Death and the aftermath ...

I'm not sure that I have ever experienced such a long spell between entries. Not sure why that is, but this is not the best of times. So many changes to morph into some kind of undetermined future.

The events surrounding the death of Marionella churned up so much that I thought was buried forever in the past -- but, no. Despite the fact that most of those with whom I shared the early years have now passed on or are surely in no shape to wield hurts of any kind. Still, there is this corrosive quality that lingers on through the epochal events like funerals that brings one's past back in living color. It was like that. It's this intimately-connected but still distant collection of relatives who come together now only in these occasional "snapshots" provided by the need to memorialize one or the other of us whose life has now ended.

Despite triumphs over adversity and monumental problems overcome, in the chapel at St. Elizabeth-Seton Catholic church in Pleasanton on Wednesday morning all the good stuff was stripped away by the service (being conducted by our family priest of long standing -- someone I grew up with), and the vastly changed faces from my childhood of children now grown old. There I sat -- feeling all of the inadequacies I'd lived as a kid -- never quite being enough or doing enough or just not being enough like those around me. Long before I learned that it was really just fine to not fit the mold and that being different wasn't a punishable offense.

I suppose one of the reasons the loss of uncomplicated loving Marionella was so disturbing was that she was the non-judgemental open and warm kin who one never had to explain or apologize to or be anything more or less than one was. She asked only that. Her love and loyalty were unconditional. She gave so much. She's gone. Life will fold in around that fact and we will go on; of course. That's the process. Until the change comes that will take me with it... .

But now it's back to packing and storing and preparing for another huge change. Dorian is moving away, back into her own precarious life again; the life of the mentally disabled. I will busy myself with the physical parts of that and postpone the disturbing thinking parts until later on when I can give myself over to it fully. I'll then cry some and celebrate some, I'm sure. But between those extremes there will be a recurring of fears about her safety in an explosive world where innocence can be fatal to her survival. That's the big stuff. The small stuff is just where in the world can I cram all of her belongings now scattered around my condo into one small bedroom across town? If I can stay with that, I'll make it through the next few days.

Then it's back to work at the National Park Service in a week or so and back to weekend trips to Mendocino to his beautiful home at oceanside and sunsets and art shows and concerts and allowing my woman to rise above my mother -- before it's too late to bring her out again into the world.

Lots to juggle, isn't there?

But then when was there ever not ... ?