It's easy for me to find reasons not to write. A couple of them are understandable but mostly they are stupid. And lies. Because the biggest reason not to write is fear. I am afraid that I am not very good. Definitely not as good as Fitzgerald, or Hemingway or Jonathan Safran Foer. Not as good as I want to be. I've tried several times to deny this part of me. To pretend that I don't need to write. I stop for awhile but I always come back to it. I get that itch that won't go away until I start again. So here I am starting again. Feeling a little bit like it's a fruitless exercise. A habit that'll never lead anywhere. But either way I have to write. It's who I am.

The Truth

I'm afraid of blogging.

It's something I should be good at. Something that's supposed to be so natural, it's paralyzing. Like forgetting how to spell an easy word when someone asks you paralyzing. Describe yourself in a job interview paralyzing. Trying to remember how to kiss on a first date paralyzing.

I read more than fifteen blogs a day and some of them are not better writers than I. But they have better clothes and filled passports and hydrangeas in actual vases on their reclaim barn wood coffee tables. And it's all real. The whole concept behind blogging is that it doesn't matter who you are, as long as you're a real person sharing your truth. These girls might have sponsors and family money and photographer friends but they are not models in glossy magazines. They really do have lives filled with the kind of glamorous things I love to read about.

My truth is not so glamorous. My truth is that I'm poor and not in a bohemian photographer buying film instead of dinner kind of way. I'm lonely and not in a gorgeously painful prose about a single cup of coffee in front of a rain splattered window kind of way. I'm lost and not in a hopeful I'm being reborn as a survivor of all this ugly stuff that happened to me kind of way.
I'm just poor and lonely and lost. Not in any romantic kind of way. The ugly truth is that I miss being told how beautiful my writing is and how brave I am for its honesty. I know that as a writer I get to pen what kind of story this is and I can tell it anyway I want. But if I'm telling the truth, my life hasn't felt like a story worth telling in awhile now. Not a story worth blogging.

                               I've been waiting all this time to be something I can't define.

    There has been a Format sized hole in my heart lately as I let one of the bands most influential to my life go unplayed for a while. Re- listening to this song feels like skipping to the end and realizing it was always going to be ok. It feels like full hearts and true friends and warm summer nights driving through the desert with the windows down. It feels the way I always did when I was single and I was spilling over with all the sweet pain of having so much love and no one to share it with, sure that the lonelieness would last forever and yet equally sure that there would be a happy ending. It feels like realizing what you knew all along, that feeling something messy and complicated is better than feeling nothing at all. That giving up on what you thought you were is how you find yourself.

The weakness in forgiveness.

In the hospital I am strong. I flex healthy muscles as I adjust pillows and blankets, fetch items out of reach of the bed and hold his hand when the pain peaks above a 7. I slow my pace to meet his on our short walks down the hall as I encourage him to go just a little further. My lungs fill and empty easily as his right one struggles. I know that for once I am not the vulnerable one and not just because I lack an assless hospital gown. I feel the blood pumping through a body that is whole and unbroken. I am strong enough to help him heal. It is just him and me and I am strong enough to lean on. I am strong enough to make him better.
     The strength fades with the chill of the hospital and melts out through my feet onto the hot concrete as I walk to my car. By the time I am shut into my father's Honda I am weak. I am alone.
      I try to think of someone to call. I don't know what I want to say exactly. My nail polish is chipped and I can't remember if it's been three or four days since I showered. I wish my Mom wasn't out of town. Even though Kyle is going to be ok this is hard and scary and more grown up than I'm ready for.  I crave the release of talking to someone who understands that a problem is not always meant to be solved and for the first time in my life I am short on girlfriends. A few I have lost to distance, the permanence of which remains to be seen. Others, casualties to the personality evolutions that come with growing up. And then there are the ones I haven't lost at all. They text me casually to keep in touch and I am angry. I have forgiven them before for forgetting me, abandoning our friendship in busy periods and then returning to it later like a hobby. I have forgiven them before because to me relationships are not a part-time job. I put everything I have into them and months or even years later I am still nursing the pains of the ones that broke. I forgive and forget or I get angry and get out. I'm not sure which one makes me weaker.

An Essay on Letting Go.

     I started doing yoga again to relax but when the flows are over and I lay down on a sweaty mat to come back to my breathing I return instead to the faces. I see the short red bob and freckled nose of my childhood best friend, the square jaw and strange Navajo tie of my piano teacher and the parted lips and light blue eyes of the first boy I ever kissed. My chest tightens and I feel the weight of memory and the stuffiness of the 95 degree room crushing me. I will never see any of these people again. I am starting to feel Closter phobic.

         In Greek they have a word for the feeling one gets when realizing something one once had is lost and can never be had again: saudade (sow-da-jee). I could never put my finger on how hard it was for me to let go until I discovered this word. It is not just a fear of change or a lack of fearlessness when approaching the future that makes me hold so tightly to things, even those that I have chosen voluntarily chosen to release. I can identify when a friendship has gone badly and I need to get out. I do not hesitate to leave a city when the time has come and I see the white space at the end of the page that signifies this chapter's end. I have chosen to let go of things when I knew that it was the right thing to do or that I needed to if I was ever going to be happy. I have chosen to let go but when the feeling hits and I realize the permanence of what I have done I am in panic. It is the finality of letting go that terrifies me. I want to hold on to the details about this person, or this city, or this thing that made me so happy and I realize that I am making a decision I can't take back. I often forget that by the time I try to let go, it is because there are only traces and memories of what made me happy left. I sometimes mistake the feeling of saudade with doubts about letting something go. I don’t want to let go of something without recognizing that I have already lost it and all I am holding on to is the ghost. There is no English equivalent to saudade.  

        I have always thought of letting go as losing something. Losing a place, a part of yourself, or worse, a person. I have never lost a person whose absence burned a whole through all the pages of my life. I have never had to wake up every morning and realize all over again that a person I loved is gone. My hardest loss was an uncle two summers ago but when I came home it was easy to forget him, to not notice his disappearance in a place where he had hardly been present. When other people I knew died I cried sympathetically, the way you do when you are watching a sad movie about a war that happened before you were born. I have been lucky enough to live a life free of tragedy. I do not know how to say a goodbye to someone that I have loved and consequently I do not know how to say goodbye at all. When there are no mountains to climb up, every hill feels twice as steep.

