Cannon Beach pictures

Here they are, as promised.

By the by, if you get a minute, please pray for the soul and family of John Kirschner. He's the father of a friend of my brother's who passed away on August 18th rather suddenly. The funeral was on Friday. As he was a well-respected man, it was well attended. Quoth the Book of Wisdom, "The just man, thought he die early, shall be at rest" (Wis. 4:7). And, quoth Hamlet, "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Anyway, photos. Here they are.

Tender shepherd, you forgot to count your sheep

I suppose when your life gets turned upside down for a while, relative peace and bliss can feel really odd. The only contra of being glad that the bad stuff is over is that it makes worry that it'll come back, even when nothing's going wrong. It's like being afraid to sleep because you might have a nightmare.

As such, I've been awake since 4:30.

There's nothing going wrong. I keep telling myself that. My family is safe and secure, my friends are wonderful, open, loving, safe and health. And, frankly, so am I. What am I so damn scared of?

The problem with feeling this way is that I tend to shy away from things and people that I love. God forbid anyone get close enough to see what happens when it all hits the fan. I'm sorry if I haven't called or hung out with you, if you happen to be reading this. I'll be better soon. I promise.

On a semi-related note, it's been 18 months today. A year-and-a-half. Rest in peace, Kristin. Today I celebrate being in much better shape that I was 18, 12, and 6 months ago.

Sweet bird/ Goodbye

I was perusing my parents' bookshelf the other day and found C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed on it. I picked it up to read it.

I'm glad I found it. Part of me wishes that I'd found it sooner, being that we lost Kristin over a year ago. The more intelligent part of me knows that reading it any sooner than now (after much time to heal) would have been too soon. I wouldn't have been able to relate to everything the author describes.

Even so, finding and reading it made me think about her more yesterday and today, so I hopped in the car to go to her grove.

Kristin was cremated and her ashes were scattered, so she has no grave site. That made the first year pretty rough, not having a place to visit. But since they dedicated the grove at SU, she has a little corner of the campus dedicated to her; a bench, a stone with a poem, a much smaller stone with her name on it (Christmas Day, 1984-April 25th, 2006), a tree, and many smaller plants.

It's nice to have a place where you can lay flowers for her when you miss her.