I thought this gig got easier with experience. Once again, I was wrong.

Children can be difficult. Each stage of development comes with it's own pitfalls and rewards. But somehow I got the idea that as I grew with my children, as I gathered experience points in this motherhood thing, it would get easier. Funny me. Delusional me, maybe.

Six and half years into this adventure, I'm beginning to realize that when you start with an infant, you start out easy. Address the basic things: food, clothing, shelter, love. Some babies are easier than others, I know (my first was a difficult baby). I just felt like I could work through everything, be generous and loving, and it would all work out. It gets so much more complicated from there.

As a family, we attended an open casket visitation and then funeral service this week. It was my daughter's first personal experience with this sort of ritual. We tried to prepare her for it, using a (quite serendipitous) question about a mortuary we drove by to explain things like embalming, viewing the dead, and funeral rites. Upon approaching the casket the other day, the first question was easy to handle. Then the distractions set in and it seemed like smooth sailing.

Until we hit the car. For some reason Ari thinks that the car is the perfect time for deep meaningful conversations.

I won't get into the nuts and bolts of the conversation. I will tell you that Ari was upset. Confronted with a person's mortality made her perceive a threat to those people that she loves dearly. [Grandpa's earlier attempts at being honest and well-meaning, with comments like "We all go someday. I'll die someday, too." didn't help matters.] And I desperately wanted to stop the car, pull her into my arms, and murmur platitudes assuring her that I would never leave her. That she would spend all her days sheltered in the arms of the ones she loves, never feeling the pain of loss and grief.

But I knew this would be wrong.

On one level, I couldn't bring myself to say this because, frankly, I want my children to outlive me. I want us all to have long, full, rich lives and come to a natural end. To tell my six year old that we would never leave her somehow implies to my brain that she will leave us instead. Short life isn't on my list of things I want for my kids. This is honest and raw and natural.

More than that, I couldn't offer Ari those reassurances because I know life is painful. It's hard. It's cruel sometimes. And I prefer honesty. We don't believe in Santa Clause, perfection, or that everything works out all the time. We do celebrate when things go right, when we try our best, and when the hard stuff reminds us of how good the good stuff is. If I am the one to leave my daughter, I do not want to complicate her grief with lies. I want her to know that I value her, love her, respect her.

So, as hard as it was, I didn't offer empty promises. Instead I followed her lead and did my best to help her through her fear. In the end, she seemed to feel better after deciding what memento she would keep from each of us. She asked for my jewelry box, some of her dad's shirts, her brother's keepsake box. She staked her claim on those things, in case one of us dies.

It took almost all of my energy to calmly progress in this conversation. To accept that she needed to have it. To hear her fear, to lift her up, to promise her these transient material things in case of disaster. Days later, I'm still digesting and processing, and when I can sit and think about it, I go ahead and cry.

The questions just keep getting harder.

All the things I'd like to say get jumbled together with my expectations and trapped inside my head.

Five things to do today:

1. Pick up all the toys littering the house.
2. Load, turn on, unload, repeat re: dishwasher.
3. Teach school.
4. Catch up on school record keeping.
5. Run over to that (new to me) cafe for tomorrow's needed birthday gift.

Isn't that exciting? And seemingly easy to accomplish?

Wait - there's also a piano that needs to be moved into the house. And those overdue library books. And the trip to the post office. And trimming the dog's toenails. The list really does go on.

My life: a fairly accurate representation of what goes on in my head all the time. There's the short list of five (or even one) thing/s I might want to do for myself and my mental well being. Post on my blog. Write an actual poem. Read something that isn't just brain numbing. Work on my decoupage project. Knit. Deeply inhale the steam from my cup of tea. Instead I get tangled up in all the other things. I feel like I'm running an endless maze and I've forgotten the way back.

Some days this is a very sad thing. Some days it's just the way it is. And sure, like most of us, there are things I would change about my life if I could but usually I focus on just accepting and changing things where it is possible. Serenity, anyone?

In the meantime, my words are all jumbled together in my head while my soul is busy living out this life of mine. Weird and all jumbled up together.

When someone calls me antisocial, my whole body tenses and I want to throw up.

When I was in second grade I participated in my First Communion (Catholic). It was a Big Deal. Months of work, frilly white dress, veil, gloves, my own (new) rosary... I even got my picture professionally taken in the whole get up. It's an odd awkward photograph, my dark hair sharply contrasting with all that white material while I bowed my head in a semblance of humility. I believe I've made my point: This was a Big Deal.

