"A box of rain will ease the pain and love will see you through."

Box of Rain
by: Grateful Dead

"Look out of any window
any morning, any evening, any day.
Maybe the sun is shining
birds are winging or
rain is falling from a heavy sky.
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
This is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago.

Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before.
Maybe you'll find direction
around some corner
where it's been waiting to meet you.
What do you want me to do,
to watch for you while you're sleeping?
Well please don't be surprised
when you find me dreaming too.

Look into any eyes
you find by you, you can see
clear through to another day.
I know it's been seen before
through other eyes on other days
while going home.
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
It's all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago.

Walk into splintered sunlight
inch your way through dead dreams
to another land.
Maybe you're tired and broken.
Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear.
What do you want me to do
to do for you to see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain
and love will see you through.

Just a box of rain,
wind and water.
Believe it if you need it,
if you don't just pass it on.
Sun and shower,
wind and rain,
in and out the window
like a moth before a flame.

It's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there.
Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare.
And it's just a box of rain
or a ribbon for your hair.
Such a long long time to be gone
and a short time to be there."

-L (10/13/11)

10/10/11

Sister,

A year ago today a light went out that has left the world dimmer. The days stopped counting themselves. The past year has been a blink; an indefinite pause between infinite shades of darkness.

Today we'll send firelight into the night sky to pay tribute to the light we've lost in you. An indistinct signal from so far away, but with any luck you'll recognize it.

How every day we love you more. How this is how you changed the world.

Still here.  Still loving you more than life.

<3, -Sister

"And when somebody asks if i'm okay, i don't know what to say."

Balloon Release

"Hi everyone,

On Sunday October 9th 2011, at 5pm PST, we're inviting our family and friends to honor and remember our beloved Katie Sue by releasing a balloon decorated with a note, picture, or message for her, or inspired by her.

We welcome you all to join us at Tri City Park to share a potluck picnic prior to the balloon release, in the company of people who will be thinking of Katie on that momentous day. For those of you who can't make it, as we realize that many of her closest friends and family members don't currently live in California, one of the most unique qualities for a ritual such as this one is that each of us can participate no matter where we are or in what time zone.

We appreciate your presence, your contribution, your love & thoughts, and especially the singular role you each played in Katie's life -- for with these things there'll always be threads braiding between your lives and ours. Please let me know if you'll be able to come, or if not, feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. We'll bring the balloons, markers, helium, and a few snacks; you bring your memories, messages, and a dish or drinks to share, if you're able.

All our love,
-Laura (Katie's lucky-ass Sister) & the West Clan

P.S.: Latex balloons are biodegradable and legal to release in California; metallic balloons are not. See these websites for more information if you're curious or otherwise concerned: 1) http://www.balloonrelease.com/faqs.htm or 2) http://www.balloonhq.com/faq/deco_rules.html#california"

Katie Sue.

Eleven months. [335]

(Embodying our experiences. Our pasts. Our tragedies, [somehow] lived through. "You're gonna lose what you love the most." -B.E.)

("Two sisters." All I overhear on the plane from Newfoundland. And sisters being everywhere these days.  Except for mine.)

(What's the use in feeling inadequate, except to waste time? As if it makes sense to save it.)

Four days after arriving in Costa Rica, we were on our way home. Besides the glaring omens, unknown to be so at the time (as most are), there's very little I remember about that brief trip Now. All I know is that we made it way too far from the airport, and getting back was the longest, blankest, most joyless journey of my life. I don't doubt it will remain so. The boat ride, bus ride, plane ride - all gone Now, like curses etched into ancient stone, dictating or directing the inevitable. Already damned, this sudden role as one of your "survived by"s.

But I ask you, what else is there to talk about? To think about? Damned be damned - it's the only thing I don't Now have trouble giving a damn about.

I don't Now nor do I expect to ever believe in the prospect of "getting over" this. All is Now wrong with the world that we lived in before - though I don't notice so starkly nor think of it as steadily. And yet I'll never feel right about fully abandoning our former world only to fake faith in this new one. All the same I'd like to learn to sand down the sharp edges of this naturally-occurring Self-Pity, which flows freely from the fact of having lost the irreplaceable. If not individual self-pity merely, than universally-affirmed; a collective self-mourning.

