We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
          ~Kenji Miyazawa

This week my Alaskan friends and colleagues mourn the passing of lives lost in last week’s terrible company plane crash. There will be memorial services, celebrations of life, small gatherings, tears, stories and many, many hugs.

I’m not there, instead, I’m back home in Seattle. While I’m deeply saddened at so many amazing lives cut short, I’m also reflecting on the nature of grief. This post is more personal than obituary in nature.

For me, and for so many of my friends, the past couple of years have been amazingly difficult. We’ve lost parents, siblings, homes, jobs and I – I’ve lost my husband. Grief has touched us all, a nightmare time of trying to find our way in the dark.

There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.
          ~Leon Bloy

Everyone’s grieving is different. Some collapse in tears, some curl up in a ball, some get angry, some march on stoically and some try to take care of everyone else. (In case anyone could possibly be confused on this point, I’m one of the latter.) There’s no one right way to express loss, to be sad, to ‘do’ grief – there’s only the way each of us figures it out as we go, groping in the dark.

And yet, being a caretaker type doesn’t mean that my loss doesn’t hurt. Intensely. It just means I’m more concerned with taking care of everyone else’s potential pain and discomfort than I am with expressing or dealing with any sorrow or grief of my own. My role, as I see it, is to keep my life, my family, and the various enterprises I manage moving forward smoothly and agreeably. Sure, we can briefly acknowledge human frailty and work/life balance, but in the long run, we keep going because that’s all I know how to do.

And keeping on keeping on becomes a habit. It’s not dishonest, you know, when I say with a self-deprecating smile, “It’s ok, it’s been a while, it doesn’t really bother me to bring it up.” Just talking about Bryan in casual conversation isn’t all that difficult, although it’s been a whole hell of a lot harder journey than I typically acknowledge.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.
          ~William Shakespeare

So yeah – I will admit that I understate it. A lot. Grief is supremely sneaky and overwhelmingly hard, and there are times when the sorrow and the anguish and the loss punch me in the gut so painfully I forget how to breathe. There are dark nights when I wake up in in a cold, lonely bed and bargain, dry-eyed, with a distant and unresponsive god for it to have been just a nightmare. (He/she doesn’t answer.)

Thanks to my beloved friends and family members who have been there at any time, day or night, when the unbearable details of grief have overwhelmed me. You’ve helped me preserve what little tatters are left of my sanity and I am forever grateful. You are my evidence that it was not, actually, a nightmare after all.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
         ~Marcus Tullus Cicero

And for those that mourn the passing of Dana Tindall, Corey Tindall, William Phillips and Senator Ted Stevens, I wish you the same kind of love, friendship, family and caring I’ve had to carry me through my loss. Nothing on earth can make this tough time any easier, but the support of loved ones can make it more bearable.

What does being an adult mean to you? And does the word have positive or negative connotations?

After an interesting twitter discussion, hot chick Janiece wrote about her take on the mythical adult; here’s mine.

I have always felt *old*. Controlled. Humdrum. Intense. Stressed. A bit melancholy. I’ve never been particularly good at relaxing, playing, letting go. Since I have been very young, I’ve tried to be the caretaker and the adult to those around me. The whole adult thing comes very easily to me, it’s acknowledging that life can be enjoyed that is a little tougher.

Certainly there are moments where I suddenly feel disoriented and think, whoa, wait — I’m just a kid playing house, how did I end up with my own grown kids?

Still, my life has mostly been a string of sobering moments that have made me painfully aware of my adulthood, my level of responsibility.

• At 15, I vividly recall helping my drunk father to bed, driving my migraine-stricken mother to the emergency room, and waiting up for my sister to return home from a school dance.

• At 25 I gave birth to my first son. My husband at the time slept through my labor and delivery and I realized how alone I’d be. Thank god for my sister and mom who were with me.
• At 27 my eventually-to-be-ex screwed up our money yet again, leaving us thousands of dollars in the hole, and me pregnant and destitute in a foreign country.
• At 30 I finally divorced the man, which cost me my faith, and moved halfway across the country with my job. My dad not-so-diplomatically informed me I needed to stop leaning on them emotionally, I was on my own there too, and I cried for hours.
• At 33 my youngest, at 5, had his worst asthma attack ever and ended up in pediatric ICU. Seeing him walk down the hospital hallway pulling an oxygen canister drove home my responsibility like nothing else.
• At 35, when he was 70, my father died. My mom, sister and I held each other up as we put his memorial together, and I closed down his consulting business.
• At 38, when he was 13, I held my eldest son through his first tonic/clonic epileptic seizure, then stood by as paramedics thought he wasn’t going to come back from it. He nearly died, and was not there for a very long time. It terrified me.
• At 40, when he was 15, I lived through several months of that same son’s violent, bipolar, psychotic break. (Related to previous? Probably.) Supporting a child through mental illness that I could not help and could not cure is perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, including the next…
• At 44, when he was 45, I lost my beloved husband to a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Saying goodbye to his cold, still shell and going on alone to support my family and continue my profession and my life was both a challenge and a comfort.

