Still here -- and still in recovery, but all signs of depression seem to have vanished ...

... but just in case,  since this is my day off and I've no plans except for doing the mundane Monday stuff -- I'm going to drive to the civic center and photograph myself as painted by UCLA's Judy Baca on that beautiful new mural that was installed a few months ago -- and that I've been extravagantly ignoring each time I drive or walk past it going to and from our offices, trying to be blasé about this unbelievable honor.  No one mentions it, yet there I am depicted among community members living and dead; young and old; all representing life as it is and has been lived here in Richmond over the centuries, since the Ohlone Indians occupied this area long before the nation was formed; before the rose growing Japanese and Japanese/American families began to settle here in 1906; and long before WWII brought its migrant work force into this city.  We're all there in brilliant color!

It's very exciting to be immortalized in an important work of public art among others who are seen as stand-ins for a community proud of its diversity.  I've been waiting for some kind of ceremony that would mark its installation, but that doesn't seem to be happening, and the mural was completed weeks ago.


(for a closer look:  go to Judy Baca Richmond Mural Project)

I figure that I'm needing an ego boost about now (after the storm), and a boost is appropriate as a balance for unseen misery and pain experienced over the past several weeks.

Guess I should at least tell my family, and include it here for posterity, right?

This will require that you do some research while I try to figure out how to gather the strength to do the writing ... .

Look at the top left side of the screen, above my photo and the banner -- for that little white search bar.  Enter the name of my late son, Dale Richard Reid.  Relevant posts will be displayed -- but you'll need to scroll down to the one dated Wednesday, October 6, 2004.

It's all there; the haunting background to these last three weeks of depression.  Today, September 3rd is the anniversary of the day that his body was discovered on the bathroom floor.  He'd been dead (it was estimated) about 3 weeks.

If you'll note the dates, I place his death with confidence at August 17th for reasons given in that post.

In an unrelated series of acts, about 3 weeks ago I'd received a message from a best friend from his childhood, John Marshall, now living in Arizona -- saying that he was planning to visit the Bay Area soon to attend their high school class reunion, and would love to see me and to learn more about Rick.  I'd not seen John since they were both children.  I answered, inviting him to come to the Visitors Center while he and his Ana were in town, and that I'd love to talk about Rick.  Told him that the pain of the loss was now firmly in the past and that I was comfortable with it now.  On Saturday, John and Ana and I visited for perhaps an hour.  He'd brought class pictures in which he and Rick had shared life from perhaps fourth grade on through high school.  I so enjoyed their visit, and the chance to reminisce about life in Walnut Creek -- a childhood that had been so painful for my son for so many reasons -- and not all of them racial.

Then Barbara, another former student friend from Del Valle High got in touch through my blog and asked about Rick just a few days after John's initial contact.  She was not someone I remembered, but appeared to have been acquainted through high school with Rick.  She was working on the class reunion dinner (held last Saturday evening,  8/31) and was sure that others would want to know and that -- though she'd heard that he'd died -- didn't want to pass that along until confirmed.

I told both these voices from the past that the entire story was available on my blog, and gave them the dates to look up.  Secret-keeping could bring no consolation at this point, and these two young people seem to care.

... all the while the darkness was building, and in my mind's obvious attempts to layer over the pain of those memories -- the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voters Rights Act, seeing The Butler film; being aware that the 50th anniversary of the bus burnings at Anniston, Alabama; and this past week's anniversary of the Great March in Washington, D.C.; all became an incomprehensible ball of disembodied angst, and they all happened over the same 3 weeks -- the anniversary of that tragedy of the fateful 3 weeks that Rick lay dead and undiscovered.   I'd simply never made the connection with current developments and those underlying awful memories.  I was being protected from myself, I suppose.

Today, September 3, 2013, is the anniversary of that discovery -- and the realization of the pall that fell over my life exactly 3 weeks ago has visibly lifted.

The sadness left as unceremoniously as it came.  I simply needed to understand what was happening to me, and whether the feelings were appropriate to the causes.  Not sure that makes sense to anyone but me, but being able to explain myself to myself tends to bring serenity, eventually -- even in the throes of such devastating memories.

I'm free again.

I can breathe freely ... and, though I do miss him still .... I'm secure in the knowledge that the deep depression was an appropriate response to living events and past trauma.

That it was.