Having just finished "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, I Now have this word in my vocabulary, with its usual sense of derogation wiped clean from this context. That is, the context of grief. Of mourning. Indeed, if one cannot allow these feelings of self-pity in the face of monumental and foundational Loss, even as it strikes out at one's recognition of Life, then when can this be possible? I do believe it to be the most appropriate of long-term responses, insofar as the alternative is accepting this loss as 'okay'.

And of course it's not.

Nor will it ever be.

As for the magnitude of your presence Now lost to us, self-pity is all that remains to acknowledge its gravity. To bear witness and pay tribute to its not-'okay'-ness.

And yet. The days do pass. The experiences of the day still require energy, focus, attention. And my eyes have learned to blur; to stay drier, longer Now than ever since. (For the most part.)

(The thought of fiction - how it sounds - presents as pointless to my mind's internal ears. Even though I know it's not.)

("My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth..." -M.M.)

(I'm sorry. I can't care about description any longer. The very idea of describing a room I've been in, or a person or house I've seen, seems tedious to the point of desperate and tearful, bewildered exhaustion. Though I know why, I can't say how it happened. Or how long it will persist in being true.)

But the ball is Now set to rolling resolutely, toward the end of Year One. It will be good to be with our family. Necessary. And to see the faces of your friends reflecting their most cherished memories of you, putting the sun to shame.

-L (9/10/11)

Ten months.

Yesterday was the ten-month anniversary... 'Anniversary' is such an inadequate word. Wrong. No celebration is represented, only most deliberately honoring her and sharply regretting the fact. That we have to. That taking her life and youth and well-being for granted no longer applies. Is no longer possible. A fact as wrong as the word 'anniversary' to describe the 10th.

My heart growls for a different reality, like the rumbling hunger of a skipped breakfast/lunch/dinner/lifetime worth of meals. My head subsists on numbness and neglecting memory. On skipping hours. I'm returning now from a trip to Newfoundland with M -- my/our first since Costa Rica and the sudden lack of Katie. Heavy, this hole-shaped her. A her-shaped hole. And getting darker with every passing "first since." Come two months from today, on Oct. 11th, 2011, we'll no longer be able to look back a full year and wonder, 'what had she been doing then?' Come a year past from that date, she'd have already been gone. Empty, the thought and its feelings of this soon expected new fact -- just like the already tired old facts of this last year.

["My sister's life was 21 years long."]

["My sister's life was 21 years long."]

["There is no 22."]

No 2011. And no acceptable explanation. No 'okay.'

She takes with her our remaining years as well, as adequate. As acceptable. 2011 has been barely a blur of a year. So will all the other years, however many more there might be. The her-shaped hole remains, and a hole won't be painted over, despite the vibrancy of hue offered. Even though she deserves to be decked out in only the brightest of colors. So we just keep painting around it -- outlining/contrasting/highlighting the black, as there's no covering a hole with paint. Or words, for that matter.

[last night i dreamt about you, my sweet sister. it was the fast forward from the before to the after, and all of it i'd photographed with my phone along the way. browsing through the wretched time past, spent in a house that was unfamiliar to me, i somehow notice a brief blur in one of the electronic images of the after. i zoomed in, and there you were, defying all that has most recently become true, despite ourselves. it was you, but it wasn't. 'you' were floating above the room, parallel to the floor and looking down on it serenely. i recognized the outfit you wore. so it must have been you, despite the impossibility of your position and timing. i ran around the house, trying to call everyone's attention to the concrete proof that you existed still, somewhere, in some alternative realm, and that you peeked in on this one occasionally and looked to be at peace with it! like you were still here, almost. but when i found people around, the different faces of my family, the picture was gone. not just you, but the picture itself, having taken you with it. i could no longer find it among the other dull, gray images. i spent hours hitting the snooze button this morning, trying to buy the time it would take to once again spot the image before i had to awake. to this. but of course i couldn't.]

-L (8/11/11)

"Packing...

...to put away the dreams, rather than to live them."