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...