My Secret Identity

Secret identities aren’t all they are cracked up to be. They are not what the movies make them out to be. I have a secret identity. I have had it for years now. I don’t have a fancy outfit or a cape to reveal my true identity. I just have a story. And it’s a doozy.

Carrying around this secret identity can get a bit weighty some days. I wish more people knew my secret. Being Clark Kent all the time with everyone when the S on my chest is screaming to be shown takes its toll. On the day that marks the occasion of my son’s death, my secret identity, being a bereaved mother, is particularly a heavy burden to bear.

That’s why I’m so thankful I got to go to George Mark yesterday and wear my secret identity proudly.

I was a hot mess at first. I went into the front office to sign in and as I tried to explain who I was and why I was there to the office administrator, I choked. Another employee who had known me for quite some time came up to me and let me cry, saying very little, giving me the space I needed to feel what I was feeling.

 Even when I think I have it together, memories of my son sneak up on me. But those memories are allowed to inundate me when I’m at George Mark. They are allowed to make me tongue-tied. My tears are welcome there.

I spent the whole day there. I hugged necks and talked to nurses. I told Kathy Hull that her Ted Talk was an absolute revelation. I was happy to learn that members of the team share our story when they walk past the tile wall when giving tours of the facility.

I told our story. I told our story. I told our story.

I let everyone see the secret identity, fancy outfit, cape, but most importantly scars and all.

Everyone knew about the hole in my chest where a child had once been. They knew the scars existed. It’s an utter relief to not have to hide the scars.  I spend so much time hiding them, diminishing them, that being able to let the scars see the light of day is an utter blessing.   

If you haven't yet, consider donating to the George Mark  #fundabed campaign. If you can't, please consider posting this on your social media feeds. Every little bit helps. Thank you.  

Book Review: The Hate U Give

Country roads are endless, or at least when you’re a little kid they feel that way. There are long stretches of road where I’m from where radio stations playing “decent” music wouldn’t reach (Read: In my father's word's "Not Country"). My dad’s old work truck didn’t have a tape deck in it so for some stretches we’d have to fill the time with talking. Sometimes it was silly, filled with bad dad jokes (“What do you think was that last thing that went through that grasshoppers mind when it hit out windshield?” “What?” “His legs.”), and thumb wars, and my bad harmonica playing. Other times it was filled with thought-provoking conversations that always made me feel a little bit smarter but more importantly, closer to my dad.

There’s a scene halfway into Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give where Star is sitting in her dad’s truck, making a trek to a warehouse and filling the mundane ride with conversation. Her father, Maverick is talking to her about Tupac lyrics and asking her to break them down and throws one of her questions back at her with a patented dad move; “What do you think?”

Just like that I’m a 10 year-old, sitting in my dad’s work truck, barely able to see over the dashboard.

The prose in this book have the very same trans-formative powers that turned me into my 10 year-old self throughout. I’m not only transformed into my ten-year-old self though, I’m transformed into Star, angry at the person she thought was her best friend and not having the voice to say so. I’m Star’s mother Lisa, upset that she can’t protect all of the children in their neighborhood the way she tries to protects her own who also works damn hard to make sure her children are protected. I’m transformed into Maverick, trying to educate his children in the ways of the world by making them think for themselves.

And I’m also devastated. This book made me cry no less than six times, and not romantic, sweet tears. If anyone taking the 680 in the last week has witnessed a girl ugly crying in her car…. That was me and I’m not sorry.  

This books takes something very specific and very personal, Star navigating grief and injustice when her friend Khalil is murdered in front of her eyes by police, and makes it utterly universal and relatable. She makes you feel every one of Star’s feelings. Every bump on this rollercoaster is intentional and is meant to shake you to your very core.

But it’s not the highs and lows of this story I’m in love with. It’s the middles. It’s the family prayers and the friendship struggles. It’s the boyfriend drama (drama aside though - Chris might be the best literary boyfriend because of how real and imperfect and how often he gets it wrong but tries to make it right and is by Star's side no matter what. Love him. Go easy Mav.). It's trying to navigate the halls of your high school. It’s the embarrassing moments of hearing your parents talk about sex but realizing they are the most amazing people in your universe anyway.

But the thing that won’t soon leave me is it’s about Star’s journey to figure out who she really is amidst all grief, pain, and terror she’s experienced.

