This list was compiled on a dog walk a week ago.
Sights our Danny won’t see again: telephone poles, pine cones, his brother, a plate of scrambled eggs that I’ve made for him, the Flatirons, Ella, his own face in the mirror, his father’s face, a 6-inch rainbow trout resting in the palm of his hand.
4/4/26
Yesterday’s comments arrived in my mailbox as a series of small miracles. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Advice to the grieving can be at once risible and wise. Take for example the advice to get a hobby.
Get a hobby?
Can you imagine shopping for supplies, trying to learn techniques you’ve never done before, sorting out where to work on your project and where to put all those supplies in your house when you’re not working on it — all while in the throes of grief?
Which is to say, I feel gratitude that I already having a hobby (though I never call my quilting that).
To have supplies, lots of supplies, to have established places where those supplies live, to have techniques I’ve practiced for decades — these are truly things to be grateful for. Quilting. It goes on. I go on.
But here’s an example of how even a semi-distracting hobby never takes you far from the person you lost.
This morning, I decided this beast of an Epstein Quilt needed basting down. I’m sick of my thread getting caught on all the pins. I’m sick of my fabric squares shifting around. I should’ve done this last week but here I am.
In the process of basting the layers, I stitched the quilt to my pajama bottoms. It happens.
Here’s the thing. The last time I did this, I was in Longmont and Danny was sitting across from me. I lifted the little house quilt up from my lap to reveal a V-shape of thread where the quilt was attached to my pants and he smiled.
This morning when I lifted up this quilt to find myself threaded to my pj bottoms, it occurred to me: the last time I did this, it made Danny smile.
And then: that was probably the last time I saw him smile.
So much for the so-called distractions of a hobby.
We are here and not there. That’s one story.
We are here and weren’t really planning to be here. That’s another story.
We’re visiting our younger son. That’s a story too, one I’ll perhaps tell another time.
Signature Colorado experiences: fellow shopper in King Sooper with a white beard down to his belt buckle.
“Shallots are just past the tomatillos.”
Outside: shirtsleeve weather.
A theme song for this moment might be one of my old favorites. Traffic.
I’ve added a white window to the dark house so it’ll look illumined from within.