After those painful, transformative life changes I’m consciously trying to enjoy life more, to value family, friends, community and my own health and sanity. I’ve been an adult for everyone for a very long time, and now I choose to work less, to be less obligated, to be less well-behaved. I’ve kicked my kids out to a college apartment. I’m buying a condo and going to Europe.

I plan to grab onto life with both hands, travel, laugh, love and enjoy the ride.

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
         ~Henry Van Dyke

One of the strangest facets of loss is how it changes time.

You’d think time is a fairly straightforward measure. There are 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year. Those numbers can’t adequately measure the experience of the human heart flowing through time.

I have lived 45 years. Raised children for 21 years. Loved Bryan for 12 years. And have been on my own, without him, for one year. That 12 years with Bryan, one-fourth of my life, still defines me – my values, my home, my heart, my plans.

How can it be that the one year since losing him can feel like it was equally as long?

I remember, in the initial days, even month, following the initial shock of his passing, time behaved especially strangely. I had the strangest sensation of being frozen, like a fly in amber, like a pebble in a stream, as life rushed on around me.

The night hours stretched out like an eternity — every night was at least a week long. In the daylight hours when I’d try to rejoin life, I couldn’t keep up. I’d notice something, consider reaching for it in the current, and it’d be swept far past me by the time I moved.

There were times when I slowed my life down to match time’s flow. Sailing, flying under the sun at whatever speed the wind chose to take us, allowed time to catch up and life shifted into focus. Hiking on a beach or in the woods, time became my friend; the birds ignored the passing of the hours and the only rhythm was that of the sunrise and sunset.

But always, I had to return to real life, the fierce onrush of work, deadlines, errands, housework, bills, and I then I couldn’t stay synchronized, couldn’t keep up with the flow anymore.

Maybe this year my own personal time flow will speed up a little and match the world I must live in. Or, more sanely, maybe I can find a way to slow my world down to mesh with my life.

Goodbye my love, maybe for forever
Goodbye my love, the tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again, if ever
But time keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
Till it’s gone forever
         ~Alan Parsons Project, “Time”

This week I’m in Hawaii, in Waikoloa on the big island. I’m surrounded by fabulous friends who love me, encourage me, lift me up and make me laugh. The trip was the fabulous Barb’s idea. It’s exactly what I needed, and I’m excited to share it with Paulette and Angie as well.

Just three years ago Bryan, the boys and I visited the big island. We had an excellent trip, with lots of sun, sand and adventure. We’ve been to Hawaii a few times (we’re very spoiled) but usually Kauai or Oahu. The below picture is from an early trip to Kauai, when the boys were fairly little.

In spite of my amazing friends, it was a little bit difficult coming here this time without Bryan. He loved visiting Hawaii, loved snorkeling, diving, beachcombing, golfing, driving around the island. On one of our most memorable trips, we went scuba diving off the south shore of Kauai, in Poipu, and we were surrounded by sea turtles. We knelt on the sandy bottom while the turtles danced around us in the crystal water.

Bryan and I had a travel ritual. When we’d go places we loved, we’d try to bring home a piece of art to remind us of our trip. We have a particularly beautiful colored handmade paper lithograph over our mantel of sea turtles, symbolizing the life cycle.

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When I lost Bryan almost exactly a year ago, symbols like that became important to me. I wore a small gold turtle pendant he’d given me on a chain, circled by his wedding band, on a gold chain for months.

One of the rituals I did to mark his passing was get a tattoo. It was my first one. (My only one!) I chose to take the piece of art we’d brought home from Hawaii, and have it translated to body art. I’m proud to wear it not only to honor Bryan, but also as a reminder to pursue adventure and joy – to dive with the turtles when I can.

Yesterday as we wandered Waikoloa, I fell in love with a turtle pendant. I got it for myself. For Bryan. It’s the simple, graceful sort of thing that I can wear most of the time, and probably will.

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I’ll probably do something else to remember him while I’m here as well – toss a lei into the volcano or the sunset surf and say a few words. Still, finding and wearing the turtle necklace completed something for me.

My good friend Shawn Powers, UCFer extraordinaire, husband, father, school technology administrator and Linux Journal associate editor, lost his family home this morning to a fire.

He, his amazing wife, Donna and their three awesome girls are ok, but they lost their dogs in the fire. They have their needs taken care of for the next couple of days, however, they have a long, hard road ahead of them rebuilding and putting their lives back together.

There are two ways you can help:

• Send donations via Linux Journal’s ChipIn page.

• Send donations directly to the Indian River Baptist Church, P.O. Box 217, Indian River, MI 49749, with a note that it is specifically for the Powers family.

You can follow Shawn’s story here:

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This is incredibly sobering; it puts the petty things of life into perspective. I sit here looking at my four walls, my roof, my (messy) kitchen, with an intense sense of gratitude. Give thanks for what you have! And give your pets an ear scratch today and send a prayer or positive thought to the Powers family in Michigan.