come away with me.

Here's what will happen:

You will come home. Dad will be washing dishes. Sinatra will be playing, or some big band. The door will open and the kids will run forward, yelling mom, surrounding you until you drop your bags. You will not be tired. You will laugh. Dad will say, we missed you. You will hug him. You will have a treat for him, a small gift for all of us. Dad will have made spaghetti. There will be a plate set for you and your noodles won't be cold. We will all sit on the couch by you as you tell us about your trip. Dad will look at you like he has the world and you will return his gaze. Maybe that evening, we will watch a movie. How about that? We will have icecream from the freezer and we will each have a large bowl. Maybe you will ask for seconds. Dad will make bacon cheese potato skins and we will each get two. We will watch Lord of the Rings, because we only watched it with you once, mom. We will watch the third one, out of order for you, because we know how much you like the scene where they light the beacons. You remember that? Of course you do. Once when you were gone, we watched The Return of the King in Chloe and my room with grandpa, grandma, Laura, and Dad. We put it on the projector and it lit up the wall with Gondor. When we got to that scene, dad mentioned how much you loved it. I got chills and that dim space felt like heaven. I haven't forgotten, you know. We will watch that movie and you will sit by dad and when it gets to the part with Shelob, you will cover your face with a pillow and he will tell you when it's over.

Okay? That's not so much to ask, is it?

God, momma, I miss you.

what will your verse be?

Oh Captain, my Captain.

Robin Williams is dead. I don't know where I'm going with this. I only know I need to write in the most primal sense of the word need. Oh God. My heart hangs heavier and heavier each day. Philip Seymour Hoffman's death was another stone on my back, Robin William's is a boulder. I don't know why this is affecting me this hard. Only that I know the taste of grief and I can never get it out of my mouth. I'm running from it but my feet know the path too well. I'm overrun, overcome, attacked at all sides.

Beheadings, divorce, war, death, grief grief grief running like a river in our hands and we can't staunch the flow. Robin Williams is dead. I cannot wrap my head around this. He had children who loved him, children not his own. He was a very human human, if that makes any sense at all. Someone on my twitter stream wrote, sometimes people use humor to hide their very deep sadness. A gradual gutting. Isn't that true? How horrible it is that this is many realities, many lives. We all cary a deep sadness, like a seed growing and twisting through our veins, inside us.

Now that I'm writing, I don't know what to say. I'll stumble through this post for awhile. Here's what I wish I could do: I wish I could gather together with the world and whisper, I know. I wish I could mourn together. Brandon of Humans of New York posted an image of four women sitting together with a captain saying, we have come to sit with her in her sadness. This is what we need. Sometimes, there is no fixing. That is, there is no fast way to feel better. It's a slow journey, an arduous trek we undertake with the help of those walking alongside us. The surest way to fall back and decide you're through is to walk alone.

I am so tired of pain. I am so tired of grief. I am so tired of seeing brokenness in people's eyes like it's normal everyday life. This dichotomy of weeping and laughing wears me thin. I want to dance, but I can only keen like a mourner. This is my life now and with every day that passes, I don another veil. I don't know many things about life, but I know that we spiral through pain and our pain is like a ring we carry inside us. We are layered.

I know the darkness of depression, I know the haze of sadness thick and smothering like old blankets in small closets with only blackness for a light. I know that sometimes reaching out to open the door takes more energy than we have. Please, I pray, keep reaching.

I don't understand, I don't understand. Not knowing is harder in these moments. I grasp at any straw, any light I can hold and I hoard it like a starved dog cradles a bone, to the chest. Though we deal with a very present darkness, we are never alone. We are not without hope. Rest in peace, Robin Williams. Rest in peace, oh broken world. Let light reign, let light in. Jesus, come come come.

remembering.

After your parents divorce, is it still okay to talk about funny, normal things?

For example: my parents both took Italian in college.

On the way up to the lake, we pulled into a parking lot of a church by our house to secure the canoe on the suburban. My dad took a picture and my mother said, don't take the picture until I pull my pants down. She almost fell over laughing. My grandpa and dad exchanged eyes and laughed and I laughed until I cried. We reminded her of it the entire vacation. We make too light of these instances, dismissing them as the butter when they are really the bread.

Mom's mispronunciations of Krusteaz pancakes at Christmas time. The bag of pistachios grandma always gave dad. A new skillet one year when the tree was in the living room, all white on the floor and the walls.

Mom always bought a special treat for my father on the way home from Costco. He always gave her flowers on their anniversary.

One year they went to Fitgers up in Duluth with my baby brother Brennan, and they came home with a stuffed moose.

When Chloe and I were old enough to watch The Lord of the Rings, we spent several weeks watching the trilogy with mom and dad. We watched all the credits on the last movie, a tradition I continue. We stayed up late looking up our Elvish and Hobbit names online.

My mother was embarrassed with public displays of affection, even if public meant our living room.

Who will get the car bed? We asked, and mom said, it will stay at grandma and grandpa Martin's. When there was still going to be a grandma and grandpa Martin's.

My mother took photos of my grandpa eating on our trip to California. My dad loved it. There's a photo of the two of them eating icecream when they were dating and it's still on my grandpa's easel.

In an apartment I shouldn't remember because I was too little, we turned on the tall, sleek black lamp and the light in the room was a warm, rich yellow in the twilight. My mother turned up Tears for Fears or Christian rock of the late 90's and we danced to it. All of us.

