Shattered Glass

Dawn and I are back from our cruise to Alaska. We got home yesterday afternoon after an uneventful flight from Seattle.  The trip was great in terms of the sightseeing. Lots of exotic wildlife (e.g., whales, seals, eagles, bear etc.), majestic mountain ranges, breathtaking waterfalls, glaciers and a bajillion pine trees. Alaska is a truly amazing place. We are already talking about going back to see more of it. If we do go back, we will tour it from land rather than by cruise ship. Seeing what we did from the water was cool, but having done it once I don't think I will feel the need to do it again. At least not on a ship that large. Maybe something half to a third the size of the behemoth we were on...and a lot fewer people. Not that we have to worry about this any time soon. It will take six months of work to pay off this trip... We had two days during out trip where we were 'at sea' all day – day 2 (Saturday) and day 5 (Wednesday). On both days, I rarely saw land. If I di...

 The following post was written on Saturday, June 18th but was not uploaded until today due to lack of Internet access onboard the cruise ship… For the first time in my life I am at sea, somewhere off the coast of British Columbia steaming northwest towards Alaska. Best guess, we are 20 miles offshore. I’ve seen land - mountains - to starboard a few times this morning. The view out of our port-side cabin is nothing but shades of gray – the steel gray of the ocean and the white-ish gray of the sky, a dark line separating the two. The ship we are on - Ovation of the Seas (OotS) - is massive: 1,200 feet long, 135 feet wide and 16 stories above the water line. Below the water, the ship draws nearly 28 feet. I can feel the ship moving side to side but it’s not bad in our room on the 10th floor. It gets more pronounced the higher you go on the ship. It’s not enough to make me queasy thankfully, but I could see where that could change quickly given an unfavorable sea state. , We will be s...

I've come to the point in my journey with grief where I feel that I no longer need to write about it every day. Rather than run the risk of treading over old ground, which I know that I've done already, I'm going to dial down the cadence. I will post at least one entry every seven days, but if I feel so inclined I may post more than once in any given week.  Having said that, I may not be able to satisfy this pledge while Dawn and I are on our Alaskan cruise, which begins this Friday, as we are unlikely to have Internet access onboard the ship.  While I'm looking forward to our trip to Alaska, I know that it will be bittersweet without Damian. It's been this way for all of the trips that we've taken since he left us so there is no reason to expect Alaska to be any different. I will still enjoy myself, but there will always be that cloud that hangs over me, sometimes larger and more opaque, other times smaller and more translucent. The ebb and the flow... I'm ...

Dear Reader,   Throughout this post I speak in the first person using “I” and “me”. I do this not to exclude Dawn, my loving wife of 29 years, but because I want to speak for me, not her. Dawn has her own amazing voice; I don’t want to assume that she shares my same perceptions, recollections and feelings related to the event described below...    At 8:03AM on Saturday, December 11, 2021, six months ago today, my world unexpectedly shattered. It was at this moment that I walked into my shop in the basement of our house and discovered the lifeless body of our 15 year old son Damian. I knew in an instant that he was gone, beyond saving. My grief and terror were sudden and emotionally violent. Over the ensuing days, weeks and months, I have worked hard to build a new life, one that resembles my life from the Before but feels very different. In my new life, here in the After, there is a huge piece of my old life that is missing – it is a hole that cannot be plugged. An overwh...

Some days are harder than others. This afternoon has been really rough for Dawn. It started when we popped out at lunch to run some errands.  Our first stop was the Post Office. After dropping off a package, a guy approached Dawn and asked, "What kind of boat do you have?" He had seen the nautical-themed vanity plate on Dawn's car along with the bumper magnet with the sailing club's name and logo. Caught off guard, Dawn didn't know how to answer other than to say that we were between boats now but that I had sailed on a Melges 24 last year. (It's a type of racing sailboat.) With the benefit of a few minutes to process the exchange Dawn told me that she wished she had told the guy that Damian had been the skipper of Pyg.  This has been eating at Dawn ever since. She's feels guilty for not thinking of Damian in the moment. I understand the feeling but can also see the logic of why she responded the way she did. She was caught off guard by someone she didn...

This post is a day late. I had every intention of writing it last night, but I got sucked into to the live hearing on the January 6, 2021 Capital insurrection.  By the time it was over I was too amped up to sit down and write about anything other than going off on 45 and his enablers... Two things about yesterday that bear mentioning. The first was a conversation that I overheard while at lunch. Three guys in a table close to mine were talking about their kids. Two of the guys were late 30s / early 40s. The third guy was older and mostly silent. One of the guys said that his biggest fear was something about having to deal with his daughter's boyfriends in another few years. The daughter is still young - under 10, if I heard it correctly. I didn't say anything but this thought went through my head: "Buddy, there are things way scarier than your kid bringing home their boyfriend or girlfriend for the first time." Thinking about it more after I left the restaurant, I cam...

