I never mentioned to him, during those four years that we knew each other, that I was familiar with Theodore Roethke. I never recall Murray saying a word about Roethke to me. It is the greatest irony to me; a small thing to you, of course. But when you meet someone, and see them many, many times over the course of four years, and your lives cross paths in both big and miniscule ways, you'd think that "knowing" Roethke would have been a topic that might have been shared.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.

You have one last chance tonight, in the next four hours and if viewing conditions are decent, to see the burst of a lifetime of "falling stars" from the Aurigids. The Aurigids are meteors, dust from somewhere near Auriga, the constellation often called "The Charioteer".

"Nor the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,..." Leaves of Grass, Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60 Walt Whitman

Update 3:20 AM PDT: One fast meteor through the clouds, NNE sky. Also, cool live meteor sounds update link at bottom.

He was a Jimmy Stewart kind of man. Tall and lanky, quiet and deliberate. His sense of humor and fun was unparalleled amongst his large group of friends, those he worked with and in those couples with whom my parents socialized. From my childhood memory, his essence still defines the meaning of taciturn, though he wasn’t an untalkative man. He had a disposition of silence. But when he spoke, I remember listening.

Jimmy Stewart (George): Now, come on, get your clothes on, and we'll stroll up to my car and get... Oh, I'm sorry. I'll stroll. You fly. Henry Travers (Clarence): I can't fly. I haven't got my wings. Jimmy Stewart (George): You haven't got your wings. Yeah, that's right

I stopped by the local Walgreen Drugs on my way to work on Thursday morning. In Seattle this week, we have a festival called Seafair and the Navy's Blue Angels perform over Lake Washington for the next couple of days as part of the festival's activities. As I came out of the store, three F/A 18As flew diagonally across the sky in a delta formation. I'm always mesmerized by these things; the sound, the precision, the deadliness; fatal power thrust across a cornflower blue sky. Some of my fascination stems from having been a government subcontractor/software trainer for the Air Force and the Air Force Reserve back in the 1980's. I have great respect for the military, or at least the military as it once was.

Sometimes you see a name and "ting"! A wisp of a memory returns, a buried day or two in time, and for some reason, that catalytic name cranks open a floodgate of many small memories strung together like multi-colored jewels. My own oldest jewels now reflect a slightly dulled patina. These mismatched jewels are diminished over time from a sadly matured awareness of the filters between a child's world and that of the world of an adult, filters that affect how sparkling political events are now viewed backwards through time's cynical analysis.

Queen Marie of Romania

I’m the only connective thread that strings these jewels together anymore in a fashion that makes sense only to me, but perhaps you’ll be amused by my own peculiar and random reminiscences on a summer Sunday night.

"There is no evidence of foul play," the official said.

The U.S. defense attaché in Cyprus was found dead in a remote rural area of the Mediterranean island Monday, four days after he disappeared with his diplomatic car. An official indicated that he committed suicide. A police statement said an autopsy showed Lt. Col. Thomas Mooney bled to death from a cut to the throat. US Diplomat found dead in rural Cyprus

I know. We have a society obsessed with evidence: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; CSI: Miami; Law and Order, ad finitum; Without a Trace.

But this is a story I'm having real difficulty with.

I was there a year ago. Looking at homelessness. No toilet paper in the house. Rent not paid. Fighting the urge not to fight anymore. Fighting a depression so deep I imagined (and later realized it was a dream) that the reflection of any shimmering water, on the lake, on the Sound, in a puddle, was just obscuring the cobbled bottom of a well that would drown me. All directions I looked were downward; that there were no good solutions, that I was dried up and spit out and had few options. That I was just fucking tired of it all.

and I'm still a full-time working, full-time parent who has to keep an even head when there is a teenage crisis and act like I'm doing okay, because there's only so much drama even a teenager can handle, and there's no milk, mom, well, there won't be, dear, for a bit until I find where I put the jar of pennies that we can take to CoinStar, and there's still some Ramen in the cupboard and I bought those Michellina's dinners for 10 for $10 the other day at the store, you'll just have to suck it up and eat carbs again, and yes, there's still some tortillas left.  Toilet paper? Shit.  We're out.
Today is gonna be the day – July 6, 2006

Hama jaa dokaan-i-rang ast, hama rang mayforoshand; dil-i-man ba sheesha sozad, hama sang mayforoshand

Everywhere is a paint store, everyone sells color; my heart breaks for the glass, everyone sells stone.

Rafiq Faani 1943-2007

Per the War Powers Resolution, a controversial and oft-debated piece of legislation if ever there was one, the President is required to "consult" with or report to Congress on a periodic basis on the state of things he has undertaken since the invocation of War Powers. I've captured excerpts of several of these reports - usually titled Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate; these are available on whitehouse.gov.

It's a curious way to pass a day off from work.