First Communion was Big enough that I even got my own party. In my house, party translated into tons of people, ridiculous amounts of food, a beer keg, and a store bought cake. It was tradition. And expected.

But here's the thing. I don't like parties. I don't ever remember liking parties. It was too much. It was overwhelming. The only party I've ever been excited to plan was my wedding reception - and once I did all the obligatory reception things, I did what I wanted for the rest of the night. Which meant I hung out with the people I liked and listened to music I enjoyed. The rest of the invitees were on their own. So I enjoyed about half of my wedding reception. Which is a much higher percentage than most parties, so I count it as a win.

How I digress.

Back to the First Communion Big Deal. This is the first party I remember truly and deeply hating. I was too little to play with the big kids and too big for the little ones. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable around my drunk relatives (my parents didn't drink, and the difference was shocking to me, even then). There were more grown ups than kids. I was the star of the show so I was supposed to talk to everyone. And worst of all, after putting up with all that frilly white lace dress, gloves, tights, shoes, veil crap, I had to wear another dress for the party.

I hated dresses. I still do (mostly).

As the guests started to arrive my dread grew until it seemed completely unmanageable. I couldn't face the day. And I was too young to articulate any of that. I went all the way to the back of the yard (a good distance from my mom's watchful eye) to hide. I climbed up on an old trailer sitting along the fence. It was the kind with a tongue at one end, two wheels in the middle, and open all around. I was feeling good about the situation until gravity took over, tipped the trailer the other way (like a bad seesaw) and spilled me onto the ground.

I wasn't hurt, but I'd stained my dress. And just like that, a crappy party went to sheer hell. I tried sneaking back into the house - though I have no idea what I was going to do after that - but I got caught by some helpful woman and delivered to my mother. Who was absolutely horrified by my appearance. I had stained my dress. At my very own party.

I was allowed to change into comfortable play clothes and then thrown back into the party. I had to apologize the rest of the day to everyone for my appearance. I had to apologize to my mom for ruining all her hard work. It felt like the rest of the party was one huge punishment for running away in the first place.

I was eight. And this party has been preserved in my memory with amazing clarity - something really unusual for me. I couldn't tell you who my second grade teacher was, what sports I might have played that year, what my favorite game/movie/tv show/book was, or whether or not I liked school. I'm sure some people have all that information stored in their head but mine got misplaced. So the retention of my First Communion party strikes me as significant.

I think it was the beginning. I think it marked the time when my shyness started to become crippling. It was the first party I tried to hide from everyone, and I've spent years hiding at parties ever since. My father used to bang on my bedroom door and tell me to stop being antisocial, come out and enjoy the party.

I suspect that many people who think they know me wouldn't use the word "shy" as a description. But it's true. I work really hard at overcoming this feeling but the truth is that it's incredibly difficult for me to walk into an unfamiliar situation, meet new people, make connections with the people around me. Even now, after 7 years of hosting a Christmas shindig for 15-20 family members, I have to eventually go hide in the kitchen or risk a total freak out. I've overcompensated at times and found myself in some really bad situations. Sometimes I totally fail and cancel at the last minute.

It's not that I want to stay an arms length away from everyone. It's just that sometimes I don't feel like I have any choice.

In a world full of noise.

There's a deep part of me, strangely silent, that yearns for words. The right words or wrong words, awkward or flowing, it doesn't matter. The silence is deafening and it is echoing through my soul.

In a bad way.

Lord, help us bear up under our sufferings and call us home in the end.

We were in church this evening and I missed most of the beginning. My 20 mo old has started to resist going into the children's program, screaming at poor DeeDee until she feels so bad for him that she fetches me. It's all a total power tripping manipulation by a toddler. So I've responded with bribery. You want that special snack? Have to go see Mrs. DeeDee first! The approach has met with mixed results.

But I digress.

Once I finally made it into the service, I sit down, start to get comfortable, and that's when I see it: some kind of insect down on the floor under the chair in front of me. I think: Hmmm. This would upset Ari. Then: Hmmm. I hope this doesn't upset the girl sitting there. And then the insect moved. And I thought: Oh! I thought you were dead. I guess not.

