Peg called out "time" as an illusion a long time ago

Early in her "post-professional" studies Peg discovered that the accepted concepts of time were just our way as human beings to rationalize and understand how and why events play out, because it's easier to accept the "arrow of time" than to accept that our universal concept of time is an illusion, ignoring an infinite universe of possibilities.

She knew the illustion and avoided it. Consciously present as long as she could be, all the while knowing that she was here and everywhere, present now and always, even while her physical body was releasing her to what she could become.

Her broken body, now reduced to ashes, is not who she was. And she's not constrained by how anyone might have defined her. She is free.

Mother's Day tomorrow

We've never given much attention at our house to either Mother's or Father's Day, except for the first one of each.

Tomorrow is the next in a lifetime of days without Peg, but there's no heavy significance for Zoë and me in regard to the "holiday." We've never been fans of "assigned" holidays, with the exception of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.

Hard to believe at the time that this little squirt would someday become taller than her mother. Or that she could probably pin me in a wrestling match. Or that she would accomplish all that she's done at the same age her dad was just building model rockets and driving around his small town, listening to the radio.

Tomorrow Zoë meets for the second day with her Physics peeps to prepare for Monday's A.P. exam. Michael and I will finish tearing out the old deck. And honoring Peg on Mother's Day? Every time we think of her, or look at photographs or videos, or reminisce...that's our version.

Git-er-done

Our deck off the kitchen has been steadily declining for years. Lots of rotten boards, and the corner was so full of container plants you'd never know there was another ten feet of yard littered with discarded tomato cages and wheelbarrows. In the top photo, the area from the deck remnants to the right of the frame to the bottom of the frame was all filled in until today when Mr. Coffee nuked it.

Peg wanted to hold off on doing what I did in three hours today (and two more on Sunday when my buddy Michael shows up with his Sawzall) until everything was perfectly planned out. I'm just not like that...drives me nuts to make the perfect the enemy of the possible.

I'm going to put in a redwood fence behind the redwoods and make the whole space a cool and private oasis.  Currently there's just a chain link fence with the neighbor's pool a few feet away...no sense of a real place to sit and enjoy.

I'm sore from cutting and hauling decaying redwood planks and timbers. But happy tonight. This was the right thing to do.

Peg was here today

Today is the eighth day. Irving Hellman and Penny stopped by tonight and explained that in Jewish tradition, the spouse is "sitting Shiva" for the first seven days and the spirit of his loved one is very close. For the next 30 days, the spirit is still present but encompasses a wider circle.

Today she made her presence known as she widens her circle.

I was on the phone with Joyce Mitchell and every time I looked out the window, hummingbirds were flitting around the rhododendron and lime tree. When I turned to the other window, a single hummingbird flew from branch to branch to branch under the Deodara Pine, which has no flowers. As long as I looked at that tree, the hummingbird did its dance.

A little while later, I got a strange urge to pull some placemats out of a kitchen drawer and group them with the larger herd in the credenza. Listening to Pandora on the Internet. "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" by the Beatles came on. This was the song playing in a restaurant in 1986 when we were first dating, looking into each other's eyes and knowing this was for keeps.

I pulled out the pile of placemats to find out what was pushing them up from the bottom of the drawer, making it difficult to close...and discovered these two hand-painted tiles Peg had put away years ago. They're now part of a little shrine on our mantle, Peggy's wedding ring at the heart.
____________________________________________________________

Norma, our friend from the women's group, spent a few hours here today and helped me sort through Peg's shoes and clothing. She filled her car with what is now Peg's gift to a local shelter for abused women. Zoë will go through the remaining clothing and may find something she might actually wear--hoodies and fleeces, water shoes, bellydancing skirts and scarves. She tried on a pair of knee-high leather boots--no go. Her legs are too muscular from swimming to squeeze into them.
____________________________________________________________

Zoë has taken her A.P. Calculus exam, and tomorrow A.P. US History. She's been studying since 1:30 this afternoon except for a brief nap. Next week it's A.P. English Literature and A.P. Physics. Then the SAT, followed a week later by the ACT.  Tomorrow night we're taking a break and seeing "The Avengers" movie. After all we've been through the last week, we're looking forward to some mindless Big Dumb Fun.

The river

Two not so random papers from Peg's collection today. The first was a printed quote from Hopi elders in Oraibi, Arizona:

"There is a river flowing very fast now. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold onto the shore....Know this river has a destination and a purpose. Now let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep your eyes open and your heads above water. See who is with you and celebrate...All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for."

Here's what Peg wrote about a vision she experienced on June 9, 2001, at a Christine Page seminar in Jackson Hole. Her writing is large. The words came rapidly. It was obvious she wanted to quickly capture what she had seen and felt without trying to interpret or wordsmith:

"I'm walking down a corridor. It's a long, long corridor & at the very end of it is a big, blood red door. Why it's red I am not sure. Something about new life, new birth, the life-bringing awareness that blood brings.