         I do not know what it feels like to say goodbye to someone you love but I can imagine. I have watched enough soap operas, read enough Shakespeare, and heard enough love songs and break up stories to be afraid. It was luck that kept me from losing someone I loved to the ground but often it was choice that kept me from loving at all. I knew I wasn't built for heartbreak. I cried when the stray cat we used to feed left us for good; how would I ever stop crying if I fell in love and he left me? So I didn't. I wouldn't admit to crushes and danced around labels like "girlfriend." I spent all of high school and most of college single and saved my emotional attachment for other things. I became inordinately emotional about friendships and interior decorating but never about men. When I finally fell in love I wouldn't even say the words out loud to myself for six months. He was a boy I had known for years and could never let go of. We have been officially together for a year now.

       When I was little I asked my mother what heaven would look like and she told me that heaven would be whatever I needed to be happy. I told her that heaven would be lots of big houses all on one street but they would be connected to each other by hallways and all of my friends and all of our relatives would live in these houses together. We would eat ice cream and watch movies and be together always without having to fly on airplanes to see each other.

            I still want this. I've tried to fashion my life after this childhood idea of heaven but instead it looks more like an attic in need of cleaning. I collect people. I add them to my life the way people add Facebook friends. When I am emotionally bored I stalk them. I click through memories finished with the filter of nostalgia and I let myself feel the pain of knowing that I can never go back.

I never let go of anything and while a temper tantrum in my teens resulted in the loss of all the cards and material items I had saved to the dumpster, the memories remain. If I didn't hold on to it because I'm sentimental, I did because I'm bitter. Courtney and Kate making up a song about me ripping a hole in my shorts at recess in the fourth grade. Not over it. My little sister Shannon getting a Tara Lipinski Barbie for her 6th birthday when she didn't even like Tara Lipinski and I was obsessed. Not over it. Getting "door privileges" taken away and having to sleep with it open for two weeks. Still bitter. The emotional weight I attribute to material objects is nearly as bad as that which I feel for the people who share their memories. I miss my favorite black leotard the way I miss the barre under my fingers and the feeling of being perfectly grounded with only my toes touching the floor. I miss my favorite shoes the summer after junior year of high school the way I miss the people I ran around in them with.

           Lately I have felt like I am carrying around a huge weight and my shoulders hurt the way they used to in middle school when I had a backpack full of books that I wore low on my hips because that was the style. I catch my shoulders inching up towards my ears and the ballerina in me is ashamed. One more thing I have lost. I am heavy with the usual senior burdens: trying to find a job, an apartment, an idea of what life I want after I graduate. People keep giving me the same advice, to be excited about all that lies ahead and all the possibilities I now have. I keep hearing that great things are coming but they are too far away to see and instead all I see is a blank page. The things that are not too far away, not just blurry possibilities are the people and things that I am losing. It is hard to let go of things you love for little more than a promise that you will find something to fill their absence. I am sad to say goodbye to the people especially. I am sad to see them go most because I have still not let go of the last set of friends that were supposed to be forever, the set that the college friends were supposed to replace. I find proof of the friendships I had in high school every day in memories and the emptiness of their dissolution in the silence between us. "We will all stay friends," my college friends say. No we won't. I think. I am bitter and jaded by finally having to admit that I am not friends with any of the people that I loved so much four years ago, at least not in the same way. Most of us don't even speak to each other. I cannot believe it will be any different four years from now. I will remember this month and these friends with the same fondness I always held but I will ache with the pains of loss.

     I don't understand how you can stop caring about someone who meant so much to you once. This does not happen if somebody dies. You never stop caring about them or feel guilty about never talking to them or have to decide whether to invite them to your wedding when you used to talk about them being in it. You are sad but what you had with them can never be destroyed. Your relationship is preserved exactly like it was, safe under the bell jar that comes from a forced permanent separation. This is not how it is with the living. Relationships change and fade away slowly. I don't know how to let go of someone without letting go of all of them, the good times and the laughter and all the things they taught me about myself. How do I keep all these things I was with you when you are not around? I don't know how to stop worrying and wondering and asking about you. If you don't care about me anymore, did you ever?

       I know that there must be a way to hold on to memories and not the people in them, to be content that these experiences were mine even if the people no longer are. I know that I should believe in the truth of past relationships even if they have changed. I know that I will still feel the fingerprints of the people I have known when they leave. I am graduating from college in exactly three weeks and there has never been a better time to learn to let go. I have no choice but to face that people are going to leave me. Whether I can find a way to or not the people I love are going to let go of this place, this life, and me and move on to something new. But I am afraid. I am afraid to lose mission beach and the boardwalk, the mission, Lestats all of my favorite places and spaces in the city that has been my home for four years. I am afraid of losing the faces I see everyday and their laughter, advice, inside jokes. I am afraid of losing the view from my rooftop deck or the perpetually sandy floors of my kitchen. I do not want to let go of these things. Every moment of happiness and celebration is colored with loss. I am happy to have known these people but I can’t stop being sad to lose them. I am lucky to have experienced this life but I am not ready to let it go. The part of it I will carry with me is such a small piece of the whole. I am sore from trying to hold on to everything as it runs away from me like a puppy on a lease but as of right now I have yet to let go of anything.

Just a couple things making me happy this week

Red wine in a pretty bottle

Easter appropriate flowers at the airport from the boyfriend.

Every picture of my pseudo-nephew Landon, but this one especially.

Yoga starting to bring back the dancer callouses

(sorry for the gross picture of my feet!)

This photo and this boy, always this boy.

Birds

I knew that birds flew south for the winter but I’d never thought that eventually they must fly back, and yet here they were. Hundreds and hundreds of bird silloutes appeared in front of the sunset. They rose from surrounding buildings like dust does when you blow on a shelf that has been left untouched for awhile. Joining together they flew in lines, one long ribbon into the northern sky. Another season was ending and it would be the last of this phase of my life. Southern California only has two seasons: summer and a pathetic excuse for winter. When the next season ends graduation will have passed and I will be an adult. I am terrified of the next season.

But I am comforted in the knowledge that some things will not change. Birds will stay in one place only as long as they are meant to. I watch until every last bird has disappeared to the north and the sky is blushed pink from the setting sun, and suddenly very clear.

