self to be with.  She did not read or write or watch TV or listen to 
the radio or talk on the phone or anything.  WOW!  That's a retreat if 
I ever heard of one, and I was awed by her courage and her willingness 
to take such a break.  

Over the course of our conversation, I shared with her how I missed 
the intensity of life that we lived when Forrest was here with cancer.  
It was such a powerful time; so alive; so vivid; so real.  She and I 
were drawing comparisons between her meditative retreat and the Living 
that's done when a crises brings all of our senses to the fore.  We 
agreed that being "alert" was the best way to describe the state that 
she was longing for and the state that I missed now.  "Alert".  
Usually the word is used to warn someone of a possible danger: "Stay 
Alert!" But if it's used as a way of describing an internal readiness 
or openness, then we are talking about spiritual life.  I love the 
idea of staying alert, ready and open to everything that surrounds 
us.  Because today is a big day for me, I feel alert, and I have to 
say it feels very good.  

Peter called from Arkansas this morning.  His voice made me miss him a 
lot, but it was good to hear the news.  He hasn't found the 
ivory-billed woodpecker yet, but he's seen beautiful wilderness.  
Yesterday he spent most of the day waist-high in swamp water and could 
not have been happier.  It's great to hear the life in his voice.  
He'll be a changed man when he gets back and I'm looking forward to 
seeing that.  

I am sitting in a wi-fi cafe in Woodstock and enjoying the sun coming 
in these second floor windows.  This morning I decorated Forrest's 
stone at the graveyard - something I do on his birthday and on this 
other kind of birth day.  I'm including a photo so that you can see 
the kind of thing that this mom does on this particular day.  The 
flowers have probably already been eaten by hungry critters or have 
blown away, but I figured if I took a picture for you I could keep it 
alive for a little longer.  





Click for larger version



Have a great weekend,  

With love, 
Bar

Blues Clues
Friday, February 23, 2007 -- 3:46pm
Posted by Bar


Hi everybody,

I'm leaning on you all in this moment. Thank you.....

I just got an e-mail from a woman who is starting a Blue's Clues 
Website for Blue's Clues Fans, and as you know we are big fans of 
Steve, Blue, Magenta and all the other beings on that wonderful show. 
As this woman was searching the web for things to link to from her new 
site, she came across my e-mail to you all just after Forrest had met 
Steve on his Make-a-Wish trip to New York City in 2001. She wanted 
permission to link from her site to mine and wanted to include my 
e-mail entry on their website. Naturally I shouted "YES!" back to her 
(via e-mail, that is), "thank you!"

I just went to read the entry to see what it was that I wrote and now 
I'm a mess. So much of what we did back then has slipped from my 
memory, and yet there it is, alive and well in the words that I wrote 
six years ago. I haven't read that e-mail since that time, so it caught 
me off guard. I was particularly struck by the last paragraph - the 
"PS". When I read that Peter and I were afraid in many moments, I could 
feel that fear in my body again - a fear that I have mostly forgotten. 
But then I read that Forrest had had no fear and that sweetest memory 
did me in. He was so alive and so unafraid. It's such an inspiration 
for me to think about that.....

Thank you for taking this journey with me. It has been and continues to 
be a gift.

Love,
Bar

Here's the link if anyone wants to read it....

http://www.barscott.com/forrest/emails/oct2001.shtml#mail120