There's a big door-knocker on the door, a symbol I've never seen but intrigues me. I decide there's no need to knock, & I reach for the doorknob. I touch the door  & feel an electric charge. There's a flash of fear & I open the door slowly & with anticipation.

There's a beautiful valley filled with mountains, lakes & wildflowers. I walk into that state & I'm in a bog & it takes great pereverance & strength to keep moving forward. A thunderstorm arrives--big, black clouds. Their raw beauty & power & the rain comes, quickly fills the area with H2O.  It lifts me out of the bog & carries me down the stream.

Quicker & quicker the river's running fast. I just go with the ride. I pass a green grassy island that I could grab on to. But I don't. I keep going with the flow of the river & it takes me through a dark tunnel.  I'm afraid, but I trust the river will take me where I need to go. I know somehow I know the beings of light & love are always with me, no matter where I am or what I'm doing.

Not alone.
Receiving.

Trust myself to go with the river

I am not alone

Love is everywhere

Peg was driven

Spent hours today going through the folders and binders stashed under her desk, so deeply stacked she couldn't push her chair in all the way.

She wasn't content just to be a psychiatrist; she went on to be Board Certified, the highest you can go in her profession. She wasn't content to "know what she knew;" she went to seminar after seminar, year after year, exploring alternate ways of knowing, and being, and creating.

She took copious and incomprehensible (to me) notes at these conferences. It was clear that she wasn't taking this in through a drinking straw, she was using a fire hose. She explored the universe in countless ways the last 20 years or so, and took it with her to wherever she is now. I pulled the course material and her notes from the binders, and put them in the paper recycle bin. The wisdom and insight that lives on those pages now lives with her, in whatever form she's taken. All that's left is the husk.

She was also fond of carrying around little notebooks, in which she'd write brief notes to herself. This one leaped off the page and kissed me:

"It's a privelege as a human to feel loss and the capacity to hold this."

Well said, me love.

Who are these people?

Made it through the last of the photos tonight. Piles all over the office for brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and her mom.

Sending a big pile to our friend Roberta (medical school classmate) who I hope can share with the Denver crowd. Mass quantities to her sister Marianne, who I know can share with her mom and brother Jay. And another pile to Peg's friend Carla, who I hope I can locate (and who Peg expressed regret at not reconnecting with through all this). All these photos have been living in a cardboard box for the last 20+ years.

Reorganizing the linen closet, Peg's gardening section of the garage and kitchen cabinets...all part of the process. Don't worry, I'm not going to go out and buy a Corvette-- organizing and rearranging is about as crazy as I roll. But it did feel good to go through all the old photos, some of which  (pre-1986) I'd never seen.

I got a real sense of Peg as a social critter. Always surrounded by friends, always having some crazy, adventurous, wonderful fun, from high school on to the time we met when she was in her psychiatric internship.

I suspect she's on to way bigger shenanigans now. Way bigger.  

Ran across this little mind-blower

Sorting through old photos to send off to relatives, because it's kind of crazy to have them sitting in our closet in a box for no one's enjoyment.  First photo was taken in 1977 (nine years before I met Peg), the second around 1990, three years after we were married. Not sure I would have recognized her in the earlier photo at age 23. Her sister Jeanette appears not to have changed at all in the intervening years.

APUSH For Dummies/the Queen of Hair

That's Advanced Placement US History. My brother-in-law Greg (literally) wrote the book, and gave Zoë and four friends some coaching on how to approach the exam, rumored to be the nastiest in the A.P. universe.

Not all studies, of course. After Greg left...

...there was some serious hair action. Olivia is doing the deed while Katie is looking through old yearbooks.

Olivia DelBono is the undisputed Queen of Coif. Locks obey her. Curlers fear her. And she sure enjoys sculpting Zoë's giant mass o' hair.

The man who almost didn't come to dinner

Bruce and Mary Patt invited Zoë and me to see the Casa Roble High School production of "The Man Who Came To Dinner." We had an early dinner (sushi at our favorite spot, Blue Nami) and the play was unbelievably funny and well-executed. The performances of these kids rivaled anything you'd see on Saturday Night Live.  Bruce took this photo during a dress rehearsal. His ability to capture the essence of a moment never ceases to amaze me.  You can see more of his work here. 

I was the man who almost didn't come to dinner. When Peg was alive, my first inclination was always to beg off on things like this. Zoë would have gone and met up with her friends...and I would have just stayed home.  When she first told me she wanted to see the play, before I came to my senses, I actually said I'd just stay here.

Thinking back on what a wonderful night we had, not just the play itself but connecting with friends, it's hard to believe I even considered staying behind and "getting things done." That would have been a real loss.
________________________

A few minutes ago we dragged the telescope out to see the "super moon" (larger and brighter than normal). So annoyingly bright we packed up and came back inside. There's just something wrong about having to wear sunglasses at night.