Complexities

I think we usually assume that life and it's parts occur in a bubble. The protagonist is pure and the antagonist is evil - cut and dry. Although I knew that those simplicities were never true, I felt the depth of that yesterday. All day I felt so sad about Brian, and yet work went on. My whole family was frantically trying to talk to my brother yesterday to see how he was doing and when he finally called me back, his empty voice just broke me heart. I just wanted to beg him to move back to the East Coast so we wouldn't all be so far away. And the thing is - there is nothing anyone can say. Nothing. Both of my parents called me to say that they wished that we could be together just to sit in the same room and appreciate each other and laugh and give hugs. (To see Brian's obituary, which includes a photo and the place to give donations, click here.)

But as sad as I was, and continue to be, joy over the littlest thing still has a way of sliding in. As we were cooking our dinner of sesame coated salmon and Thai noodles with peanut sauce, we got a knock on the door. "Maybe it's a package." The delivery people often confuse the two doors to our house and when there is a package of ours at the other door, our neighbors knock on the front door as a little signal.

I knew what it was since a charge recently showed up on our credit card statement - the wedding invitations. Now, the relevance here is that I LOVE paper. I love it. If I could be paid to make cards and wrap presents, I would be in blissful heaven. I get this catalog called Bags & Bows which is nothing but present-wrapping material and I tear it open when it arrives. So anyway, to me, this package was a big deal.

So I tore it open, put together one of our photo invitations, tied the specially colored ribbon that B suggested we buy aaannndddd... Perfection! Perfect! It's so beautiful that I can't stop looking at it. I love it. Love!

So I'm blissfully happy over something as simple as our invitations and similarly sad and depressed at the tragedy that is effecting people I love. I have the same urge that my parents were talking about - I just want to get in the car and drive to Plattsburgh to give my sweet Adam a hug. But truth be told, I take comfort in the fact that life is not segmented in bubbles of good and evil. I think that's what keeps us grounded and allows us to keep moving forward.

* A very big happy birthday to my brother who turns a quarter century today and also to B's sister who turned 27 yesterday *