false starts

Several times I've sat down to write and been hung up on what to say. I've tried to compose a short memorial, but somehow everything I wanted to say seemed truncated and shallow, like all the well-intentioned but clumsily innacurate newspaper articles about him. I've tried writing about the beauty that has emerged from this terrible crisis, but it felt Pollyanna-ish and again, shallow, to attempt to describe a community's pulling-together in its profound pain and grief. What to say?

Only this, I think: love and friendship are the most important forces in our lives. Don't waste time being angry, feeling guilty or wishing things were different. Just call. Just go over there. Just hold them close and love them openly and without regrets. If you miss someone you love, don't feel guilty for not calling or writing enough. Call, write, tell them you miss them. Love and friendship make all the pain and suffering in this world bearable.

It's too bad that often we don't appreciate the love and frienship in our lives until the pain and suffering force us to take stock of the web of support around us and lean on it, hard. Over the last week I have been kicking myself, again and again, for everything I've taken for granted, every call not made, every chance missed. But I'm also so grateful for the opportunity to wake up, and to see that all the anguish is shared, and that healing will only happen together, through love, and through friendship.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Jason Lundberg has written a very moving and personal memorial to Jamie. And I keep returning over and over to Jamie's beautiful online portfolio.

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Sorry for the long absence, especially the long absence from knitting and from the real world, in which Earth Day and a shocking Supreme Court decision on abortion went by unremarked (by me). The real world has seemed a little unremarkable to me, lately, but this will pass. Thanks for being patient.