*photo by me

Feel it all

"And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory."
-Andy Warhol

Say what you will about Andy Warhol, the man had his moments. We never think about the atmosphere of an experience until we find ourselves momentarily transported back to it. It's that way that a smell or a song can return you to a time in your life in a way that transcends the singular stimulation of one of your senses. Why does hearing Time to Pretend always make me feel a little bit less than sober? Andy nailed it. Atmosphere.
I have often tried to take note of these details, attempted to bottle that feeling up so I could recreate the moment again and again. These efforts have failed.
As I finalize my work schedule, buy books for my last semester of college, and happily return to beer of a normal alcohol percentage my head is still back in Park City. I could not capture the feeling of Sundance: of coming out of a midnight movie to a soft sparkly snow, of delirious sleep-deprived laughter and the electricity of thousands of people feeding on the creativity and passion of each other. I could not hold on to it and so instead I wait for it to find me. I wait for all the detail of a memory.


*Photo by me, through the hotel window in Park City

New Beginnings

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again"
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi

It's been a year since I have posted. At the risk of sounding like melodramatic, I thought I'd left the author of this blog behind in Italy. Another layer of life has settled over my soul and I will never again be that girl.
Studying abroad was the manifestation of every fantasy I'd ever had. The romance of it made me brave. The excitment of it inspired me. For the first time in my life, I believed that what I had to say might be interesting. Despite my four suitcases, I'd left all my baggage back in America. So I wrote. I read. I had lunch by myself and didn't feel like a loser. I did optional work for my classes because I wanted to. I didn't feel guilty for eating whatever I wanted. I achieved a kind of satisfaction with my life that was unprecedented for me.
When I came back from Europe, I thought I'd lost that. I stopped writing. I didn't think anything more wonderful or exciting then a semester abroad could happen to me. But then it did.
I fell in love.
I used to write things and fear that people would notice I didn’t know what I was talking about. And then one day I realized, I did

I think it's time to start writing again.

Arrivederci

As I trek home down narrow cobblestone roads I’ve trespassed a hundred times before, I fall into company with the realization (perhaps a bit prematurely) that this may be the last time these streets will see my shadow. Appropriately, this stroll on this street glorifies each step before it. It is the ultimate farewell, I couldn’t have directed a more beautiful scene. My boots crunch as I leave footprints on the snow-blanketed cobblestones, a conspicuous but fleeting documentation of my existence. That delicious and satisfactory crunch is among my favorite sounds in the world and better than any song I would have sound tracked. Flakes fall softly, gently speckling my steel gray pea coat in silence and collecting in the tangled mess of dark strands poking out from beneath my black knit beanie. My street is still. No cars go by and creaky old wooden shutters are closed against the frigid day. My eyes water, stinging from the cold and I shuffle a tad faster toward home accidentally squeezing the plastic cup in my hand too tight as I exhale a cloud of condensation. Hot wine sloshes over and dyes crimson a patch of snowflakes congregating on the front of my jacket. Wine flavored snow cone. Only in Italy.

My hushed walk home is a welcome escape from the asphyxiating sounds of the day. All day I’ve been imagining I heard my name. Hisses and whispers barely audible but vaguely familiar in sound. Shouted Italian words with homogenous syllabus. I turn around and no one’s there. It’s like Firenze it’s self is calling out to me, whether in tender farewell or a desperate plea not to leave I do not know. On either front snow was definitely the way to go to convey this. To see the city I love, the place I’ve grown to call home transformed into a winter wonderland makes the eminent goodbyes more bitter than sweet. An afternoon spent with some unlikely but not unwelcome company exposed the city in a magical new way: clean and sparkly under fresh white powder. The Duomo turned white, People laughed and threw snowballs, and every Christmas song cliché played out beautifully across the Italian landscape, no translation needed. The city turned out in it’s best and a beautiful new coat to say it’s farewells. The perfect goodbye made me oh so sad to go and as I left puddles and soggy layers around the radiator I curled up on my old woe begotten green couch and watched the snow fall in my backyard. I found my eyes watering again but this time from something very different then the cold.

Travel

She said to me

“Haven’t you ever loved something you were afraid of?”

You have no idea.

Sweaty palms, racing heart, trouble breathing

Why is it that to the body fear and love feel the same?

Cashmere sweaters folded in a bag weighing under 10 kilograms

Playing solitaire with my thoughts as I yawn to unpop my ears

She said to me

“Sometimes I feel like everything I say is being translated by someone far away in another country who has had to much to drink.”

You have no idea.

Parlez-vous anglais? Non capisco l’italiano. Voe ist the train station?

Relationships aren’t the only time things get lost in translation.

Kind confused eyes search crinkled maps for familiar names I have butchered.

I fold up and tuck sarcastic comments in my pocket for later, for people who will understand them

She said to me

“Did you ever find that you’d outgrown who you were? Cast it off like a snake sheds it’s skin and left a ghost of who it was?”

You have no idea.

A reflection I don’t recognize, words I can no longer define, déjà vu feeling with the scars to prove it’s real.

I squint, peering back into memories to make out the shape of the teenage girl in a uniform plaid skirt.

Words have all the translucence of a reflection. How do you describe something that is in one word everything?

Had to write this for travel writing and thought I'd share for a change of pace.

Thanksgiving/Amsterdam and Paris blogs are coming soon. Things are crazy with lots of wonderful visitors and only 11 days left in Florence.

....

At some point on every weekend trip I find myself watching the Tuscan countryside fly by with my nose squished against the smudged glass window of a Eurostar bus. It’s one of those in between details, the unaccounted for and subsequently forgotten moments of transition that come between airports and train stations, hostels and home. Despite the hassle of the extra 7,50 and added hour of travel I love these bus rides. Caught in the handover between my home in Florence and adventures in a new place I am often inspired, prompted to consider my current life with the clarity of an outside perspective. It is during these jaunts that I make the majority of my notes for later writing, hunched over my journal squinting in the dark as my pen scribbles in even worse handwriting than usual, thrown off course by speed bumps and sudden turns. I’m in awe of everything I am experiencing and newly resolute to harden every detail into a flawless unbreakable memory of the moment. I take in every curve of blue silhouetted mountains in the distance, plowed fields of symmetrical rows of skinny leaved trees, and clotheslines burdened with sheets speckling the hills as they puff up and try to elope with the breeze.