I was my eight year-old self again, realizing my uncle was dead and my other uncles, because of their Hemophilia and the AIDS crisis, were soon to join him. I was that scared child trying to figure out who I was through all of that death.

I know who I am now. As much as I miss my uncles (all six of them) and a few of my aunts, and one tiny baby cousin who didn’t get to experience life, I’m stronger for the journey we went on together as a family. And now? I’m much stronger and wiser for having travelled with Star on hers and I’m very grateful for it. 

Book Review: This is Where it Ends

I know these people. I know these people. I know these people.

This was the resonating thought I had while reading This is Where it Ends, the devastingly beautiful book by Marieke Nijkamp.  I know these people.

I don’t just mean that in the sense that writing makes you feel so ingrained in these characters lives that you feel you know them on an intimate level. It’s a true statement definitely. Nijkamp gives each character a livable and lived-in backstory and makes each character feel vibrant and alive in their own ways. But this isn’t what I mean.

Some of these characters feel plucked out of my own life, to a frustrating and heartbreaking degree, which makes this book that much more painful, and on some level, that much more important.

This is Where it Ends is a story that plucks us right in the middle of an impossible to imagine scenario that unfortunately happens all to often; a school shooting. All the events happen in the length and breadth of a school rampage being perpetrated by a former student of Opportunity High School, Tyler.

The story itself is told by a handful of students' first person accounts, but also through text messages, tweets, and blogs, but mainly focuses on the perspectives of Clare, Tomas, Autumn, and Sylvia. Each is entangled in Tyler’s life in their own fraught way. Clare is an ex-girlfriend, Tomas an enemy, Autumn a sister, and Sylvia the sister’s girlfriend and the enemy’s sister. Each has had a role to play antagonizing Tyler in varying degrees and being antagonized in return.   And it is made very clear very early on, each has a lot to lose and will lose much in a short amount of time.

And the thing that startled me the most was that there was an analog in my own life for just about every character. Clare’s brother Matthew, Tomas, Kevin (who barely spoke a word but had such a lived-in backstory I knew exactly who he was), the English Teacher, his daughter and her blog. 

(Sure, there were a few who I didn't have analogs for, Farid, and Sylvia, but they were so well created and such unique characters that I really wish I have versions of them in my life. Farid especially for reasons to deep and numerous to mention.) 

But the thing that made itself the most clear and also scared me the most is that I knew exactly who Autumn and Tyler were.  The relationship of a brother and sister surviving a traumatic and abusive household who were at once each other’s port in the storm and also each other’s worst enemy is a relationship I’ve witnessed up close and it is utterly heartbreaking.

The character of Tyler was especially upsetting because the analog of Tyler was someone I was once very close too but whose destructive qualities I was too familiar with and ultimately had to break ties.  The version of Tyler I knew never went on a rampage, thank God. But the capability was there.  The need for revenge, and always having something to prove was too close to the surface.

Sadly, the Tyler analog I knew died. And just as sad, there’s probably a lot of Tylers out there, lost and confused, and several Autumns and Clares and Tomas’s, just as lost and confused looking for some sort of anchor in the storm.

Which is why I find this story so important and worthwhile. The point of the whole book is that we are supposed to band together to be each other’s port in the storm instead of floating apart from one another, isolated and alone.  

It took a tragedy for the characters in this book to realize that. Sadly, it takes tragedy after tragedy for us to realize that. And even worse, sometimes we still don’t realize it.

But the power of this book is it gives us a close-up view of such a thing with the hopes that we will never have to live it ourselves, that maybe we can recognize the Tylers amongst us and accept them, love them, help them before it’s too late.

This is an incredible, heartbreaking story that is well-crafted, exquisitely told and has a message that is so important I’m going to be singing its praises for a long time. As I said on twitter, this book is so good I told my mom to read it and that might be the highest praise I can give a book. So please read it.

My super power

“But you’re not Ukiah’s mother anymore.” The funny things that come out of the mouths of babes. I know where this came from. My daughter was trying to wrap her head around the holiday that is mother’s day whilst also wrapping her head around the fact that she has a brother who isn’t here anymore.

“I’m always going to be his mother.” It was a knee-jerk response I wasn’t sure I was capable of. “Just because he’s an angel now doesn’t change the fact that I’m his mother.”

There was a confidence in the statement that surprised me. This confidence didn’t exist in me on my first mother’s day without him. I still remember half-yelling at my own mother “What am I mothering? A box?”

