Friday, October 24, 2008

The Valley Song

I added a playlist to this blog. I apologize for those of you who don't like music on blogs-- hit mute! But if the time that Darrell was in the hospital had a theme song, this was it. This song still touches my heart and at times can bring me to sobs.

The Valley Song
Jars of Clay

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Photo of Darrell and I

Several people have emailed me asking if I could post a photo of Darrell. Its funny because right before the requests I had thought that I needed to do that. But first I had to get out all my old photo albums which proved more difficult than expected. In the process I found the DVD that the funeral home made for us with pictures of Darrell and I watched it this afternoon. I looked at the babies and thought how sad it was that they will never know their father. True he's not legally their father, but nevertheless, he's their father.

As I write my book I struggle with the fact that Darrell has no voice and what little voice he has is not really the person he was in life. I'm working on how to fix that.

This is my favorite photo of the 2 of us. It was several years old at the time of his death. The date is frozen in time now. A happy time for us as we celebrated one of his daughter's birthday at Olive Garden. I have this photo burned onto porcelain on his head stone in Tennessee, the one place he was finally happy.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Chapter One

It was beautiful spring day, a day full of promise. The sky was a bright beautiful, cerulean blue with the occasional white fluffy cloud drifting through. It was March, although early, but the wind didn’t know and had a healthy gust. The air was warm, in the 70’s, so the wind didn’t chill.

The wind didn’t need to chill me, for my heart was already cold. And although I stood at my husband’s grave I was still vaguely aware of the weather around me. The irony of the beauty of the day was not lost on me. It should have been raining. It should have been cold. It should have been ugly. As I my eyes fixed upon that beautiful sky, I could hear Darrell’s voice in my head “What a beautiful day to fly.”

And it was.