It feels very much like Monday. I'm back at work, back for the first time since last Wednesday afternoon, when I left early to take Heather to the doctor. The cup of coffee left on my desk had dried out, turning into a 1/4 " thick sludge. I had been monitoring my e-mail, so at least there weren't 100 unread messages, but I'm still feeling very uncentered. I don't know what I should be doing. I can't find a routine, a groove, something repetitive enough to occupy my brain. Thinking is painful. I wish I could have just stayed in bed, but that's no good either. I have to make the effort. I have to at least act like I'm functioning well. The problem with grief is that it is cumulative - each new heartache brings back memories of old heartaches, so that everything seems to well up at once, even things long settled in the heart. They all come back anew to haunt the soul.
Like a bad penny.... We used to scuba dive as our hobby, a hobby which eventually led to the procurement/construction of a small dive trailer to haul four sets of gear and four cylinders. It was a simple but elegant design - a box on a single axle frame, with the beginnings of a mural painted on both sides, and dive flags at either end. The kids had helped paint it, with Stephen taking special pains with the sharks. When we moved to Nashville, we sold it. We didn't dive as often, and we had no place to store it. Nearly ten years have passed since that October in '99 when we came up here, and I hadn't thought much about the trailer. I thought I had seen it the last time we went to Greenfield, but I wasn't sure. Then Saturday my mother-in-law called to say the neighbor across the street had our trailer for sale. The neighbor was asking a certain price, and we offered a little less. She called back later to say it was ours for the picking up. Sunday we made the trip to fet...
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