On Lost Love, a Year Later

They threshed the field's long golden grass while I was gone this last week. Now all that's left is a wild turkey picking through the leavings and just below the fence, a tangled knot of Queen Anne's lace.

Everyone complains that the summer heat came too early this year without realizing that summer is here. The new green leaves of spring trees deepened and darkened into baked green - a hot, kiln-fired color. The final blooms on the magnolia turned a waxen buttery color, and the petals hang heavy and limp. Only after a rain does the melting Southern heat relent, turning briefly to a mist that rises from the road, the smell of ozone and wet burned things.

It's that sudden oppressive heat that descended when we weren't looking that reminded me of year ago: a surprisingly mild evening, late twilight, cool enough to go outside without losing your breath. How we walked slowly through the grass that felt fleshy and alive. And then the next day that came with merciless heat, even in the earliest hour of the day, when we pushed ourselves into the car with death at hand.

Who could breathe in such humidity and tears? The hot damp flush of despair rising up my throat, staining my neck, my cheeks. Who could avoid choking on thick air and salt water?

Who could forget the bright clear light that slanted through the windows, the dry, dead wheatness of the grass, the fervent green of the trees that he must've seen just before he closed his eyes?

Who could not wish, even a year later, for a gentle twilight and cricket song to soothe the sadness of missing him?

Another Horsedreamer's Blues

With the windows down and the music up loud, I drove south out of the N.C. mountains today on Highway 441. On a whim, I brought along Recovering the Satellites, the Counting Crows album that came out my senior year of high school and turned me into a die-hard fan. I can't remember the last time I listened to it in its entirety. But today, I did.

I had forgotten about the song "Another Horsedreamer's Blues" even though it was one of my favorites on the album. I was reminded of the passage I used to listen to, rewind and listen to again and again...

"Margery's wingspan's all feathers and Coke cans and TV dinners and letters she won't send. And every race night is shot through with sunlight. Trying to hit the big one one last time tonight for drunken fathers and stupid mothers and boys who can't tell one girl from another. So she takes her pills - careful and round - one of these days she's gonna throw the whole bottle down but she's trying to be a good girl and give them what they want."

Granted, I didn't have a drunken father or a stupid mother, but I did mostly think the boys in high school couldn't tell one girl from another. It was the part about trying to be a good girl and give them what they want - there was something about the way it was sung, so angry and defiant. Searching for what it was they wanted.

And at times - even at 31 - I still feel like that 17-year-old girl with clipped wings trying so hard to fly right. Trying so hard to live up to expectations. And sometimes, in a moment, rolling down the asphalt at 65 mph with my red hair whipping in the wind, I realize that I'm a stranger to myself in the mold and so familiar to myself instead with the early spring sun turning my hair to fire.

Requiescat in pace, Kudzu

My dearest, my most beloved Kudzu, may you rest in peace.

May you rest knowing that you were loved to the greatest depths of the human heart. May you rest knowing that you were and are cherished.

May you rest knowing that your constant companionship warmed even the loneliest, the most sorrowful of hours. May you rest knowing that you were light in a dark and sometimes unkind world.

May you rest knowing that your presence brought joy, comfort, happiness, peace. May you rest knowing that you were all things good (even when you were bad).

May you rest knowing that beyond pet, you were family, as much my lifeblood as anything. That you were my very heart.

May you rest, fully restored to your gray fuzzy bellied glory, with no scars or marks or patches to evidence of your illness.

May you rest knowing that you will never have to endure my picture-taking ever again.

May you rest after your long and hard-fought battle. Having been so brave and true, holding on for so long for me, so that I could accept that it was your time.

May you rest knowing that I never wanted you to die, except that one time you ate my blue merino wool J. Crew sweater (and even then, not really).

May you rest, weary traveler, from all those thousands of miles on the highway between here and North Carolina that would have been so much longer without you.

May you rest, knowing that you will never have to be stuck in the car with me in the McDonald's drive-in in Leland, North Carolina while I have a panic attack over the holiday weekend traffic.

May you rest knowing that you will be remembered in repose on the windowsill, on the kitchen towel, under a blanket nestled against my stomach.

May you rest gently purring or making sleepy kitty noises as you slumber. With your snaggletooth hanging out.