One day I saw an entire patch of dead sunflowers. Hundreds and hundreds of them still standing but withered and brown, their heads all dropped in surrender the same direction as if they had met their end as the result of some mass suicide or a Medusa like sighting that instead of stone transformed them all to decay at the exact same moment. The image of this field has haunted me and even without effort I can still conjure it up as if I were back against that bus window what must have been two months ago now. For a long time I could not figure out what it was that made me so sad about this sight. Sunflowers are not among my preferred flowers and the enjoyment I get from them is mostly in that they remind me of one of my best friends who considers them among her own reasons d’être. No, it was not the sunflowers themselves at all that saddened me but instead the skeleton of a beautiful thing lost.

As the epitome of a hopeless romantic, I love flowers. Neatly pruned blooms along sidewalks, mismatched grocery store bouquets on sale for $9.99, untamed and unnamed wildflowers in a field, a single tiny blossom poking through a crack in a slab of concrete, I’ll take them all. Peonies, orchids and poppies are best but even carnations will do. When I have been lucky enough to receive flowers I have done everything I can to make them last. Sniping stems, adding plant food and goggling the species for tips and optimal lighting suggestions. Of course within a couple weeks they all die and I find myself a bit more upset about this than is probably healthy or normal. I also (in true failure-to-let-go fashion) refuse to throw them away. I leave them there until all of the petals have fallen off, the stems have dried out and hardened and the water in the vase has begun to grow some type of white mold. I refuse to admit that my flowers are gone, still hesitant to admit that I have lost such a beautiful thing.

This peculiarity of mine is also why I find myself sliding into depression whenever I leave San Diego. I am sorry to withdraw from a magnificent life of laughter, sunshine, kindred spirits, and ocean spray, sad to have such a beautiful thing taken back from me much as mother nature takes back her flowers. The first weeks back in Arizona, I find myself in mourning, afraid I have lost something and can’t get it back. This anxiety over having something beautiful and then losing it has nurtured my desperate wish for a better memory. Lamenting my departure from San Diego, I recall sand in the bottom of the shower, watching life unfold in the reflection of the mirrored wall in Emma and Brittany’s kitchen and the exact ratio of powdered sugar to butter in Laguna 201 homemade frosting. A vivid and carefully cultivated memory is something that can never be lost or taken from me and I take comfort in the clarity of these details.

This is why I try to take pictures as often as possible, and more importantly why I write. Because despite my most ardent and unyielding attempts to notice every detail and lock it away for later, so often my memory fails and I can no longer remember if the vase of flowers was blue or green and whether we were in Lauren or Erin’s car when we brought home our Christmas tree. So I write. I write about the way that traveling has, for the first time in my life, given me a kind of solidarity with my own thoughts that makes being alone sometimes not feel lonely anymore. I write about bath room talks with roommates where alcohol loosened our tongues and brought the swelling on our egos down. I write about people I meet on planes and how the clocks on the buses are always inexplicably set to the wrong time. I write and I take pictures in the hopes that when this incredible adventure is over I will not feel that I have lost something that I had and loved but instead gained a collection of glorious experiences, carefully documented to later supplement omissions in rose colored cob-webby memories.

* Image from We heart it tumbler

Roaming Rome

A hand to her forehead as she speaks Maria tousles her hair and returns to kneading the air like dough, speaking with every muscle from the waist up as only Italians can. Her frizzy ash blonde bangs float back to her brow in a rumpled mess, seemingly aware that they will soon be disturbed again and so there is no need to look presentable. The rest of her hair is twisted haphazardly into a tangled knot of scraggly ends and forgotten bobby pins, which could have been secured this morning or the day before it’s impossible to tell. As usual Maria has on an array of neutral colored, loose, draping clothing arbitrarily layered together in a way that makes it difficult to identify on any given day what she is actually wearing. Today however, she is also wearing very baggy blue jeans whose frayed bottoms drag on the ground over clogs with a heel bringing her to around 5” 4’. She rummages through a large olive green canvas bag, clinking a chunky silver ring on her index finger against keys or coins as she forages for a cigarette, her fourth of the morning. Like the excessive fabric used for her clothes everything she does is intemperate. Her movements are leisurely and overindulgent, limbs never choosing the quickest route between two points, cigarettes drawing rings through the air on the way to her lips. All loose strands of hair, no make up, grandiose gestures and loud thickly accented English devoid of prepositions, Maria is equal parts animated and disheveled. The perfect picture of the single bohemian Italian woman, who is a little crazy and maybe a little bit drunk most of the time. She is a fascinating and fantastic mess. She is also, my theology professor.

As part of the Women and Religion class Maria seems to frequently confuse with an art history course, our saucy (and possibly sauced) professor herded us onto a seven am train Friday morning and guided us through a nine-hour tour of Rome. The Coliseum, Pantheon, Forums, Capitol Hill, Castel Sant’Angelo and six or seven churches all of which blur together in a muddle of frescos, filigree and fervently whispered prayers. They were however all very beautiful and afforded me the opportunity to see some relics for the first time1. It rained sporadically throughout the day, which allowed us to see first hand the pitfalls to having a hole in your roof (the Pantheon) and to take cute umbrella pictures during a deluge in front of the Coliseum. I won’t bore you with the history of these places but I will say there is something remarkable about standing on the stones where gladiators fought and individuals built a civilization that would influence the world for thousands of years to come. The Coliseum in particular was a marvelous thing to see. Rome, although very beautiful particularly with all of the fall leaves and history, is incredibly different from Florence. It is really amazing that the two are not only in the same country but a mere hour and a half train ride apart. I was secretly pleased to find that I much prefer the quaint beauty and accessibility of Florence to the dirty busy streets of Rome. After nearly three months, Florence feels like home in a way I believe Rome never could have.

At the end of a long day trekking all around Rome with Maria, my friend Sarah and I wandered off to find our host for the evening. Feeling very much like we weren’t in Kansas anymore and pooling together our limited Italian vocabulary we got tremendously lost and finally made it to Michael’s apartment in great need of a nap. One hour of sleep, two kebabs, and three bottles of wine later Sarah and I found ourselves in a situation that never happens in Florence and rarely at USD: we were outnumbered by American boys 3 to 1. Thus began a typical evening of bathroom talks, overpriced drinks, unoriginal Italian pick up lines and Sarah playing chess with a Columbian in a bar called the Drunken Ship. Huh? When in Rome? The night ended with Sarah and I pathetically huddled atop a make shift bed on the floor in our coats fighting over who would be big spoon and freezing after Sarah lost our blanket to a blacked out boy from Boston. It was too hilarious to even be upset about.