About then, Marc and I realized we were both looking at this insect, and he leaned over whispering "I tried to flip him over; his wing is broken." I shrugged. After all, with a broken wing that insect is doomed. It's a flying insect. They're not that adaptable. So, that's that.

Only, it wasn't. Because throughout the service, that insect would randomly start moving again. Little legs going, moving ever so slightly sideways. Then it would stop, as if exhausted, and rest awhile. Each time it stopped, I thought "That's that." But the weird thing is: no one told this insect it was doomed. It didn't know. So it kept trying.

I know, we're getting into a pretty well used and fairly lame analogy here. But I can't help it because I got socked in the head with it this evening. How much do we limit ourselves, all by ourselves? How much do I fool myself into one more try? Should it matter if it's simply hopeless? Is there really ever an end to hope?

I carry a lot of emotional baggage (ha ha! surprised you there, didn't I? You weren't expecting that!). One of the most complicated things I carry around is related to my mom's illness and death - yes, those are two separate things. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that this is related to Mom, what with Mom being one of the highly complicated things in my life. Ack. Again I digress. Moving along... I reached a point in Mom's illness that I stopped hoping she would get better. Deep down (way down) there's a part of me that believes that the reason she didn't get better is because I stopped Believing.

How's that for guilt?

Have I mentioned this before? Forgive me if I have. Every time I come around to it, it feels so dark and bad that I just want to whisper it quietly like a secret I'm imparting, begging for forgiveness.

There are some problems with this little belief of mine. Logically, I know that giving up hope of recovery didn't kill my mom. The part of me that believes this, however, has the mentality of a small child. It can't hear reason, see logic, believes in Santa Claus and that everything always works out in the end. Plus, there's no way to ask forgiveness from the person I impacted the most (Mom - try to keep up). Not in a tangible way, anyway.

In the first few years after Mom died, I wrote her letters. I always knew she was gone but it helped me believe for a little while that she wasn't so far gone. They weren't for her. They were for me, because I couldn't cope in this cruel world without my mom. Eventually I learned. It was hard, and it sucked. And I stopped writing letters to a dead woman.

Back to the point. I stopped believing Mom would get better. And then she died. And a part of me was relieved. Yep. Awful as it sounds, it's true. The harsh facts: My mother died of starvation, looking overweight and cancer riddled (yes, you can look like you have cancer), addicted to morphine and when you watch someone you love go through this, the end is a relief. A small, cold-comfort kind of relief.

But what if no one had told Mom she was doomed? What if no one had ever used the word terminal? Would she have known anyway?

In a cruel twist of fate, my dog was diagnosed with cancer last year. Liver, metastasized (I've ranted about him, too. Look under "Simon.") I seriously doubt he understood the vet when the vet said "terminal." As smart as he was, I doubt he understood why I was standing there sobbing. Or why, for the last few weeks we had together after that, he got loads and loads of peanut butter. But he died anyway. And I'll never, ever forget those last moments, watching him, waiting with him, seeing the life fade out of his eyes. It's the first time I've watched a soul float away (we can argue elsewhere about dogs having souls, I'm busy here) and I'll never forget it.

So where does the knowledge of our end come from? Internal, external, or both? Do we all die alone or is it possible to go while being loved? Does any of that matter, anyway, as we are judged?

Towards the end of the service, Marc got up, picked up the insect and took it outside to die. I was grateful. Not so the struggle for life wasn't smack in front of me like that, but so the insect could at least feel a bit more at home in the end.

Thunder

It's late; quiet with much of the world asleep. My favorite time of day.
Tonight is better than some - a gentle rain can be heard through the open windows. The rain nourishes my plants and keeps my neighbors inside,
Neighbors who enjoy the quiet much as I do but fill my home with the acrid scent of cigarette smoke.
The price I pay for opening the windows to the cool night air.
But the kids are asleep and the dog is settled in and the rain is picking up and I think, for a moment, that this is the best it's going to get all day, all week.
Then I think: pessimist.
When I deign to be honest with myself I have to face the emptiness inside. No matter how hard I try to gorge myself on hope it seems to pass right through me -
It reminds me of holding a fingertip over the flashlight, the light still gets through.
Amazingly, as I wander down these mental walkways, the rain begins to fall more earnestly until a rumble of thunder rolls through my head.
The quiet has past and I'm grateful for the distraction.

