ten: words from e's mom

Andree here, but only for a moment.  It's been one decade now since E left for his biggest adventure.  His mom - our mom (in order: me, Sean, Erik, Brynn, Hans) - has something to say to him.
* * *
Andree expresses her thoughts and our thoughts so beautifully --- I want to do as well as I struggle to write about these ten years without Erik. Ten years --- that seem like yesterday and forever. When you are told that the sadness will get easier --- that is a nice thought, but not necessarily true. Fortunately our family is not reticent to keep Erik alive in our thoughts and conversations. I consult him regularly when I am problem solving. I often see something that I think he would like and I am about to get it for him or think to tell him about it when reality crashes down.

 Erik lived his life with gusto. Being with Erik was seemingly never dull and often challenging --- just trying to keep up. Once when I was not enthused about a coming holiday and I was lamenting the effort in front of me --- Erik said plainly, "If you don't make it special it won't be special." Time with the ones you love is so precious, I always want to remember to make that time special.

 I loved standing beside him in his kitchen as he and Nancy prepared a feast. Gatherings at their house were always fun --- with wonderful food. Sometimes interesting food --- lavender infused beef for the fire-pit was not one of his better ideas and was not repeated. That's not bad --- in the years of the fire-pit having only one not-so-good.

 I recite the ten affirmations created by Erik and Hans every day. I think these were originally guidelines for business --- but they are certainly appropriate for life in general:

The value of time.
The success of perseverance.
The dignity of simplicity.
The worth of character.
The power of kindness.
The influence of example.
The obligation of duty.
The wisdom of economy.
The virtue of practice.
The improvement of talent.

And --- I hope that by keeping these thoughts in my brain I am a better me.

Simply put: Erik you are loved and missed and with us always. We speak of you often because that is how we keep you in our lives --- and, of course, remembering to add some gusto as you would.

Mom

in which i am struck by a similarity

(Andrée here.) Similarity between these three guys? Well, there IS some - you can tell a Purdom man a mile off, I think. (Helpful note in case you're new here: these are my three brothers. L to R: Hans, Sean, Erik. Not in order of origin.)

That's not where I was heading today. I've been reading a little of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, thinking I can always stand to bolster my stoicism. Imagine my surprise to find him musing upon his brother in ways I recognize well from being around Erik:


...From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice; . . . I learned from him also consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy; and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes, and to believe that I am loved by my friends; and in him I observed . . . that his friends had no need to conjecture what he wished or did not wish, but it was quite plain....


Doesn't that sound like E? And what an odd, random comfort to find in the words of a long-dead Stoic philosopher a vivid feeling of my brother's ways and values. Yet another way to find him at my shoulder. As we go forward into 2018 I hope you too cherish good hopes and the love of your friends.

good traveling weather: nine

Hey everybody - Andree here.
It's been nine years today since E took off for the other shore.  I don't know about you guys, but I still miss him in a very immediate fashion - that is, I keep wanting to tell him things, show him things.
He's a little farther away than a phone call now.  But I call on his presence often when I have something I want to share with him.  In fact, yesterday I ran away to Seattle to visit the Henry Art Gallery.  There I stopped a while in the Skyspace by James Turrell, on a quiet overcast day, faced with the infinite possibilities of the life remaining and the life to come. 
I felt E very near.
As if - if I were to squint sideways - he'd be spacebombing me just like in the photo.

It is a desperate hurt to have lost him.  But the remedy to it lies in all of us. We bear it together, and we continue to soothe and enjoy the mess and the wonder of our lives together here.  And we keep before our eyes the fine adventures yet to had, when we pile into another house very far indeed from here, and hear E's voice say "Hey."

raise your glass

Andrée here with a picture saying a thousand words -
words like "still missing E" and "hope" and "celebrate."  Raise your glass to Erik, to everyone you miss, everyone you love.
Raise it also to yourself.
Happy 2017.

eight

this was from art

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves
Into my heart and upon my skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,
"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful Game."
--
"A Suspended Blue Ocean," Hafiz

 

 

(Andree here.) Today marks eight years since Erik flew away to be a bigger part of the Wonderful Game.  (Someday I plan to ask him what happened when David Bowie and Prince showed up.)

While I was thinking about those eight years, and all the directions the world has spun in the meantime, I was reminded that the number eight on its side is the infinity symbol - right, right. How many infinities?  All the ways we have each missed him, all the depths and colors of our sorrows; all the things that have changed in each of us as a result; all the hopes, plans, joys we've each cautiously built in the wake, knowing now (if we didn't before) how very precious it is to have them. 