May you rest with my gratitude for having never eaten my eyeball as I feared you would.

May you rest having served me well with the greatest devotion and loyalty - no matter what mistakes I made in life.

May you rest from leaping onto the cabinets, the countertops, the bookshelves, the bed with sprightly grace.

May you rest with an endless supply of spider plants whose leaves you may nip to your heart's content.

May you rest from strewing toilet paper from the downstairs bathroom into the kitchen.

May you rest, never to be forgotten.

May you rest, my darling. May you rest from exhaustion, from pain and from this namelessness that has consumed you.

May you rest in the hands of the Heavenly Father who made you.

My dearest, my most beloved Kudzu, may you rest in peace.

Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Ashley.

Six months ago, the words stopped.

I couldn't say precisely why. Perhaps it was my unwillingness to let the laptop go and embrace a new computer. Perhaps it was the myriad of out-of-town trips that kept me busy through October. Perhaps it was the onset of the second holiday season without Ronnie. Perhaps it was the relentless pursuit of the perfect house. And perhaps it was a combination of those things or none of those things. But whatever the reason, the inner-narrative that became the outer-blog was suddenly silenced.

I feel like I ought to be able to find the words now to describe those months, to fill in the great void I've left here. When I try to pin them down and sort them out into some chronological experience, it all falls apart. Instead it's a rush and blur of images and scenes. Mountains in October in North Georgia and Boone, NC. Dahlonega in November. Pictures of leaves. A second Thanksgiving without Ronnie. And Christmas without him, too. Cold, gray days, long and dark.

There were sounds: A Death Cab for Cutie concert at the Fox. And Ray LaMontagne's voice crying out "Jolene" against those beautiful theater walls. A new David Gray album - fourth row tickets purchased for his upcoming concert in Atlanta. John Mayer at Phillips Arena again, covering "Ain't No Sunshine."

The milestones: Dillon is three now. And Reese is one. And I bought a house. The Barrister, for whatever reason, still sees fit to hang around me.

I still work in the office between The Goofball and The Linguista.

Nothingandsomuch has changed. And nothingandsomuch has stayed the same.

And even though I want to say everything, I settled for saying something. Something like...hello.

Johnny Castle, in the Corner of My Mind

July 3, 1988

Dear Diary,
July is a good month. I think Patrick Swayze is cute. I love the movie Dirty Dancing. Jennifer Gray is good for the part. I want to be in a movie with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray. I want there to be a Dirty Dancing II. Adios.

Love,
Ashley

***

July 4, 1988

Dear Diary,
Today is July 4th! We had a big meal and firecrackers. I have a dream of being in a movie with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray. I still have flash backs of the movie. It's 11:15. Gotta go!

Love,
Ashley

P.S. My birthday is in 2 days!

Sorta Memory

Just listening to the Sarah McLachlan station on Pandora, and it's playing Tori Amos's "Sorta Fairytale." And for a flash, I'm standing in the kitchen of the Grace Street apartment in the middle of fall. The windows are open, twilight is settling, and the air begins to bite. Debating a glass of wine and smelling the cold. Filled with melancholy, but I don't remember why...and then, like a fairytale would, it dissolves into nothing more than an ephemeral shiver.

Gratitude: Part I - Belonging

For so long, I felt like a ship adrift, having untied my moorings and sailed into different waters. Though I found a harbor, it was difficult to drop anchor. It seemed that I would throw it over the side, only to find it weightless and futile. An anchor with no gravity. A ship with no way to hold.

I stubbornly stayed in the harbor though, convinced that I had followed the right currents, that I had read the map correctly, that I had found the waters where I could finally fold up my sails and put my weary soul to rest.

And while I had one myopic eye to the telescope looking into the distant future and trying to spot that solid ground that I longed for, slowly but surely my anchor gained gravity. Ounce by ounce, it grew heavier. One by one, those whose names I knew become those I knew. The husks of acquaintance were stripped away to reveal the meat of friendship.

On Friday, I passed through the Atlanta office on my way back home. Two women came surging from one of the hallways and one said, "I told her I heard your voice!" This welcome, this recognition of me, was a reminder that I am home in more ways that I even acknowledge. There are a multitude of places I can consider myself among friends (including here), and I think of those places and faces and I am astounded; I am overwhelmed by their surprising numbers - more than I would've guessed at first thought - and I am touched by the depth of feeling for this motley crew of people I've collected. Without realizing it, my skeleton crew has evolved into a tour de force.