Watching the news this evening, I got really upset by the coverage of the parents who lost children testifying before Congress. My anger was very much targeted at the politicians who, after hearing today's testimony, have not budged one iota regarding the passage of any - ANY!! - meaningful gun laws. I knew nothing was going to change, yet it is still infuriating. Even more so when on the same broadcast there was a story about Mitch McConnell demanding action after a man was arrested outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh. I think the quote from Moscow Mitch was "Something must be done to protect our nation's judges."About all I can conclude from this is that the life of a federal judge is way more important than the lives of our nation's children. By all means, let's bend over backwards and spend all kinds of tax payer money to put armed service details on every federal judge. At the same time, let's be sure to send extra thoughts and prayers to the families...

I brought home today several pictures of Damain from my office at work. Since I spend so little time there anymore, I didn't see any reason to keep the pictures there. Better to bring them home where I can see them.   Speaking of pictures, there is one of Damian that I really like but haven't been able to find. He was probably around 2 1/2 or 3. He is wearing giraffe wellies (tall rubber rain boots), shorts, a red t-shirt and a hat while he's pushing his bubble mower around the front yard. What makes the picture special is that I'm in the background of the picture also wearing boots, shorts, t-shirt, hat and pushing around a lawn mower. My mower just happens to be much larger than his. I love this picture for several reasons, but mostly because of it so elegantly captures Damian's innocence and his adoration of me, his dear old dad. You can't ask for more as a parent. 

This Saturday will mark the 6 month anniversary of Damian's death. If I had been asked two or three months ago to predict how I was going to feel in the final week leading up to this day, I'm quite certain that I would have used words like "very sad", "anxious" and "afraid", but that's not where I am emotionally. As least not so far. Maybe I will be later in the week, but I have my doubts.  Having the benefit of time to inch my way ever forward in terms of accepting what has happened to Damian and, as a result, to me (and Dawn) has no doubt helped. That and the confidence that comes from having survived his birthday at the end of March. A little bruised and battered in the days after perhaps, but not nearly the emotional torture I was expecting. All of this helps me to breathe easier; to use it as a reminder not to get myself worked up to the point where the dread of its inevitable arrival is far worse than the reality of the day.  Tapping into...

No post today. Time got away from me. 

I want to explore the topic of consumerism. The act of purchasing things. This is going to take time as I don't have all the dots connected just yet. But rather than wait until I do, I at least want to get the basics down on "paper" as this will help me see it for what it is. I'll come back to it again, when I have more to say.  I spend money on things ostensibly for two reasons: either because I need them or because I want them. The needs are mostly easy to identify: food, medicine, essential clothes, gas for the car, etc. Boring really and not where my interest on this topic lies. I want to focus on my impulse to satisfy perceived wants. The first thing to address is why I want to do this.  I think I buy things as a way to make up for being disconnected with my feelings. I have an especially difficult time with happiness. Happiness for me is theoretical, like an ideal state of mind, similar to perfection. I can strive for it but never feel that I've achieved it....

I hit a bump in the road today. Nothing major but enough to rule out an eight hour day of office work. I spent the afternoon counter sinking screws in the new closet system instead. I didn't know at first why I was feeling blue but was able to finally put my finger on it earlier this evening: The summer sailing camp season has already started and for the first time in nine years Damian won't be a part of it. Thinking of this made me sad. It still does, even now as I write this.   Every summer, the sailing club hosts two or three weeks of sailing camps for kids age 7 to 17. The first week is focused mainly on teaching kids how to sail but not exclusively so. The second week, known colloquially as "Junior Week", is the marquis camp of the summer. For all but the true beginners, the focus of Junior Week is on sailboat racing. A lot like any other high school sport, long days are spent learning how to race (if new to the sport), practicing various maneuvers (e.g., tacking...

I'm tired tonight. It's been a long day. The day started off early with my alarm going off at 6:15. I really didn't want to get out bed so it was another 15 minutes before I finally found the will power to go vertical. A few minutes later, I was cursing the shower in my hotel room for refusing to give me hot water. Before going nuclear on the hotel staff, I somehow managed to calm myself down and think through the problem rationally. A quick test of the available water temperature in the bathroom sink revealed that there was in fact hot water on tap. So why was there no hot water coming out of the shower? As an experiment, I turned the shower on again but this time I only turned the handle half way. Eureka! I had hot water. Further testing revealed that moving the shower handle to the fully open position made the water progressively cooler, while moving in the opposite direction, like I'm going to turn it off, made it hotter. The only explanation I can come up with is t...

Dear Damian,  I saw Oma again today but only for a couple of hours. I stopped by her house on my way to Wilson, North Carolina. (I have a work meeting in Wilson tomorrow morning.) It was nice to see Oma again even though it had only been three weeks since my last visit. No changes to report; all is pretty much the same as last time.  Oh. I don't know if I told you this already, but Oma had to put Decker to sleep. This happened a couple of months ago. He wasn't eating; the vet had found a mass growing in his abdomen. Given his age and deteriorating health, it was for the best. Sad but inevitable. I don't know how many cats Oma has had over the years but it's got to be pushing double digits. I'm pretty sure there won't be any more though. Oma will turn 80 next January so probably no more pets... Your mom and I went to Lakeview last Monday for the dedication of the memorial bench the school purchased in your memory. The bench is a really cool shade of blue and has ...