My happy Thanksgiving visitor

The turkey is in the oven. The stuffing is made. I've added a dilly swiss green bean casserole to our traditional menu in honor of the fiftieth birthday of the Campbell's mushroom soup green bean casserole.

It's too soon to start the sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. For one thing, the college freshman won't wake up for at least an hour. I'm not sure when the grad student will be over from his dad's house. It's quiet, in a homey way.

While checking my email I realized a bird was chirping at me in a very close and insistent way. As I scanned the patio and the shed roof the chirps got even more emphatic. Look! Look up here! I'm here! I'm here!

When I spied the little tannish-grey-green bird at the top of the fence, just ten feet away, it chirped twice more, then did something quite surprising. Like an Olympic triple-jumper, it hopped in three huge hops, each over three feet along the fence top, making sure I could notice its dark eye stripe. Then it was gone behind the shed. It hasn't been back as I've typed this.

I felt a huge wave of happiness and closeness with Fritzi. Then the tears just flooded. I will talk to my dad later today, buy I won't be able to voice this experience. Some experiences have to be written.

Grief sneaks up

Sometimes it's a flavor or a smell. Other times it's the news. Thanks to a dear, watchful friend, today it's an op-ed. My buddy caught Maureen Dowd's return to the New York Times opinion page, and her wonderful column about her mother, Peggy Dowd. I wasn't expecting the column to be a eulogy as I read along learning about this alert, informed, creative woman who wanted to be a writer.

Tonight I feel honored that Fritzi considered being our mom a meaningful career and performed it with such generosity, practicality, respect, firmness, and love. How did she understand the importance of the Sunday family rituals, and celebrate them with us so consistently? Our family was anchored by the Sunday lunch of crackers and cheese in the living room, and the Sunday evening broiling of steak. We knew what to expect, and what behaviour was expected of us. Sunday was not set aside in the church-going sense, but it was always our special family time.

NASA launched the space shuttle Discovery yesterday morning. Fritzi spent a fabulous Grandma Day in Omaha, January 28, 1986, with precocious three year-old Jeffy, baby Mike, and I. We were so lucky that Mom was able to drive up and spend relaxed days with us often. That particular day, as Mom got settled in her car to drive back to Lincoln, I opened the evening Omaha World-Herald. Challenger had exploded on its launch. I can still see the five p.m. winter sun on the snow as I showed Mom the headline through her car window. Our reactions were mirror images of shock as our sense of a perfect day spent together was unable to accept this news.

Death of a student

Children die. All over the world. Every single day. From malnutrition, disease, birth complications and genetic disorders. By suicide. From land mines half-way around the globe, and from random bullet sprays in gang violence a few miles from my home. From swim pool accidents in gated communities, and horrifying abuse by mother's live-in boyfriends. They are left in locked cars in the Texas summer, or thrown from cars because they weren't properly fastened into a car safety seat. Children without life jackets at the lake, or active supervision on the playground. Some are attacked by the neighbor's Rottweiler, and some by the neighbor. They find loaded guns at home. They are victims of unspeakable crimes by parents who swear God told them to do it. Not the concern of the current administration, but impacting families every single hour of every single day.

It shouldn't happen. Not here. It shouldn't happen anywhere, but it always will. It shouldn't happen now, but our species is not as civilized as we fancy ourselves. In our fantasy mental version of modern medicine, children don't die. But they do. It's the pits. Life has no pause button and no rewind, and there's no guarantee that it will make sense.

When a child dies, it is "time out of whack" for the parents, my coworker explains. This week has given me cause to consider the death of a sweet, sweet child, of a student, and also to wonder about the siblings of the deceased. That concern for the young brothers has been lurking just off stage in my brain all week. What could I possibly say to the boys after the sudden death of their sister?

It was so difficult reading cards and writing letters when Fritzi died. Conversations were even harder. It didn't make sense. It shouldn't have happened. It hurt, and it still hurts. What helped me? I didn't "get on with life", or "get over it". Mourning is not like that. One doesn't just "get back to normal life."

The thing is, "normal" has changed. There's no rewind or pause. I work to accept the changes in the frustrated person holding the remote control and clicking without results. I am not in control, but I'm less remote.

Writing posts for this blog has helped me find a calm, safe spot. No answers or explanations. Just little hints at finding acceptance for myself, and some courage to explore changing relationships. Tiny glimpses of my life's purpose.

Writing has also been a way to Photoshop the mental images of my mother to find enhanced meaning and resolution. Some images needed to be blurred or to have the shadows softened. Other images needed the colors and definition adjusted. Sometimes the midtones had overpowered the highlights. The saturation levels required fine-tuning. Writing. Writing....

Woke up in the middle of the night knowing what I could tell the young brothers. I could tell them how I wrote stories about Fritzi. I hope I've written the letter in vocabulary the young brothers can understand. I hope they will consider my suggestion that they write stories, or make drawings. Writing has helped me more than I can describe. May these young brothers find a creative way to send their feelings, energy, sadness, creativity, and memory outward in a way that helps their larger family.