Now it’s different. Now I speak the truth. I’m still his mother. Death changes nothing about that.

Right after Ukiah died, my parents tried to convince me that I was more of a mother than most mothers could ever dream of being. The idea was that by being Ukiah’s mother, for however long it lasted, I somehow become a super-mom. Like being his mother gave me powers somehow. It’s a nice thought, one meant to soothe and bolster at the same time, but it’s not the truth.

I’m just a mom. I’m not super-hero mom. I’m prone to the same short tempers, the same gaps in judgement, the same misgivings as any other mother. Being his mother didn’t give me super-patience, or the ability to see through each and every decision and realize the outcomes.

The one super power it did bestow on me was enjoyment. When I have a moment with my daughter, by god I have a moment. It beautiful and perfect and every part of me knows it. I take my with it, relish in it.

That’s why Sunday was a good day, one of the best. Unlike many a mother’s day, it wasn’t met with a lot of fan fair or flourishes. We went to the grocery store and picked up stuff for a picnic. Then we loaded up the entire family, including the dog, and went to the river. We went to our favorite stretch of beach and had it all to ourselves. I watched the dog play fetch in the water for hours. I helped the daughter dig up sand and find shells. I smiled as she got a stick and pretended to fish. We wrote letters in the sand and drew pictures. She captured a ladybug and named it Bingo.

Every moment of that day, as simple as it was, was perfect. My heart sang and I listened to its melody, completely at peace. Being in the moment, seeing it for what it is and not taking it for granted, that’s my superpower. That’s a gift that is partially from Ukiah and partially from my daughter, and it is a gift I cherish.

p.s. I know I’m beating a dead horse about this, but the George Mark House #fundabed campaign is still going on and it needs your help. Not just donations, but they can use that too, but just getting the word out. Please help them fund two of their beds for a year. A five buck donation buys one meal for one child at the house. Just five bucks. But if you don’t have five bucks, please consider posting it on facebook, sending out a tweet. Anything. 

Remembering Prince

Since Prince’s passing, I’ve been thinking a lot about him and basically consuming every obituary/think piece there has been. I don’t know why. Maybe it is to try and soak up all that there is in the void that his passing has left.

There is one thing about Prince that I’ve been finding out that I never knew or possible forgotten if I had ever found out about it; Prince had and lost a child. Every time this comes up, it feels like a footnote in everything I’ve read, taking a back seat to his musical genius or to his artistic legacy. It’s barely a blip on our collective radar screens.

I get why, or at least I think I get why. Nobody wants to dwell on what it means to be a parent that’s lost a child. And to be fair, it’s not all that he was. To the public he was all those other things first. But, and I’m guessing here, but it’s a guess built from my own experience, he would prefer to be thought of a father first, a grieving father second (maybe, but maybe not), and then all those other things happened to be pleasant white noise.

There’s a reason many an obit reads loving father, adoring husband, blah, blah, blah, because that’s usually the order of priority. The love we gave our kids is what should take the first prize.

Speaking as a mother who has also lost a child, the title of grieving parent is not something to be taken lightly. It’s something that I don’t want the collective we to pass over quickly, in obit or memorial form. No it’s not all I want to be known for. I'm a mother, a wife, a writer, a creative writer, a person deeply passionate about disability rights, beader, the list goes on. But I also don’t want it to be a footnote in my life when the final word is set to paper. Because Ukiah was certainly not a footnote in my life. He was so much more. He could be the central thesis, the theme on which the whole book hinges. That’s how much he shaped my life.

So I wonder what Prince would make of all this. It seems to me that this was all kept so close to the vest or else I would’ve been more aware of it. And anyone who has lost a child is certainly allowed to do whatever they want in the wake of such things. If Prince decided to keep that loss quiet, that was his choice and I respect it.

But when these things come to light posthumously, I wish such knowledge would be given the respect and width and breadth of appreciation such a thing is due. Prince was a father that lost deeply and lost greatly and among the many other things he was to each and all of us he was this thing too and he should be loved and respected deeper and more greatly because of this.

Prince, you’ve meant a lot to me throughout the years, but you mean so much more to me now knowing how deeply you have loved and how deeply you have lost. Rest in Peace and Rest in Power, but most importantly now you can rest with your child. 