On Saturday we woke up bleary-eyed and grateful that we had opted for the later tour and set off in the pouring rain to grab a cappuccino and a cannoli, make a wish in the Trevi fountain, and complete the full 50-euro tour of the Vatican museums. Even running on five hours of sleep in two days, the three-hour tour flew by. The Vatican is the second largest collection of art in the world (the Louve is the first) and I was perpetually in awe of all the famous and incredible things I was seeing. The Sistine Chapel was absolutely phenomenal. Even with all of the build up and all of the expectation it did not disappoint. Especially when you learn all of the historical meaning and the anecdotes of its creation. Sarah and I also got to see the apartments of the scandalous Pope Alexander the VI, whose wild orgies and concealed murders had been the subject of a presentation assigned to us by Maria the week before. So all in all we were pretty excited.

Lastly, and rather embarrassingly, I had hoped to see the Fountana de Amora from the movie When in Rome. After several fruitless attempts to find it I finally asked our Vatican guide for it’s location and our conversation went like this.
“Excuse me can you tell me where the Fountana de Amora is?”
Blank stare. “Isn’t that in a movie?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed excitedly “When in Rome! Have you seen it?”
“No but I heard about it. They made that up. The Fountana de Amora doesn’t exist.”
I was too disappointed to feel stupid.

One hour and about three false alarm panic attacks later2 we are homeward bound. I stare out the window of the only seating car on an overnight train curiously ending in Germany, and I decide our little Roman Holiday was a success. Much like the intrepid Maria who started us on our adventure, we had navigated Rome with a careless and unmethodical attitude and a sense of humor. Minor set backs only added to the experience and all the must sees of Rome were accounted for. Leaving the city behind for God knows how long I decide that Rome is nothing like the movies and most people have no idea what the expression “When in Rome” really means. Except maybe Professor Maria.






1. I stood next to aged Italian women silently weeping and wondered who on earth decided this, really not very old looking, piece of wood had come from the manger Jesus laid in or why an iron chain was in a glass case with people kneeling in front of it.

2. Since Sarah and I bought a two-person ticket, it did not include the train number or time and it took several inquires to acquire this information. Then when the conductor asked for our ticket it seemed we had lost it and right as he was about to throw us off the train I found it soggy and folded in the forgotten outside pocket of my bag.

After five hours of class I come home and gracelessly throw myself down on one of our comfy green couches, sliding to the middle because as usual the pillows are out of place and it sags. I attempt to summon a last vestige of patience as I wait for the Internet to load. Wednesdays are long and my usual homecoming routine is to pour myself a glass of wine and vege in front of the computer. That is until my roommates return to our apartment with the necessary buoyancy for me to rally for a carb loaded dinner and a late night of Florence shenanigans. As I roll my neck in a fruitless endeavor to alleviate the knots from a day of bending over child sized desks something catches my eye on one of the blogs I frequently stalk. A quote by my favorite author Nicole Krauss that is cited from Great House.
Great House? I wonder. This must be a mistake. She has only written two books both of which are among my favorites and one of which happens to be the only book of mine that I brought to Florence. A Wikipedia search is obviously necessary. I am shocked and in all honestly slightly outraged to find that she has in fact released a new book just 12 days prior. A new book? Why was I not told!?!?! I know I am not in America right now but still someone really should have called me. My outrage turns immediately to panic. How am I supposed to get her book over here? I begin to consider the possibilities and wish this issue had arisen last month when my mother could have brought it to me on her visit. After several Firefox and safari reloads I have the numbers for the only two international bookstores in Florence. I dial hastily. Please have it. Please Please have it. The first number goes to a machine. I dial the second. Please Please Please. I beg in a whisper. A calm Italian woman tells me that the line is busy and if I will please wait an associate will be with me soon. Five minutes later she tells me again. And again. Elevator music is not any better in Italy than it is in America. Finally someone picks up and after much hemming and hawing as to whether he must really get off his butt and look he tells me yes they do have a copy and he will hold it for me at the front desk. I tell him I will be RIGHT there, literally skip out the door squealing and nearly forget the keys to my apartment.

The walk to the Duomo seems to take longer than usual as I am practically shaking with excitement. I cannot remember a time that I was more excited about anything in my life. Thanksgiving mashed potatoes tomorrow? Amsterdam the next day? Paris the following weekend? They don’t compare. I scurry through the streets like an animal. I’m a literary addict thisclose to my next fix. I throw open the bookstore doors with an excessive amount of force and rush up to the desk. A crinkled twenty and some change is exchanged “I don’t need a bag!!” I snap a little too forcefully then smile apologetically as I stretch a hand across the counter just inches from the crisp red and white binding waiting to be broken in. He hands it over with a shrug and I resist the urge to let out another trademark squeal of delight. I clutch it to my chest, arms crossed in protection and walk out of the store and into the cold but thankful rainless night. I try to exercise self-restraint but only make it to the corner before I crack the cover. I vow to read only the first sentence but three blocks later I’m on page four and barely looking up. I try to walk with my feet flexed since I have a history of tripping on independently minded cobblestones but Italian people usually tend to barrel through the streets without regard for people or cars in their way so I have little issue as I make my way home. Every sentence is like a present just for me a beautifully crafted line in language I adore. I feel like I am reading through my list of favorite quotes and find myself folding over the corner of almost every page to copy and paste to this collection later. In my life there have been few surprise gifts which I actually adored but tonight I hold in my hands a present just for me and it’s wonderful and unexpected. I suppose the Italians find me strange peering down at a book as I walk through poorly lit streets and weave through the crowds around Billa (our nearby grocery store). I begin to think of the opening scene in The Beauty and the Beast when Belle is declared “Nothing like the rest of us” for having her nose in a book. If they are thinking this they are right.

There might not be a single person in Florence tonight or any night for that matter who is remotely excited about a new Nicole Krauss novel but that is more than alright with me. I am insanely happy because having a new novel by a favorite author is being reunited with a friend and soul mate. Someone who doesn’t know you but somehow knows the very essence of your being to a minute detail. With this book, I have just been returned a part of my heart and soul that I had left in America. I would not have thought it would travel well but in fact the streets of Florence and a cold November night on my own make it that much more beautiful. I wonder as I write this if Great House will live up to the legacy left by Nicole’s last two books. I wonder if I will forever think of Florence when I look at this book months from now. If all the beautiful joys and sorrows of my life abroad will be pressed in between the pages like dried flowers. One thing however is for certain: either I won’t be in class tomorrow or I won’t make it out tonight. If you’re looking for me I’ll be on the couch healing my heart and crying with Nicole.