My anchor has grown heavy but my heart has grown light. So I throw gravity overboard, and climb down to the solid ground where I belong.

Coldplay: A Personal History

"Spies" - First year of grad school. The tiny bedroom in the Abbott's Run apartments. Listening to Parachutes while getting ready for Clyde's class. Dragging out of bed to head downtown to the little brick office on Princess. "Spies come out of the water..." always makes me think of the light through that second floor window, the view of the dumpster, Kim Shable's patio, and the first slight easing of that summer's torrid heat when October arrived.

"Clocks" - I used to travel between Wilmywood and Charlottesville, VA to see Mike when he was in grad school at UVA. The five-hour drive was pretty brutal - an endless stretch of asphalt with very little to look at until you got on I-64 in Richmond and headed into the foothill country toward the college town. I can remember Sunday afternoons, getting on the I-64/I-95 interchange with the windows down and the piano unfolding into the sinking sun, the wind whipping my hair. "Home, home, where I wanted to go..." and wondering exactly where "home" was anymore.

"Fix You" - "And the tears come streaming down your face when you lose something you cannot replace." I sobbed relentlessly over these words as I turned out of the drive at Grace Street for the last time. I was losing something - Wilmywood, my first (real) apartment, my hard-won independence. I let go and jumped into the unknown, letting the tears come, letting "the lights guide [me] home."

"42" - The first time I heard this song, it gave me chills. "Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell, I am living there as well." What an apt description of the last eight months in the aftermath of Ronnie's death...the retreat into my head where the dead live, where it's the safest and most excruciating place to me. Inside my head, I'm insulated and tortured by all that's there.

And tomorrow, I'll add another memory to my list...

TTLY Syndrome

I've always had a particularly pronounced sense memory. Smells, sounds, even a certain atmosphere, light - all provoke the return of sharp visceral memories for me. This little trick came in handy at times during acting classes when I was in college. But on a day to day basis, this sensitivity piles up into what I refer to as TTLY Syndrome or "This Time Last Year Syndrome" (TTLYS).

The oppressive heat and humidity of the last fews days have thrown me into last year's frame of mind. Indeed, the past few weeks have brought on a bewildering myriad of memories. This time last year, I was interviewing for The Job. I was feeling bereft and rootless. I was waiting.

And inside, away from the shimmering heat, in the cool darkness of my brain, the chemicals were sliding out of the proper equation. My stomach was burning, turning itself inside out almost every night. The Panic was coming.

This time last year was a tipping point, away from what was and toward what is. It was a precarious lean into the unknown. Everything was tossed into the air, floating down in a slow-motion freefall with no end in sight. Everything was all questions and no answers. The unknown was my only friend.

It's back again, like a second wave. I am waiting. Waiting for a movement away from this stalemate of grief. This terrible endgame, all the pieces on the board and nowhere to go. The Panic is rising. I waffle on the edge of nausea, try to push it down, pray through it. The unknown is siddling up next to me...it's reminding me that in a year, I haven't made very many strides. I haven't built the life I envisioned.

The heat lashes down on me when I walk out of work each day. I stumble through the evenings, fight the TTLYS washing through my veins. I remind myself that I have moved down the road, made progress. That I'm waiting and panicking and befriending the unknown because I had not choice when life jumped the rails in February.

Tonight, Dad said to me, "I feel like...we're never going to be normal again." And somehow, seeing the weight of it on his face, hearing the crushing reality in his words, I thought, "Not any time soon."

As I stare down the barrel of TTLYS right now, I rue the next season of it - the last season where everything was normal. And that season followed by the one where everything fell apart.

The -ings of the Last Week

* Getting my hair cut - my favorite thing - which involved talking to my stylist about the line dancing craze of the early 90s

* Attending the farewell show of The Rockstar's band at the 40 Watt. He's moving to Barcelona to pursue his music. And I am sad.

* Putting together a photo book of San Francisco on Shutterfly. It's so awesome, I can't stop looking at it.