Silly things like that. The things that matter most. I'm forgetting them and it terrifies me. How can I say these things and then announce, they're divorced now. Where is the line? What's appropriate and inappropriate and who gets to decide? How do I speak about my history when the present is divided? It would be easier to erase my roots versus go through the pain of replanting. Trees carry their memories in rings and each line is a circle of sorrow, of hallelujah. I daresay after grief, there will be no joy that does not carry with it a remembered sorrow.

'Cause you're shivering cold.

Once we watched August Rush past midnight with mom and dad. Chloe and I. We laid blankets on the floor and stayed up late. Eleven was late. I had to babysit the next morning. I don't know if I should stay up this late, I said to mom and dad. We understand, they said, but they encouraged me to watch anyways. It's not that late, they said. How many nights like this will we have, they said, and now looking back, my heart races. What if. But I watched. There was one sex scene and Chloe and I were just newly initiated into the reality of what that meant. We looked away, embarrassed watching with our parents two people make love. There were blankets, you couldn't see anything. Still. At eleven, dad said, hey, what if we order a pizza. Imagine that. These were the days before celiac disease, perhaps before Sam was born. We were carefree, because we didn't believe anything could touch us. Dad ordered pizza from Dominos, I think when Evan (August) listened to the music of the fields. Mom and Dad were happy, I remember, and I remember feeling so happy, I remember brimming until I feared I'd collapse. My whole body screamed in fear of keeping this moment good. We ate green olive and canadian bacon pizza on pink and blue plastic plates while watching August Rush. That was a good movie, mom said when it was over. She liked the music. Dad liked the story. She sat by dad. They went to bed together. I told Sheila the next morning that I had stayed up until one watching a movie with my parents. I remember this, listening to the soundtrack on my grandma's couch. My skin cracks anew. One sone in particular rips off my bandages without warning. If I close my eyes, I see the warmth of that night, the bubble that surrounded us amid darkness.

So long you've been running in circles
'Round what's at stake
But now the times come for your feet to stand still in one place
You wanna reach out
You wanna give in
Your head's wrapped around what's around the next bend
You wish you could find something warm

'Cause you're shivering cold

It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes
The last thing you say as your saying goodbye
Something inside you is crying and driving you on
It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes
The last thing you say as your saying goodbye
Something inside you is crying and driving you on

a boy you once loved.

Once there was a boy you liked who you never kissed or even held hands. Why? Because why. Because a myriad of rules and a million reasons not to and if you did, the impetuous to do it right. Lunch once, that was the most of it, though you drove together. He drove you. You had no license. For one reason, you prayed thanksgiving. It took five minutes to get from your house to Church, and there was a specific structure for each ride. The first two minutes, a gradual relearning of the others voice, of hearing words directed only to you. By minute three, someone would laugh and that would loosen your insides. You would uncurl your hands. The last two minutes you prayed that you could spend a lifetime making him laugh. You hoped for different things then. You were a smaller soul, no, not better, not worse, just not fully grown.

Once, when your Church was a Church and your family a family, he drove you and your sister to a movie at midnight. The Hobbit. You remember this watching the movie at your grandma's house with your sister and the man who will become your uncle. These details matter. Back to that night. He carpooled with four other boys, who crammed in the backseat with your sister. She flushed and stayed quiet. You felt a sliver of sharpness for her but would not give up your seat beside the boy. One boy in the back you disliked. He disliked you. It didn't matter. They left you waiting in line for the movie while they went out and bought snacks. Several boys, not men, made a motion to join you and your sister, but you barred your arms like your space was a door only you could open. They left, the boys came back. Two more boys, your friends, boys you used to sing with and dream simple dreams with, came, and with them, your insides unloosened all the way. The boys you didn't know went into one theater, the three boys and another you loved like brothers, though you didn't know it then, went into another with you and your sister. She was quiet then, not shy, but shut away.

You sat by the three boys who you once loved, yes, all three of them, but the one who drove you the one whose mouth you still watched and eyes you glanced under hoping he carried you in them. Maybe he will make a move, your sister said. You laughed it off and it was like popcorn, salty and smooth and gone with only the taste behind, but still, you hoped. The theater was full and humming like a hive. You sat on the right side, in a curved row. You sat between two boys, almost men, not quite, as they talked to you, and what a glorious day to be alive. To be surrounded by these people you loved and everything was simple and everything kind, even if you did not know it then. There was much you did not know, and they were deeper things than holding hands. The movie began and you tilted your heads toward him and inched your hand on the arm rest and once, the faintest heat of his skin brushed yours. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Afterwards, you said goodbye. Sometimes you hugged the boys you loved like brothers, but not tonight. The boy you once loved and knew as well as your own family drove the three boys you did not know and the one you did not like, home. Then he drove you and your sister and his brother back. Your sister and his brother sat in the back. You sat in the front beside him and held the taste of the evening in your mouth, refusing to swallow. You would suck on the sweetness of this evening for weeks. Your tongue still knows the texture. It was three in the morning and the freeways were silent and smooth and sloping forever into the distance into a deep blackness like a road that could go on without end and the only way to find out was to drive. The streetlights were silver. The lines were slivers. You laughed and called it eerie and he laughed back, more an answer. This wasn't a time of questions, though you did not know it then.

Thank you, you said, when he dropped you off to a silent house with the porch light still on. I love you, you wanted to say and never did. He waved and drove off. You shut the door. You did not sleep until near dawn. And why. The boy you once loved grew into a man and you a woman and with only the memories of each others names printed like ticket stubs and theaters you cannot enter together anymore. You did not know it then.

ps.