I promise my post about Rome is coming soon! Actually that's a lie. It probably won't get done untill after this book! :)
HAPPY THANKSGIING EVERYONE I MISS YOU ALL AND WISH I WAS WITH YOU

Belated Reflections on Venice

The One in Love
On a gondola floating serenely down the waterways of Venice reality loses it’s faculty. Calm stillness replaces the rumbling of engines and the pinging of Blackberry’s. Red and white candy cane poles perform the duties of traffic lights. Concrete is traded for cobblestones. The noise and bustle of our busy city seems far away. A distant memory, a dream. The specific details of what, where, when and why melt away like the sense of time and concern for consequences. All that remains is the sheer beauty of the moment and the who. You and I on an island captained by a charming man with a striped shirt and throaty heart wrenching singing voice in a place designed just for us.

The Cynic
When on the subject of Romance wet, dirty, and smelly are not the first things that come to mind. It is therefore rather curious that a place where these adjectives have pervaded every nook and cranny is a prime destination for self-proclaimed victims of cupid. A city idiotically built on water, Venice has the unique odor of something that is always damp and slightly moldy. Constantly grey skies and morose silence accompany the faint aroma of decay as the buildings begin to deteriorate, growing more and more dirty and sinking further into water that seeps up through the cobblestones. Most days platform sidewalks a foot of the ground are erected but it is still impossible to make it through the day with dry feet as decrepit front entryways flood and the delusional people that populate the city slowly go down with the sinking ship of that supposed phenomenon know as love.

The Hopeful
The timeless stone buildings garnished with shuddered windows and wrought iron balconies housing cheery red geraniums cozy up to each other like old friends whispering secrets. Angles connect to reveal waterways, roads clogged not with pollution and yelled obscenities but gondolas, seemingly all filled with couples kissing. Their drivers silently stroke the water and glide by with barely a ripple in the distorted beauty of Venice’s reflection. There is a kind of stillness, even St. Mark’s Piazza with it’s tours, it’s tea services, pigeons and string quartet seems to be at a lower volume than everywhere in Florence. Venice is peaceful and the seldom interrupted quiet allows thoughts to slide in and out like silk through fingertips. Easy come, easy go. No impression left. What a lonely place to be by oneself I think as a solitaire figure crosses a arced bridge up a ways and fumbles in his pocket for keys. What an odd place to call ones home. Another gondola of the lucky in love floats by What a beautiful place to bring the one you love. Someday. My mind stills like the water below me on the bridge after the gondola is out of sight.



My assignment for Travel Writing this week was to write about a place I had been from three differnt perspectives. Having spent a day and a night in Venice last weekend when my mother visited I decided to play on it's reputation as one of the most romantic cities in the world.
Can you tell which one is me?

Hold your own, know your name and go your own way... and everything will be fine.

Recently I've been letting myself get bogged down by a lot of stuff, to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite authors, My boots have been heavy. My heart has been hurting, my smiles have been less frequent and I occasionally find myself sleepwalking through my life, choosing to be numb to all my feelings rather than wrestle with the ones casting a dark shadow on a beautiful life. My moodiness pulls me down like quicksand, sucking me into a pit of failures, mistakes and people lost that makes it hard to realize how lucky and loved I really am. Being abroad is the greatest experience I've had so far in life but it's also sometimes the loneliest and scariest. I've always fancied myself brave enough to walk the tightrope of independence but I've never actually had to do so without a safety net to fall into.

But... as a good friend of mine remarked recently in a much needed cross continental note of love and encouragement via my e-mail inbox: happiness is a choice. So as I reflect on the tears and insecurities of the past few weeks I'm instead choosing to be happy, grateful for the beautiful moments that transpired even before I reminded myself of a favorite quote of mine "It's not as hard to be happy as you're making it" (especially in Italy).


Fifteen things that made me happy in the past Fifteen Days
1. Curling up on the couch with across the universe, a bottle of red wine, visiting friends and, lots of blankets as the rain came down outside.
2. Taylor Swift's Speak Now CD on repeat
3. A phone call to my eternal roommate and soulmate Erin whose high pitched "LeeN" always makes the world feel right again.
4. Experimenting in the kitchen and then sitting down with a glass of wine and a dinner I made myself that is slightly more refined than PB and J pasta or grilled cheese (although I did make that recently as well).
5. Finding out that garlic isn't green when I cooked with it for the first time.
6. Venice. So beautiful and romantic.
7. Four days of meals at all my favorite restaurants for free while my mother was in town, including a dinner with just the two of us that was full of honesty and (for once) non-combative conversation.
8. Details in the fabric by Jason Mraz (source for this blog title)
9.A care package from my Theta fam complete with Theta tanks, holiday candle, Halloween socks, a fourth of July flag filled with confetti and some fabulously drawn stick figure cartoons of my adventures in Europe furnished with creepy Italian men.
10. Splashing in the twinkling reflections of lights captured in cobblestone puddles with my sky blue rain-boots as I walk home at night without an umbrella.
11. My ugly, old, dirty, embarrassingly pink, gloriously warm, and comfy Ugg boots (yes, that was a sentence with six adjectives and no verb).
12. A lit candle and the serenity prayer in Orasanmichael (my favorite church in the world)
13. A sweet heartfelt compliment from a new acquaintance with no ulterior motives for giving it.
14. Finally knowing my way around Firenze without a map and being able to show my home to visiting friends and my mother.
15. A visit from the only friend I've retained since preschool and the reassuring realization (during a conversation about who would be the bride and who would be the bridesmaid first) that sometimes friendships do last forever and it's possible for people to grow up without growing apart.

:)

The most beautiful place in the world

Resplendent and overbearing the sun begins to set, unfurling its plumage of colors through the sky like a peacock: without hesitation, without inhibition. Clouds blister and squirm mismatched for strength in a game of peek-a boo, a rock paper scissors where sun trumps cloud always and even the grumpiest, grayest cloud has no choice but to dissipate in patches, giving way to orange and pink rays as if someone had pulled them aside like curtains. Sunset brings out the grandeur in everything: bathing the horizon in pink, turning the remaining clouds into no more then silhouettes, causing the water to glitter with it’s reflection, highlighting various white and blue Cliffside buildings in Fira like a realtor showing off the best property. A sunset anywhere is beautiful, but a sunset in Santorini is like a bottle of Cristal when you are used to drinking Andre.