* Meeting up with my dear Jenny Ray and her husband Nick for drinks on Friday night. She got to see the aforementioned red shoes, and we caught up on all sorts of things - like hugs!

* Winning my first account for the firm on Thursday. Hooray!

* Enjoying lunches with my parents while Dad spent the rest of the week at home recovering.

* Missing Dillon. I didn't get to see him Father's Day weekend in all the hospital madness.

* Catching up on blogs.

* Sorting through old photos - Jenn, I found some oldies, but goodies. Like your college graduation party?

* Taking many, many photographs to complete the photo game. 20 photos down and six to go.

* Shopping too much - I am enacting a moratorium on new clothing purchases.

* Thinking. A lot. About life and love and the pursuit of happiness.

* Gaining perspective on the here and now.

Weeds

For Ronnie, lawn maintenance was nearly a religion. He mowed, edged, watered, fertilized and weeded. I can remember him talking about needing to tend the yard like one would speak of nurturing a child. He labored over it in the warm months and planned for it in the cold ones.

So when the weeds began encroaching on the front lawn after he died, it became almost an assault on his memory. Anna's mentioned the weeds frequently to me; they seemed to be feeding on her grief, popping up across the lawn and in the straw beds stretching around the yard's perimeter.

On Saturday morning, she and I decided to tackle the front yard. She sat near the sidewalk and I sat near the road, and we each methodically plucked weeds from between the blades of sod. The sun moved higher; we scooted a path back and forth across the lawn, leaving a trail of weeds atop the grass behind us.

And as we broke apart the fragile roots of those tiny but persistent weeds, we uprooted the thin barrier between casual words and those that reached deeper down.

"Does it seem like a long time," I asked. "Or like it was just yesterday?"

She sighed. "It depends. But most days, I just think about how long it's been and I wonder how I made it this far."

"I really missed him this week," I said. I hesitated to say this...did she want to hear how I missed him? A feeling that undoubtedly paled in comparison to her own sense of loss. She was silent.

"And...and when I think of him-" I pushed on - "I think of him chuckling. I can still hear him chuckling." My voice was quavering at this point and tears were sliding down my flushed cheeks.

"Me, too." I could tell she was crying, too. "You would never expect his laugh to sound like that."

"No," I laughed - a watery, thick kind of sound.

And it went on like that. She would tell me something she missed, and I would respond, and vice versa. Sometimes we laughed; sometimes we cried more. Our muscles were aching. The sun grew hotter, burning my shoulders and her forearms. And we kept on pulling, weed by weed, discarding those unwanted plants in heaps of green tops and spindly brown roots systems.

They seemed to cover everything when we started. But by the end of the afternoon, the lawn was a clean stretch of green sod, pristine and trimmed. Just like Ronnie would've wanted it.

Sliding Down Memory Lane

This morning, Dillon was quite insistent about being allowed to go into the neighbor's yard and make use of the playground equipment. Instead, we convinced him that far better playground equipment could be made available to him by trekking to the school where Mom works in the library. And while I confess that it was fun to watch Dillon laugh and play, I found myself hanging back and letting the others oversee his sliding and climbing. All while I did a little sliding and climbing of my own.

For whatever reason, it was easy to forget on that expanse of white sand and metal bars and plastic tubes that I am nearing 30 years old. Instead, I found myself in a swing, chuckling at the familiar heat of the flexible black plastic that had been baking in the morning sun. I squiged my toes into the sand and pushed off, pumping my knees out of sheer instinct. Then I laid back into the motion, pushing my feet up toward the sky, closing my eyes against the glare. The doppler of wind whistled past my ears, to and fro, and it felt so blissful, for a moment, I forgot everything except blue and sun and air.

Then I went over to the tallest snaking tube (wondering for a moment if I would get stuck inside). I climbed up the metal rungs and gripped the top of the opening and settled at the top of the incline. I pushed off, slinking through the twists and turns with surprising speed and popped back out into the daylight.

Dillon started to pinken, so we decided it was best to stroll him home. I cast a sidelong glance at the slide and said, "Just one more time." And, to my surprise, Justin and Eva lined up right behind me. We all slid through the tube, I imagine, holding our breaths, cloaked in our ten-year-old selves, before being dumped back out into the present.

One

One year ago today, I moved.