Today I hope that Heaven is a place where you can fix things you broke while you were alive.

When I was a kid, the only grandmother in my life was on dad's side. She lived about 10 minutes away by car and Dad spent most Saturday mornings at her house tracking her finances and keeping up the property. As my sister and I got older, we each took a turn at joining him to mow the lawn or clean the house. I spent many Saturday mornings at Grandma's. It was a big, adult yard - no swingset but a nice park bench next to the flower garden. I have a number of strong memories of that place. I can't recall a time when Grandma was ever nice. Sometimes she was downright mean, mostly just highly indifferent. But week after week of pushing a lawn mower or mop around gave you a sense of connection. Grandma died some years ago and it was easy for me to let go. At the time, I was reeling from my mother's death and the only emotion I could dredge up at Grandma's funeral was sympathy for my father. After all, good or bad, he'd lost his mother. It just didn't mean a lot to me.

I find myself in a similar place now. I got the call this evening that my Grandfather died a few days ago. He wasn't really my grandfather, exactly. He was my mom's step dad. And it's complicated, because my maternal grandmother died when I was 2, leaving that step dad a widow. He remarried a few months after her death. A whole lot of things ripped apart the fabric of my mother's relationship with her father (he'd been in her life since she was a toddler, as opposed to her biological alcoholic abusive father). So while I vaguely knew this man called 'Papa' by my sister, I had no real connection to him. The last time I saw him was over 8 years ago at my wedding. And I only invited him to be polite. Well, he died the other day and the only emotion I'm feeling is sympathy for my sister because now she doesn't have a chance to mend her relationship with him.

In this situation, before I knew what I was doing, I decided to be the one to call my sister and tell her. And while I spoke with her, I volunteered to go to the visitation with her as moral support. Now, I'm feeling a whole lot of other things.

The woman my grandfather married never really wanted us around. It was fairly obvious - I got the message when I was still a child. But these two people are intimately connected to my mother's side of the family. And going to the visitation means I'm going to have to see all of them. And the mere thought of it is making my blood a little warm. It harkens back to that dark time of mom's illness and death. I had known them a little when I was younger. Then mom got sick and they came out of the woodwork. Food, time, hugs, love, support - as long as Mom was terminally ill they were there. After the funeral they packed up and left and stayed away. Their connection to me (my mom) and their obligation to my dead grandmother was gone and so were they. A part of me is still angry about this.

The whole thing gets into the concept of authenticity. Sure, I appreciate the casseroles that fed us during that short intensely bad time. But I resent the fact that as soon as Mom was in the ground they were gone. And I would have traded every casserole for somebody to give me time, hugs, love, and support in that dark time after Mom died. I wanted something real, something authentic to hold on to during those long days. Something solid in a world that had fallen apart. It's been over 10 years and just thinking about how amazingly lonely I felt then makes me cry now.

I must admit, even if they had stayed I might have felt amazingly lonely anyway. My whole world changed when Mom died and that was very, very hard.

When I was a kid, I never really thought about how my mother didn't have a mom or dad around. Once I got a bit older, I began to wonder a little bit about it but was afraid to ask, afraid to rock the boat. My Mom was the center of my universe but she wasn't without faults, including a tendency to lash out at the nearest person when angry or sad. Late one night I found her sitting in the living room crying, missing her parents. She said it never goes away, that missing. And now all three of them are gone, truly gone, and I hope that missing is over for all of them.

That thing on my desk is hindering my ability to work.

I stopped into a bookstore this past Saturday morning and made a killing at the clearance rack. I bought stickers and button pins for that 6 year old birthday party on the horizon, got some high quality wrapping paper dirt cheap, found an amazingly funny little book for $0.75, and got myself a new writing journal. The point in this is going to now shift focus to... the journal.

It's 5x7 or so (perhaps a bit bigger) with a cloth wrapped soft cover in black and white with a red ribbon page marker embedded in the binding. It's not fancy but it feels great in my hands. It was a bargain, too, at 75% off. I hesitated for a long time over it. After I picked it up the first time, I knew I wanted to buy it. It was just that nice. But I don't need a journal, nor want one.

Now that I have this wonderful thing, I can't think of a thing to do with it. There's the obvious; it's a writing journal, you write in it. But what to write? Is there a point to the book itself? Should the book have a purpose? Should each page be an isolated foray into language?