Most people visit the island of Santorini in the summer months and at late October the people that dot the picturesque landscape are like specks in spackle. Traffic is sparse: there are no honking horns, few exhaust pipes spewing clouds of suffocating black soot. Many of the places are boarded up until next season. Forgotten fliers boast parties that happened months ago and blackboards of restaurant specials left unerased offer air conditioning and deals on ice cream. The locals complain about the “bad weather” of occasional cloudy skies and temperatures below 70, weather that feels like paradise compared to my freezing apartment in Florence but does not afford one many opportunities to bring out their bikini. However the end of the season is prime for deals and with only a handful of tourists we have the run of the island and less danger of collisions as we ATV from the jagged cliffs of the lighthouse on one end to the village Oia made famous in movies on the other end. Even without many companions some of the curves and cliffs of the narrow roads are frightening and my friend Jordan gets into a small fender bender with a fourteen year old on a borrowed motorcycle. Still the feeling of the wind in our hair and view of the open road can not be equaled and five days give us just enough time to cartogram the entire island as our own with the amiable assistance of many gas station attendants, our three ATV’s and our tiny rental car whom we name “Shelby”. Getting around is effortless and inexpensive many ways but the best transportation of all on Santorini is the donkeys.

On the only day during our stay that actually constituted bad weather we had resolved to take a boat to the active volcano and hot springs about twenty minutes from the island. Winds churned the waters and cut through my sundress and sweater as the boat is tossed by the waves which spew icy water all over my sandaled feet as I try to ease my qualms about seasickness. After a hike around the volcano’s craters and charred rocks and a motion sick affected boat ride back we stand dismayed at the foot of the wide 588 stone stairs up from the port. Luckily we are soon accosted by a wrinkled old Greek man with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. “You want to take the donkey taxi? Five Euros? Donkey’s yes?” Skills as a salesman are not necessary to convince us and we eagerly pass over crinkled bills. Saddled and ready the donkeys trudge up the steep stairs leaving a trail of their poo and our squeals behind them. This was an experience repeated twice more during our stay, later with whisky to ease the terror of facing straight down the steep side of a cliff on the back of an animal that liked to get as close to the edge as possible, charge directly into a traffic jam of several of it’s immobile friends, and change it’s speed more than Greek people yell Opa!


When we were not trekking around feeling as if we had magically hoped into a postcard a la Mary Poppins, traipsing through turquoise shutters and white domes followed by packs of friendly and adorable stray dogs, and exploring the black, red, and white beaches we were eating. There were twice-daily visits to the 24 hour bakery by our hotel for one euro nutella filled cream pastries and giant fluffy sugar covered doughnuts fresh from the oven. There were Greek salads of fresh vegetables and seasoned feta, flavorful stuffed grape leaves, juicy chicken and formerly undiscovered Greek dishes like Fava and baked Feta which maybe the single greatest thing on the planet and is actually just feta wrapped in pastry dough and baked in honey and sesame seeds. In the tradition of Germany, England, and Italy Greece also had amazing French fries (or “fried potatoes). While many people would probably think of French fries as an American food to be had with a cheeseburger at McDonalds I have eaten more in Europe then I ever do back at home, partially because they always seem to be magically included in whatever I order. On the subject of McDonalds we resigned ourselves to one of the more upscale European ones and had McFlurry’s both jaunts in the Athens airport as we made our way to and from the Acropolis and Athens markets.


After all of the laughter and adventures as well as the burial of my gold gladiator sandals (or “gold sports shoes” as one tittering hiker called them before adding “I kid, I kid, they work.”) it was time to say goodbye. With each step offering a new and more picturesque view, it is not at all an exaggeration to say that Santorini is the most beautiful place I have ever been. Leaving had all the finality of our final sunset from the lighthouse, a beautiful ending but bittersweet in it’s farewell. However just as the sunset brings promise of a sunrise to come I hold onto the belief that I will someday return to collect the pieces of my heart sown about the island and Saturday’s sunset will not be my last in Santorini.

Weeds

Despite the fact that I just returned from an absolutely incredible time in Greece and that tonight is Halloween and I should be out partying, I find myself in bed on the brink of tears. Amidst all the donkey riding, baked feta, sunsets and smiles this past week a garden of unpleasantness had begun to take root. Pushed back into dark neglected places and watered with a few stolen tears and fearful whispers before sleep, ugly twisted things began to grow. Sadness sprouted first as it usually does, followed quickly by pain, loss and homesickness. Guilt lagged behind but as always soon grew to be the largest, spreading it's roots and slowly starting to strangle everything else. Intertwined so closely with the others it cannot be uprooted without taking all grief up with it and so I let it be. I tried to ignore the vines snaking their way up my spine and around my heart and have now found as grief tightens with each beat that it's too late.

A tragedy in the family has caused the flowering of all kinds of emotional seeds many obliviously sown years ago, dormant until now when age and slightly increased maturity has brought about an entire new set of weeds in addition to the loathed familiar ones.

I have never been very good at gardening and the people who are usually so adept at pulling the weeds in my soul (often without an awareness they are doing so) are miles and oceans away, just as I am from my family. So instead of haphazardly and whole-heartedly, if mostly ineffectually, trying to comfort and help my family and watching guilt begin to shrivel and die from the warmth of kinds words from beloved and trusted kindered spirits I am just sitting here in Italy growing weeds and raining on my pillow.


*Photo from Stumble

Zen Revenge & Other Things

I've probably never mentioned that the family that lives above us is extremely loud and annoying. Since we are just worthless American students and the ceiling is 12 feet high, poking at it with a broom like Erin and I used to do in the Vistas last year is not an option. Incased in a thick cloud of midterm studying, over the past couple days I have found myself stewing more and more each second, about to lose my mind over every marble dropped upstaris. So I decided to get revenge the only way I could: by imprisioning the father of said family in a hateful miserable life, literarily speaking. I don't know much about Italian families so I had to use an American family dynamic but I assure you irresponsible parents and demon children upstairs this is about you.

If you need a distraction/laugh enjoy my very shittily written catharsis.