One year ago today, something horrifying broke inside me and every pain I felt about leaving came rushing out.

One year ago today, I looked out the window on the big tree outside for the last time.

One year ago, I paced across those wide-board wooden floors and locked the door.

One year ago, the echo of my footsteps in the hallway was loud and hollow.

One year ago, I sat in my car at the stoplight at Fourth and Grace.

One year ago, I looked in my rearview at the yellow stucko and the red tin roof and the black curls of wrought iron.

One year ago, I drove away.

One year ago, I said goodbye.

One year ago, I crossed the bridge.

One year ago. And sometimes, I can't help myself from looking back.

Ronnie in Sketches

I realize how very few of you knew Ronnie...and to my discredit, I haven't blogged a great deal about him. He was a hard person to get to know. And to be honest, I know that I didn't know as much of him as I would have liked. But here is what I know...

Ronnie was born and raised in the smallest of small towns in Mississippi. The kind of town that's outside the town that's outside the town that's closest to the bigger, somewhat recognizable town. Anna mentioned that he had something like 53 people in his graduating class.

He grew up pretty impoverished. His father was an alcoholic. His mother was his saving grace. I don't know that I've ever known a man who revered his mother quite like Ronnie. She died of cancer when he was in college. On their wedding day, Anna had one white rose placed on a little table alongside a candle in her memory. Ronnie cried when he saw it.

He went to a community college and then on to Ole Miss. And I must say, I've known some folks in my time who were college proud, being from the Bulldawg Nation, but I don't know that any of them surpassed Ronnie. I'm not sure you could name an item of clothing or a basic household item that they didn't have imprinted with Ole Miss: sweatshirts, t-shirts, ties, socks, pajamas, rugs, lamps, the trailer hitch on the truck and the Sequoia. Everything navy and red.

As a kid, he used to listen to the St. Louis Cardinals games on the radio. He was almost as die-hard about those guys as he was for the Rebels. He and Anna went to St. Louis to watch the Cardinals play for their honeymoon.

He loved sports - especially football and baseball. He started his career in south Atlanta coaching high school baseball and teaching adaptive P.E. county-wide - meaning he developed physical education programs for the special ed kids. To this day, he's still the winningest baseball coach at that south Atlanta high school.

He moved to the northwest Atlanta suburb to be an assistant coach for football and head baseball coach at the school where Anna taught. That's where they met.

Ronnie doesn't have a lot of family. With his mother and father gone, and a stepfather remaining that he didn't like so much, he's got a brother who still lives in Mississippi and a half-sister who's in Atlanta. His brother didn't come to the wedding. So the family pew on his side was filled with the freshly scrubbed faces and uncomfortably starched shirts and tightly cinched ties of the high school baseball team. Every year, Ronnie and Anna would have the team over for a steak dinner at Christmas.

And when you talk about Christmas, you have to know that Ronnie was Clark Griswald incarnate. In fact, Anna mentioned this similarity in her remarks at the memorial service. He loved Christmas. Over the years, Ronnie collected more than 300 nutcrackers. Small, medium, large and 5-foot tall. Wood, ceramic, glass, dancing, light-up, robotic. Sportsmen, presidents, Biblical characters, tradesmen, cowboys, and your classic Nutcracker prince. They started decorating their house for Christmas the week after Halloween in order to get it all done. Two trees - all decorated with nutcracker ornaments.

Ronnie shopped on Black Friday. He'd get the paper and mark out his purchases and make a plan. He would get up at 4 a.m. to get a deal on the day after Thanksgiving. He usually bought his wrapping paper that day, too. He didn't like it to get picked over.

But probably what everyone will remember most about Ronnie and Christmas was his candy. Every year, he made tins and buckets and boxes of candy to give away to friends and family. Chocolate peanut butter balls, white and milk chocolate dipped pretzels, date balls, white and milk chocolate dipped Ritz crackers with peanut butter sandwiched in between. Baby Ruth bars and Reese's Cup cookies. I would get a gallon bucket stuffed to the brim with all the handmade treats. And so did his coworkers. And the nurses at Emory that administered his chemo treatments.