I feel this ridiculous amount of pressure in regards to this journal. I already pulled all the tags off and they've migrated to the dumpster (with the receipt) so I'm pretty well stuck with it now. But it's just sitting there on my desk, haunting me. Making me feel like I'm missing something. Making me wonder which thoughts bouncing around in my head should migrate to paper.

And no, I'm not immune to the hint of irony involved in blogging about journal intimidation.

Night Shifts to Day

Night Shifts to Day

I slept for a few hours after a late night wander through the house. I would have slept longer if not for the child at my elbow asking for breakfast.
I waved her away, promising to climb out of the warm covers, and then went back to sleep.
I woke again to the flutter, flutter, peck sound of a bird trapped in the chimney behind the headboard of the bed.
It's an old house we occupy, and it used to be warmed by coal. Many rooms have these tiny coal chimneys along the wall, and the basement has a chute for delivering the dark lumps of fuel.
The chimney cap related to our bedroom has some kind of flaw - we keep forgetting to investigate the problem and fix it - which allows small birds to be swept down in high winds.
So we wake up to a flutter, flutter, peck of a desperate animal used to freedom but caught in a trap.
Each time, we clean off the headboard and heave it out of place with mercy and pity mingling in our eyes. We open the windows on these windy days, lock out the cats, and take off the little cover behind the bed.
Each time, the bird finds true sky so fast that we have trouble identifying the species and I realize that locking out the cats is ridiculous - they wouldn't have time to make a catch.

In the Details

In the Details

I stood at the edge of the bed today to fold the laundry. The huge windows don't let in much light on these overcast afternoons in late winter.
The room is a mess, no matter how many time I promise myself I will pull myself together and clean. Stacks of things that haven't found a place or are simply out of place compete with the layer of dust for someone's attention.
I can hear the wind working around: the flag out front snaps, like a cheap firecracker, while the old coal stove exhaust behind the headboard emits short puffing sounds as the bitterness tries to sneak its way into the house.
Downstairs, you can hear the wind howl around the back of the house, mournful and profound. Such howling started when we built the outlying garage and I'm oddly grateful for it. I hear the moan and feel less lonely inside, more appreciative of these walls that surround me.
I am chilled down to the core and feel stifled in these clothes meant to keep me warm. I soak up hot beverages in vast quantities but it hardly touches the cold;
I am tense: against the cold, with the anticipation of sunshine, out of fear that the dark coldness will never go away.
No matter how often I live through this stage of winter I always lose confidence that spring will come again. One day, my fatalistic heart believes, the sun won't shine anymore and I will be lost here forever.

Grab a blanket, it's cold outside.

Do you ever find that you have a nearly overwhelming urge to talk but have nothing to say? This happens to me all the time. It's like words are stuck in my head in some nasty punishing game of pinball - without all the cool lights and sounds. I know they're in there. And I know I want to let them out. But connections fail, willpower fades, and the moment is past.

So, lacking the ability to hold a coherent conversation, here are some things I've been thinking about lately.

1. I love my husband and kids. I like this life I lead. I'm grateful I get to stay at home to be a mom, and that we've decided to continue home schooling Arianna for awhile. I also want a night out, maybe an entire day off, and am seriously dreading all the arguments about continuing to home school Arianna.

After all the things that we've done over the last 8 years that our fellow humans have looked at askance, you'd think they would just get used to it. I suppose they keep holding out hope that we'll morph into "normal" with no notice.

2. Coffee is my enemy. Or if it isn't, it should be. I only drink it when it's loaded with cream (preferably vanilla flavored) and sugar. And yet I keep enabling myself to drink it. You'd think I'd learn the lesson and stick with tea. I suppose I keep holding out hope, blah, blah blah...

3. "Making choices the most spiritual thing we do," says Shane at Mosaic. Or he said something like it, anyway. And the more I think about this, the more I accept the truth of it. There are many things I do not choose about my life. For example, I wouldn't choose to have coffee as my enemy (think about it's sheer thorough infiltration of our entire culture), but it is. And still I choose to drink it.

Ok, so drinking coffee isn't a spiritual exercise - or at least it isn't for me, enemy or no. It isn't the drinking of the coffee, it's the choice to drink it knowing that I probably shouldn't, knowing that it's just going to be unkind in the end. And this is a huge metaphor for life, isn't it? Don't we take all these things we know and use them to make choices good and bad? Admittedly, I do occasionally close my eyes and blunder forward but mostly my choices are based on my knowledge and experience. And sometimes it seems that the problem lies exactly there: the knowledge base and experience I use to make my choices.

