Laurel -- My, how time flies, and how the world changes. Your light still shines bright.
Tony and I sang again together, at Unity, for another celebration of life in our family, and another aching loss. I really didn't know if my grief, both fresh and raw for Mike, and reawakened and compounded for you, would let me get through it. But, gratefully, the sense of giving this small gift in gratitude and honor of your beautiful lives carried the moment, however bitter, bittersweet.
A few weeks before, the last time I got to see Mike here and say goodbye, Tony and I went to sing Mike and Gail's love songs to them one last time. I knew it would be heart-wrenching and beautiful and tragic and lovely to try and give them both this gift -- the gift, Gail told me, of one more romantic night, that made it easier to say their goodbyes. (Be still, my heart.)
I didn't know we would also be sharing that intimate moment with other loved ones -- your parents and mine, our aunts and uncles, Gail's mom, all over Zoom. (Ah, you don't know what Zoom is.) Anyway, Tony took me by surprise when he started us off with your song, You Can Close Your Eyes. I couldn't look at anyone, for fear that my grief for you both would just overflow, like two colliding rivers and I'd be a puddle, and couldn't make it through.
Yet I just sang my love, for all of you. Every time I sing that song, I think of singing it with you, on our rock under the stars, in the Boundary Waters. "You can sing this song, when I'm gone..."
And I do ...I mostly sing it as a lullaby to my babies. I couldn't often get through it without tears when I tried to sing it to Regan or Eli, but with Xavier, our youngest baby, we sing it often. He asks, "Mama, is this a you and me song?" Yes, baby. A you and me song, and Laurel, too.
Your love and light live on, in countless ways, great and small.
A lot has just poured out of me right now... So much has happened since you left.
At Mike's memorial, we reflected on Jamie Anderson's wisdom: “Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot."
Almost eleven years later, we grieve not being able to give you our love, at least not in the same way. Yet I try to let all that grief; deep down, reawakened and compounded by our new loss, be transformed into even more love to give to all those around us that you loved too, or most certainly would love, if you got to be here on this earth, together. It's yet another way I see and feel your beautiful light live on, my brilliant cousin.