A year and half into their marriage, Ronnie ran over a rock with the lawn mower and sustained a pretty serious injury when it hit his leg. But after stitches, he struggled with the wound, and weeks later an MRI revealed an enormous blood clot - from calf to groin. He was admitted to the hospital for intensive blood thinning and subsequent tests to ensure there were no more clots. And there weren't - but there were two curious spots behind his diaphragm, clouds that looked suspiciously like cancerous tumors in the lymph nodes. The day before Thanksgiving that year, we got word that he had non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

He underwent chemo, lost his hair, took steroids to bolster his strength. Three months into his treatments, I came home from NC, and on the way to meet Anna and Ronnie for lunch, Mom prepared me for his appearance. But nothing ever quite prepares you for the sick look of cancer - the pasty skin, the distorted body shape, the haggard tiredness. He never missed a day of work. Not one single day. And he only missed coaching one baseball game, because it fell during the time of his treatment.

All along the way, he helped kids in whom he saw himself. One of his former baseball players lived with Ronnie and Anna for a couple of years after his home life fell apart and he needed to get his bearings. At the visitation, he wore one of Ronnie's shirts and ties and stood with the family. Ronnie and Anna put together sheets and towels and all the dorm essentials for a wrestler who had earned a college scholarship but still was tight on money. He bought lunches for kids. He tried to get them to change their errant ways. One of the students who came to the funeral had been disciplined by Ronnie earlier this year; he came to pay his respects, saying that Ronnie inspired him to try to change himself.

But lest it sound like I'm sanctifying him, I'll tell you right up front that Ronnie was just human. He was obstinate and opinionated in the worst sort of way. Everything was black and white, right or wrong...which really translated into Ronnie's way or the wrong way. He didn't cook or clean, and when he married Anna, he was a bachelor to the "T". I remember cleaning out his apartment - oh, the horror. He could be gruff and aloof. But he had an infectious and unexpected laugh. He had real soul - from his hardships and his hard work - and I wish that I'd gotten to know that soul better. Ronnie was 15 years older than me, and I don't think he ever really knew whether to treat me like one of his students or an equal. I don't think he understood me - nor I him - but I like to think that in the end, we loved one another in our own ways.

There are those minute details that make up the forensic evidence of what you know about a person...tiny facts that you cling to and hope to somehow hold on to someone...like, he was extremely picky about dress shirts. Mama and I agonized over getting this shirt at Brooks Brothers for Christmas and I really pulled for it even though I figured he'd hate it; it was hanging in the laundry room, just washed from a wearing when he died. He loved sweet tea. He worried about eating ribs in public because they were messy. Anyone he didn't like was a punk, a turd or a POS. He obsessively cut the lawn every Saturday. He hated lateness. He was a morning person who never needed an alarm. He said Anna had "too much clutter." He bought everyone shoes for Christmas - I haven't bought myself running shoes in six years. He had naturally curly hair, which he kept cut painfully close. He was an avid newspaper reader. He usually stood with his feet spread apart and his arms crossed high over his chest. He mumbled. He always asked me about work - that was his standard question for me, "How's work?" That day in the hospital, when I came in, Anna said, "Smash is here." And that wrenched my heart because I felt that in that moment, if I was Smash to him, I was his sister as much as I was Anna's.

In December, Ronnie had his last CT scan - it marked 4 1/2 year cancer-free. They had moved into a new house in August. He was loving his new job as a high school athletic director - it was what he had always aspired to be. Anna loved her new high school position, too. They had been married for six years...bought their dream house...found themselves settling in to a new community they loved. We celebrated Thanksgiving at their house this year. At Christmas, they came bearing the familiar buckets of candy.

The last time I saw Ronnie before he died was Dillon's birthday. I can see him, sitting on the corner of Justin and Eva's fireplace, Dillon clinging to his knees and him saying, "Hey, buddy" in this voice he used to talk to the dogs. I could mimic it if you could hear me - the pitch, the intonation...the way his voice went up an octave and the "hey" was kind of long and the "buddy" fast. And he chuckled when Dillon had that fistful of cake and crammed it into his mouth.

After he died, I found out all sorts of other things about him. His favorite TV shows ever were Miami Vice, Magnum P.I. and Sanford and Son. He used to have a crush on China Phillips and went to the Wilson Phillips concert back in the day. He once attempted to have two dates in one night - and on another occasion dated a woman he referred to as Hellion 1. His best friend Darryl dated Hellion 2. One of his favorite movies was Grease. He loved disco music.