What do you do when your knowledge is faulty? When your experience shines the light the wrong way? How do you learn to disregard everything your head and heart tell you, guessing that they are wrong but unable to understand?

Heavy, vague questions. Here's where my real life intersects:
A great example came into harsh view over the last few days. Hang in there, the connections might take awhile. My nephew informed me that when my sister was young and "threw a fit" her (my) parents would do things like throw her across the room ("and isn't that bad?" he added in a rush). I looked at my sister, wondering about all this, and she said "I might have exaggerated a bit." And I shook my head and said sadly "Only a bit."

No, I wouldn't say my parents were abusive. They ruled with a heavy and explosive hand, though. They never apologized, never backed down, and spent almost all of out time together trying to mold us into what they wanted us to be. This doesn't sound so bad. And I often think of it this way. And I excuse the behavior as being "what they knew" and the "best they could do." But deeply do I remember my dad's kick that sent me sprawling across the floor, and then choosing to leave the house, and making a condition of my return that they weren't allowed to hit/kick/etc me anymore. I was almost 16 then and they were embarrassed that I had told my friend's mom what had happened, embarrassed enough that they agreed to my condition and actually stuck to it, for fear of being embarrassed again.

I spent years drinking behind closed doors, creating poisoned relationships, ekeing out a miserable existence. Is this because my parents were explosive and heavy handed? I don't know. And I'm not sure I care. No matter what they chose to do, I chose to respond this way. And when I get really frustrated or angry with my kids I find I sometimes choose to act in the same way. [Yes, yes, no shock there: we are imitators by nature and learn from our environment, etc.]

But here's where things get dicey for me. I can admit that I made and make some of my choices based on a faulty knowledge/experience base. But what is faulty? Can it be fixed? How do you make these sorts of judgements?

For me, I often rely on outside sign posts. No, I don't want someone to stand over me and tell me what to do. But guidance sometimes rocks. Sometimes you really do just have to give up what you know and blunder forward. But all of this means that in the end you lack a basic trust in yourself. Hopefully, my inward distrust is a healthy thing. I don't know, really, as it's a terribly hard thing to judge.

And so I suppose I'm beginning to hold on to Shane's other rather prolific comment "The past is the past." I just don't know how it all goes together yet. How it changes everything or if it even does.

4. [Amazingly, there is still more!] I haven't been to therapy in over a year. This is the longest break I've had since I started therapy 8 years ago. And I'm so grateful that I went. At the time I was poisoning every good thing in my life, putting my marriage on the line, and was ready to just not step out of the way of the end. Thank you to Marc for forcing the issue, to my therapist for not forcing the issues, and the friends who stayed around anyway. [Award speech ends here.] But it's scary not being in therapy. The real world has actual repercussions and consequences. Therapy was a reality suspension in which words could float away from me without harming anyone else. And I miss that. I should probably try writing again. It's possible that sort of thing is available there.

5. I don't have very many secrets left. I've given away a lot of them. It's strangely lonely.

I can't handle the sound of my own voice anymore. Later.

PostScript: Who's Shane at Mosaic? This Mosaic is Mosaic Christian Church of St. Louis. They meet downtown (cool for me). Shane's the pastor there. He's unlike the "average" pastor: he's not worn a suit to a single church service I've attended, he conducts a lot of meetings at Starbucks (infiltration - see?), and I'm pretty sure I heard him use the word "crap." You can look him/the church up on the web at mosaicstlouis.com

Climate Change

All the words are scrambled behind my eyes, victims of lit monitors spewing forth endless images.
The clatter and chaos of my surroundings limits free thought -
For the most part, language goes through a process of distillation, emerging efficient and stark.
Deeply complex ideas become simple statements of truth requiring a moment of wary faith.

In this world of language drought
My mind moves in monologue;
I have become starved for conversation.
Profound moments come in quick bursts like firecrackers across my brain
Leaving little impression beyond the echo of their light.
I grapple for some method of notation before it is all gone;
I litter bits of paper around me, seeming to exist within an exclamation mark.
Taken altogether, there is a sense of missing grace.