Of course it’s possible to grieve for places and things. Not just people and animals. Or for ways of life longed for, but never obtained due to the vagaries of life, chance, happenstance, or fate. Or for connections lost; not to death or disease, but to time gone untended, a garden of heirloom flowers gone to seed.

Welcome - this is a weekly forum (with rotating hosts) for whoever happens by and wants to discuss issues relating to grief, death, loss, or impending loss.  Share your story, or read and cry - use it for what it's worth to you.   Giving it a Rec each week will help keep it visible for those who may need it - thanks.

(Warning: This diary contains graphic images that may be disturbing to some. I tried to avoid over-the-top, gratuitous graphics usage, but the limited images subject matter may be too disturbing for some. Please take note. -exme)

I'll wake up again in a few hours time, stumble from my bed to the bathroom mirror where I'll clear the sleep from my eyes and splash water over the mirror in my blurry haste to hustle that toothbrush and paste to my mouth.

July 25, 2006 - Each refrigerator holds about 25 bodies, and they’re fully stocked; leftover corpses, and even some solitary limbs, pile up nearby. Morgue staff go about their business among swarms of black flies. It’s just another day in Baghdad, and their unpleasant work pays the bills. Privately, they admit that working in the morgue takes its toll. "It’s a really bad job," says 46-year-old Fadhil, who has been employed as a cleaner at the morgue for a decade. "It’s turned us into other creatures." Newsweek - Counting Corpses

But the unclaimed bodies stories haunt me.

(Weekly series, every Monday)

It's been some five weeks now since I was in the room where my sister died. I've been in the house since that day, helping my niece with small tasks here and there, stopping by to check on her or pick up some item for another errand.  

(Note from The Grieving Room host Dem in the Heart of Texas  For those who have missed this over the last several Monday evenings, this is a weekly forum (with rotating hosts) for whoever happens by and wants to discuss issues relating to grief, death, loss, or impending loss.  Share your story, or read and cry - use it for what it's worth to you.   Giving it a Rec each week will help keep it where more people can see it and perhaps find some comfort.  Thanks.)

My note - apologies for the lateness in this installment of the The Grieving Room series. DKos server issues and a family celebration have bumped out this posting. For those of you who are reading so late, thank you.

I should have gone to the cemetery today. I should have gone. In past years, I've made a point to go to the Evergreen-Washelli cemetery in North Seattle on at least one day of the Memorial weekend when I've been in town. It's a tradition I carry forward when I can, though I hold no special regard for cemeteries and graves. They hold the remains of bodies, not spirits, not the lights of the souls of people I loved. They hold the memory of a gentle touch of a hand on a grieving, bowed shoulder, the faded and musty scent of funereal blood red roses, incongruously beautiful sprays of flowers draped on the boxes that hold my dead.

These boxes in the earth do not hold what I want. Spirit, memory, the remembered essence of a longed-for presence; this is in my heart as my memorial. Boxes hold bones and bones are nothing to me.

"In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month." Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing'

How do you discuss events like this with a rational voice? How do you justify the cultural mores of a religion, a gender, or a tribe, or a society, or a community or country, when the actions taken under the banner of honor and tradition are so vile, so horrible, and so wrong that there will never be equal justice for the victims in a court of law or in the eyes of the world?

Welcome again to The Grieving Room, a weekly series initiated by Dem in the Heart of Texas and others with the intent to offer a "get it off your chest" diary and discussion environment set in the arena of our favorite online political community.

Channelling Dem in the Heart of Texas: "...this is a weekly diary series for people in mourning; it is intended to be a safe place to unburden and to share sympathy for those who are traveling the sad road of loss."

My turn again tonight and I haven’t much left after the past week’s events, but I’ll give it a go. This is my quick 30 minute diary entry, so apologies to all for my writing quality tonight.

This is the end of an April narrative; the outcome of a sequence of events; the end result. I wrote the first installment on April 3rd. This is the final installment, at least of this part of my sister's story. Sharon died this morning around 4:30 am after a short four weeks, a long four days of rapidly degenerating life. She died at home in her bedroom.

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerunt: Sebulla pe theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo." (Petronius epigraph from "The Wasteland")

This is the second installment of The Grieving Room series, graciously started by Dem in the heart of Texas last Monday evening.

The grieved are many, I am told;    The reason deeper lies,—   Death is but one and comes but once,    And only nails the eyes. Emily Dickinson

I’ll lazily quote from Dem’s first diary in the series as I, too, invite you to share tonight:

This diary is for me and for the dozens of others here who have suffered the loss of a loved one, and need a place to vent or commiserate about it, with those who share their values and are in a similar spot.  
A few of us mourners have been in contact, and we think it would be of great help to have a weekly support diary, just for us.   If this applies to you, come on over the fold and join in.