But I didn't know...and I know now that there are things I missed. And the outpouring of love and compassion and sorrow since he died has made me all the more sad about the parts of him that I never glimpsed. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at the end of The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

26 Grün Balloons

Ronnie coached baseball for many years, and he always wore the 26 jersey. No one knows why, but at every school, whatever the mascot, whatever the colors, he had 26 on his back. Last week, two of the high schools in the county faced off in a baseball game. All of the gate receipts and concessions went to the scholarship fund Anna established in Ronnie's memory.

But before the game, they had a moment of silence and released 26 green balloons. Those of you who know Anna will know the significance of the color. One of the students took this picture. I thought it was lovely and sad. Anna's in the lower left.

99aXed

It's the end of an era. As of January 25, 99x will no longer be on air. The 99.7 FM frequency is being given to what is now Q100, a top-40 rock format. The X will transition to 100.5, sans its morning show, marking the end of Leslie Fram's 15-plus-year run on the station's Morning X show.

For those of you who grew up in Georgia, listening to the Morning X was akin to watch SNL on Saturday night. It's just what you did. You tuned in to the legendary Barnes, Leslie and Jimmy morning show so that you could catch a few stellar lines and maybe hear the first spin of "Jeremy."

And then there was 99x Resurrection Sunday, which played chic rock and folk rock and folk infusion and was the first place I heard "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos. I remember leaving Jenn's house and driving down a lonely stretch of road with Tori's voice reverberating through the old '92 Taurus and thinking, "Yeah."

99x sponsored the Counting Crows concert at Chastain Park Amphitheatre where I met Adam Duritz - who gave me his autograph while denying me me a hug. Somewhere, I still have photo of Niki, Tempe, Heather and me with the 99x poster we absconded with.

The X hosted the Jingle Jam that Sarah McLachlan headlined at the Gwinnett Civic Center where we had fifth-row seats.

And there was also Live X, which produced some amazing acoustic sets over the years.

99x has apparently fallen on hard times while I've been away. With the rise of satellite radio and the faltering popularity of alt rock against top-40 pop coupled with the departure of Barnes and Jimmy from the Morning X and difficulty finding a successful replacement combo, it looks like it's finally jumped the shark. Goodbye, 99x. Thanks for the memories.

* For you OC kids, I couldn't find the old logo - the bright yellow 99x on the black background. You know what I'm talkin' about!

Bones

Bones are the basics. Long after the rest of a body is gone, the bones remain; hard white fragments outline the person that once was. In forensics, even the least of these slivers of a past life can indicate how life was lived and how life was lost.

***
Having my nose broken marks the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life. Not the breaking, but the resetting. The doctor took the bridge of my nose between his first two knuckles and cracked it back into place without warning. I'll never forget the sound of bone grinding against bone or the shocking pain - so immense, I made no sound.

***
Bones make up the skeleton - the framework of the body. We never think of it, this complex matrix deep inside other layers. Each bone fits to the next and so on - the leg bone's connected to the foot bone - each one, no matter how tiny, has a purpose. We never consider how essential it is - how it holds us up, holds us together.

***
For ages, whalebone was used in corsets to shape the body. The unforgiving bones molded new curves, nipped the ribcage and waist, accentuated the hips. Bones, always giving shape from the inside, created an opposite reaction on the outside, a rescultped form the result of these forces.

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To cut one to the bone is to say that one shears through the tender flesh and strikes the very core.

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Bone is slang for domino and dice, likely because the earliest forms of these gamepieces were carved from said substance. These bones are a risk, a gamble - a smooth white game of chance.

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Make no bones about it - let's get to the point.

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At the heart of the bone is the marrow. And from the marrow comes new blood cells. Bone bears blood and feeds the veins circuiting around it.

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And so digging deeply down to the bone to find the traces of who you were and who you are, of what holds you up and holds you together, cutting past the flesh and into the rigid hollows of bone, it's no surprise that there's blood there. That getting to the bone, so unyielding, lets out a little of the life that's in there.