There had been a time when Bill and his wife had been in love. When they were young and new to each other there had been smiles from across the room, and witty debates over paint color and sex on the kitchen floor. Delving into each other’s pasts and wielding hopes with which they begun melding a future, they had shared secrets and dreams. Now it seemed all they shared were children. Three of them. Sticky, screaming little demons who dropped things on the floor and ran around in circles shrieking. Bill resented the fact that since their introduction he was not allowed to talk about himself anymore, only about the children. He was not allowed to eat at a restaurant without a kids menu, or take a little stroll on his way back from work instead of rushing straight home with more diapers. It’s true they were HIS children but still, it certainly had not been his idea to have them. To turn his cozy well furnished little apartment into the monkey exhibit at a zoo and his wife into a dumpy baby factory who talked of little else.
Bill tried to ignore the children as much as possible. He trudged up the stairs to his first floor apartment and dropping the diapers by the door, settled into his chair with the morning’s paper. Only to find that his daughter Jamie had apparently needed to make a ransom note as her preschool homework and the days headlines could only be read after a game of hangman to fill in the blocks left by her safety scissors. Halfway through an article he found an blue eye staring at him and he lifted the paper to find three year old Tommy giggling in front of him with a green mouth most likely from the magic marker in his pudgy left hand. “
“Do you mind sport? Daddy’s trying to read the paper here.” He went back to his article.
“Daaaadddyyyy”
“What Tommy?” asked Bill gruffly
“Will you play with me?”
“Not right now son. Why don’t you go play with the baby. And keep that damn marker away from your mouth. You’d think there’s nothing to eat in this house with you always chewing on makers…..Weeendyyyy….. Tommy’s got a green mouth again. You want to do something about that?”
“I’m a little busy Bill.” Came a terse response from the steaming kitchen. Angela started crying from her bedroom. “Billl….”
“What Wendy?”
“You want to get her so I can take the meatloaf out of the oven?”
“Meatloaf again?” muttered Bill with disdain “You’d think we were some damn poor people. No wonder the kid is eating crayons.”
Somewhere in the apartment Tommy turned his tin of marbles upside down and they spilled out onto the tile like shattering glass. Angela cried louder and started shaking the crib to get out causing it to bump against the wall. Waaaaaaa thunk, waaaaa thunk waaaaa thunk
Bill stared at the front door and listened to the beeping of the timer in the kitchen, the marbles being dropped back into their tin one by one, the pounding of the crib against the wall. He stared long and hard at the front door and then he threw the paper down and went to take care of Angela.


Not my best writing but now when I hear what must be elephant sized people parading around upstairs I just think of poor unhappy Wendy and Bill and I feel better :)

I finally got over the strange and inconvient illness that ruined my weekend. Now I'm spending my time cramming and paper writing over coffee and smoothies in the loft of a nearby bar where in my first weeks in Florence, I took the strangest and most repulisve shots ever. The lady asks sometimes if I want rum in my smoothie and while I think that really alcohol can only help when reviewing ethics, I have so far refrained.

Two midterms down, three to go. and then a wonderful week on the beaches of Santorini. Excited for a break from creepy Italian men, pee smelling streets, exasperating neighbors and (hopefully) the rain!

The aftershock felt across the world

Besides being a life altering and tragic thing, death is very complicated. We expect that when it happens we will know what to feel. We have been told there are stages that we should hop across like stepping-stones on the path to being whole again. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. But the Kübler-Ross model leaves out the emotion that for me has always been the most prevalent when death lays a fingerprint on my life: guilt. Guilt eats away at the denial, the anger, the depression and fills the spaces left by reason and perspective, which always seem to disappear in the face of loss. I feel guilty that the last thing I said wasn’t I love you, that it had been so long since we had spoken, that I’m alive and well while they have breathed their last. Guilt pervades every crevice of my existence. It disagreeably seasons my food, glues my shoes to the floor like bubble gum and turns mirrors into artistic likenesses of Medusa so that the only sanctioned activity seems to be grieving or attending church. It seems somehow disrespectful to laugh, go out with friends, and even take out the garbage as if nothing had happened. How rude to go on as if things were the same. How rude to live when someone has died.

But the way in which guilt gets me the most is when it hisses in a whisper over and over again: this isn’t your tragedy. I’ve been fortunate enough in life to so far not experience the kind of earth shattering loss that makes the planet go black. The kind that snuffs out the sun and feels very much like something out of Revelation, the apocalypse, the termination of all future existence. Both of my parents are alive, my friends scattered and strained but still breathing. I have lost people but never someone whose presence I demanded for my own existence or who had in their possession a piece of my soul. I have never known this tragedy and I am grateful. So in my past, when death stilled the spinning of the world on it’s axis for just a second and left behind the shadow of a loved one he had stolen I found that it was not my world he had stopped.

It’s true that I cried for days this summer lamenting the loss of an uncle I had truly loved, whose removal from my life left a large hole (and not just because he was a large man). I felt grief that has since subsided but is prone to flare-ups especially when I think about returning to Arizona for a Christmas without him. This grief had to fight being suffocated however, by the guilt of feeling that my loss could never compare with my fathers. My Uncle’s death was tragic, but it was not my tragedy. We had all lost someone we loved but the loss belonged to my Father. Four months later it still follows him around like an imaginary friend that only he can see. My grief was not that strong and so it allowed guilt to rope around it, intertwining the two as it had always been in the past. It was not my grandfather who died as much as it was my mother’s father. Not my Aunt as much as my Uncle’s wife. My parent’s neighbor who was like a father to me was in fact someone’s father and it was the loss of this father that brought his son home. These tragedy’s were not my own. I had no right to their sadness.

Today I found out that my favorite teacher has passed away. Passing at only 35 her story is a devastating one of cancer, two-year-old twins and a five-year-old boy left behind. Although it has been years since I have spoken to her I am still affected almost daily by the life lessons she instilled in me. She was my Psych Professor and a school favorite at Xavier; constantly dispensing advice, inspiration, and encouragement to hundreds of plaid skirted teenage girls over the years. It is a tragedy that the scope of lives affected by a single person is never realized until they are gone and now we are banded together in our memories and mourning, lamenting that we were among the last to be addressed as “future mother’s of America.” Although shocking the loss of our teacher, GP as she was affectionately known around Xavier, is almost insignificant when compared to the immeasurable grief that must be felt by her husband, or the devastation to her children, losing a mother at such a young age they might not even remember her. When I think of this, I cannot help but feel guilty for even experiencing a sense of loss. I try to remember however that in death grief is not rationed out. You do not have to be the most devastated to feel remorse that a life has been lost, that a person has been taken from you forever. There is no shortage of sadness in death and we can always make more. Regardless the relationship or history, in some ways the loss to the world of a great person is everyone’s tragedy.
RIP GP.