August 29th – Three Years Later
Last week, I was thinking of this day approaching and what we might do to commemorate. But life changed so much in the last three years. And in the last three days, I am grieving for a friend’s child who is dying and simultaneously have been looking forward to an old friend arriving for Southern Decadence weekend. My friend is from another life I lived – the one in California – which ended on or around August 29, 2005 – three years later, last night, sitting around the table with new friends laughing and wondering what we are going to do – Plan A and Plan B – some believed the portents are ominous (I was just about to do this last time this happened and here I am again) and some believed by Sunday we’d be at a parade (should we ride bikes on the North Shore or the lakefront). I thought to myself this Sunday might be a parade or an evacuation – we don’t know – but my friend’s child is still dying, and any collective breath we all exhale still points to the tentativeness of everything we perceive as our reality and once again, we’re asked to evaluate what matters and what doesn’t and maybe that is our silver lining for living here.