I'm It

Pen tagged me because she doesn't know enough weird stuff about me, so she needs to know seven new things. Here goes:

1. I have a nearly photographic memory. In a recent meeting, I was able to recall (and name out loud to the group) the first and last names of 20 people I had just met. I used to be able to remember answers on tests by visualizing the location of the answer on the page in my notes.

2. I almost always pick a good wine from the wine list. I know almost nothing about wines, but I can usually look at the list and know which one will be good.

3. Sometimes, I find reading a book jacket as satisfying as reading the book. I love book jacket copy. I like to get on amazon.com and troll around, reading the book descriptions. It's like speed-reading.

4. For the longest time, I refused to eat olives. I swore did not like olives. Recently, I rediscovered olives. The other day, I was eating kalamatas out of a jar with a spoon.

5. When I was little, I had an imaginary friend. He looked like Johann from the Smurfs. And I'm afraid that his name was Gaddy. I have no idea why. Also, I had Holly Hobby wallpaper that I talked to - and grew so attached to, that I would not let my parents remove it, even when the glue failed and the paper would fall down on me in the night. I kept it held up with thumbtacks.

6. We have a feral cat that lives in our house. Inside our house. No one can touch her. We see her; we talk to her; we feed and water her; we love her. But, for all intents and purposes, she is like a wild animal. We never, ever pet her. (Except for occasions like the other day when we trapped her in the bathroom to cut matted hair off her back.) And her name, appropriately, is Shadow.

7. I abhor Pepsi. And Diet Pepsi. If I order Diet Coke in a restaurant and the server asks, "Is Diet Pepsi okay?", I will say no and order water. Diet Pepsi is like getting Patrick Duffy when you ordered Patrick Dempsey.

Passing on the weirdness...I'm not feelings so tag-a-licious about this. If you're jonesing to share seven oddities - you kids over there on the right, I'm talking to you - go for it.

Nostalgiaism

Today I went to a meeting with a local organization that advocates for and preserves historic buildings in ATown. The office is located in a renovated fire station, a corner block brick building with the firepole still in the far corner, massive glass-globe chandeliers, and the pale green fireman's lockers lining one wall. As soon as I entered the building, I was accosted by nostalgia. The smell of an old building - aged wood, old paint, and history (it smells, I swear). And when I reached the top of the stairs, I was almost speechless at the tall arched windows whose frames were painted almost the very same pale blue-grey shade as the ones at Grace Street.

The whole time I was there, I couldn't help noticing how suddenly I felt at home. Like I wanted to spend the whole afternoon there. I belong in an old, rickety building. I need the splintering wood and the creaking boards and the drafts and the echoes and the ghosts. I left feeling a little bit renewed, like I'd had some sort of spiritual transfusion.

And then I had a fairly good day at work, which included a brief meeting with my boss about several projects I have been working on that needed his input, one being an interview with an intern candidate. "She's got enthusiasm," I said. Like you, he responded. "Me? Are you serious?" Yeah, he said. I hear that banter going on down the hall. And I laugh and say yes.

But later, I'm thinking about banter, and I'm thinking about sitting at my old desk at my old job with my old coworkers. I'm thinking about shouting ideas to my boss next door. I'm thinking about eavesdropping and answering everyone's questions. I'm thinking about fake arguments with STGD about when he's going to get a job done. I'm thinking about raucous lunchtime chats and late afternoon staff meetings and brainstorms where everything goes downhill quick but you can't stop laughing. And I think, That's banter.

Right now -just right now - all the good is rushing into the sad and the past is haunting the present and my heart is creaking against the memories. And I am lonely and struck down with nostalgiaism.

Side Effects: Mercy

When I was little, Justin and I used to play a game we called "Mercy." Mercy involved bending the other player's hand back at the wrist in an effort to touch the fingers to the forearm - until the pain became too much and the player called, "Mercy!"

Mercy meant "Stop, it's hurting too much." Mercy meant, "You with the upper hand, please take pity on me." Mercy meant, "I can't take anymore." Mercy meant, "I give up - you win." Mercy was about finding a threshold, the fine line between tolerance and intolerance. Mercy was a plea.

And now, I find myself emotionally bent backwards. Just when I thought the worst was over, I feel my fingers touching my forearm, everything in my wrist tight to the point of breaking.

Mercy. Please, please, mercy.