"Family" times

Jason is holding on to Kali with one hand so she can't get away and trying to brush her hair with the other. At this rate, I'm likely to finish this posting before her hair is brushed.

The last number of days I've been wanting to write and then another day comes and goes and I think of more things I want to write but forget the thoughts from the previous day. And so life goes.

We have had some special times with Kali lately and with each other. Working together has been good for us. We have 12 tons of stone scheduled for delivery tomorrow to put a several inch layer of small rock over the tons and tons (literally, Dad) of rocks we have hauled over the last several weeks to create a parking space.

Sunday after church we took a picnic lunch down into our woods and ate lunch at the site of the rock pile, which is much diminished.


Kali is in her last week of camp for the summer and hasn't tired of it yet. It feels like a new and special thing for us to see her interacting and developing friendships with other children, independent of her relationship with us.

Nora's absence has been felt pretty keenly in the last number of days, particularly today as we pass the two month mark since we said goodbye to Nora. I miss her more now than I did in previous weeks, not that you can somehow track precisely the feelings of missing someone. I find myself wanting to somehow plead with the universe to give her a chance at this life. As we experience beauty around us and enjoy Kali's almost-5-year-old antics, I hate that Nora doesn't get to be part of it. And I feel sadness that we don't get to watch her grow and change and develop into a little girl and onward. I dreamed my most vivid dream of her last night but she was alive with us holding onto my hands as she practiced pulling herself to a standing position and then plopping down, again and again. I woke up as I was trying to figure out how we were going to reinstate ourselves in all the early intervention services and home health companies I had canceled services with when she died. Not that life isn't already confusing and emotional and then dreams just muddy reality all the more...