It still seems to me as though E left yesterday, and I won't lie to you: I'm not over that, nor do I expect to be in this lifetime.  But I know E, and I know he was all about the plans, the fun of good work, the joy. 

So today I'm going to ask you about your own joys, and I look forward to the happiness of hearing about your own glimpses of the Wonderful Game - glimpses that bring you closer to E.

xox



fifty

(Andrée here.)
That's Sean and Erik as tykes up there, Erik being the blond on the right.  Did you know his hair had ever been that color?  As he grew up it settled more toward the darker color most of you knew best.
He would have been fifty today.  There would have been some grey in there.  Runs in the family.

I wish E had had the time to come up with a few more grey hairs, but often I wonder if perhaps there was something so big waiting for him that he couldn't stay.  I found this in "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount.

***

Happy birthday, brother.

Someday I'll get past the first stair.

new terrain

Mogfest 2004

Hi everyone.  Andrée here.

Seven years ago today E took off for that far shore, where in my mind's eye I see him blazing across shining country in a sky-blue Pinz, new friends bouncing out the windows howling with laughter like we all used to do.

    

Dear E - 

Though it truly seems like just yesterday you went away, it's long enough now that your kids are as tall as I am, and Jemma goes away this weekend to be a junior at WSU.  It's a new world for her too, starting her grownup life where the hills roll far golden to the eye, her own shining country.  My auntie pride in her is about the only thing that makes missing you today bearable.  As you fly across the hills over there, do you look out to the horizons and understand everything?  I hope I will, too, someday.  Save me a seat and a brew, brother.  

Love, A

new year 2015: reach out

Andree here.  Many of you have seen the photo above already, most likely on my Facebook profile this past couple of days.  I can't recall what Erik was doing, precisely, but I love how evocative his hand is of his whole being: big, encompassing, nimble, hardworking, tender.
His kids are up visiting their grandparents as I write this; they head back to SoCal tomorrow.  They are so tall!  You know time has gone by in an academic way, and then you come up against a couple of beings who are suddenly lofty rangy teenpeople, and there you are whapped upside the head with the big wet fish of Time.
Which is a perfect example of why we need to . . .

Look as long as you can
at the friend you love
No matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.--Rumi

express it

Some of you probably saw this on Facebook, but I stumbled upon it again this morning.  Even if this wasn't my loved, lost brother this shot would still grab me by the heart; it captures just what it's like to think, believe, envision the things that could be, that you could create, if you just reached out with all that you have.
Who knows what he was doing; probably expounding upon something, could be anything, you'd never come up with it in a million years.
And he'd come up with something every damn day.
Was the world spinning fast enough to hold him?

new year's eve, 2013

Andree here.  Happy New Year's Eve, everybody.  I hope wherever you are it is warm and dry and you're with people who make you smile.  Maybe you're thinking of E and your memories are making you smile (Dean did that for me on Facebook today when he posted a funny Xerox of Erik's face that he found).
About the picture:  long story short, I took a leap of faith in the fall by leaving a job which, though destructive and humiliating, was utterly stable. I haven't found its replacement yet.  But a few weeks back, when I was deep in angst over my future or rather my perceived lack thereof, I woke up to find two things:  one, somebody had grabbed my special pink pumpkin I'd bought at my favorite farm stand, and smashed it on the sidewalk;  two, someone else had left this Buddha yard statue front and center on the porch to greet me when I opened the front door.  They did this deep in the night, as I'd been up till ten and was up before six.  I have still not got any clue of his source.
Clearly, I thought, it was time to have a little more faith in the random possibilities of the universe now.

So that happened.  

But I miss Erik still, in ways I don't understand until they have manifested (and then I have to explain).

And then I found this year's Rumi poem, which I keep hearing in E's voice:

The Body is Too Slow for Me

Toward the gardens,
Toward the orchards,
I am going.
If you want to stay here,
Stay here -
I am going!
My day is dark without His Face,
Toward that bright flame
I am going.

My soul is racing ahead of me.
It says, The body is too slow for me -
I am going.

The smell of apples arises
from the orchard of my soul.
One whiff and I am gone -
Toward a feast of apples
I am going.

A sudden wind won't blow me over.
Toward Him, like a mountain of iron,
I am going.

My shirt is ripped open
with the pain of loss.
Searching for a new life,
with my head held high,
I am going.

I am fire, though I seem like oil -
Seeking to be the fuel of His fire,
I am going.

I appear as a steady mountain
Yet bit by bit,
Toward that tiny opening
I am going.

From: A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
Ode 1668 Version by Jonathan Star
from a translation by Shahram Shiva
- See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumi2.html#sthash.UyUP63Zx.dpuf