Weight

I can’t stop petting it. I keep stroking a leg or rubbing an ear, squeezing it closer into my body as I do. I know that a grown woman holding and patting a teddy bear must be pretty strange. But I don’t care. I know I could have placed the teddy bear on the floorboard of the car or sat it next to my daughter for the car ride home. I know having it on my lap makes little to no sense and yet I keep it there, petting it, hugging it tighter into my body as I do. Because this bear has suddenly become everything. Because this bear has given me just a little semblance of something I’ve missed horribly; Ukiah.

Since Ukiah’s passing, one thing that I missed terribly was the weight of him on my lap. I use to joke that I have phantom lap pains because my chest, the place where his head would lay as he slept so many nights on the couch, would ache for no reason. All I’ve wanted/needed was to put that familiar weight back on my lap again.

My daughter’s weight, although similar is a weight all her own. I’ve never compared the two. Nor has Loralei’s weight replaced Ukiah’s in my mind. They are both separate but equal. When Loralei sits in my lap, she’s not taking his place, she’s taking her own rightful place there. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the place he use to take. I still miss it terribly.

George Mark House was expecting us. I’d called earlier that day and told them we were coming. I’d spoken to one of my favorite people there at the house that morning. I wasn’t expecting that the metaphorical red carpet would be rolled out for our arrival but it certainly seemed that way. My daughter wasn’t feeling well, and everyone was bending over backwards to please her, because that’s how they are.

They offered her juice boxes and cookies and tried to do anything to make her smile. It didn’t work but that didn’t keep them from trying. Everyone was all warm smiles and even warmer hugs. This never surprises me. Ken Sommer, the director at George Mark even took time out of his busy schedule to come talk to me personally. He said something that I’ve heard over and over again at George Mark but that never ceases to surprise me when I’m there. “It’s your home.” It was said with a shrug, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

And it is my home. There’s a sort of peace there, a comfort in looking around. A smile crosses my face when I spy one of the eight mural-painted patient rooms. When I’m there by myself, I walk the halls. It’s the same ritual I perform at my Aunt Clare’s house. I have to see all the places that have filled me with comfort and love.

Today I settle for seeing some of the people I love. There are the two familiar faces in the front office along with Ken’s. At the nurse's station There’s the nurse I’d spoken with earlier that day. And she's soon joined by one other. She’s the one who asked the question.

“Do you want a bear?” I’m a little confused at first and then she explains further that a mother who’d lost a child had gifted these bears to the house and they could hand them out to families who had also lost a child. I immediately get choked up at the idea, so I leave the decision up to my daughter. Even though she isn’t feeling well, she nods. We go get the bear.

They are called Comfort Cubs. Each one is a little different, some are squatter than others, each has a unique nose. Each one is weighted. This is not your normal stuffed bear. This is like a brick in a purse. If you carry it around, you are doing so with conviction. I sit the one my daughter had picked on my lap and I immediately begin to cry.

It’s the weight of it. It’s his weight. It’s back on my lap again and it makes me feel…. I’m not sure how it makes me feel. It makes me feel so many things at once. I hold this bear in my lap and it’s like he’s there with me again. I held the bear on one leg and my daughter on the other and it felt like I had them both and that was everything.

I try to put words to my feelings and emotions, but they just get jumbled in my throat. The nice woman just grabs a Kleenex box and puts it in front of me. I don’t have to say anything. Those things I’ve been leaving unsaid are still being heard by those around me. That in and of itself is powerful enough.

I find my husband by the fountain up on the hill by the chapel. He’s already found Ukiah’s rock. We sit up on the park bench outside the chapel and I hold the bear. My husband said quietly. “This is a good thing. You’ve been wanting something like this.” It gets quiet again. Things I should be saying aren’t being said and it really doesn’t matter if they will be.

On the way home, as I’m clutching the bear, I want to tell him how important this is, and at the same time I want to diminish its importance. I want to brush off the fact that I’m clutching on to this bear and patting it lovingly. But at the same time I want to sing the praises of having this bear in the first place. Instead, we make the way home in relative silence. 

This bear, this simple stuffed bear gave me a gift I never thought I’d get back, it gave me Ukiah’s weight. Whenever I need him to ground me again, to comfort me, he can take the form of this bear and I can feel him again. It is one of the things that destroyed me when I lost him and now I get to have it back.

Thank you to the mother who gifted those bears. Thank you to the wonderful person at George Mark House who wanted me to have one. Thank you to all the people at George Mark House who created this safe space so that I might have one. Just thank you.

Please help me in thanking this wonderful organization by donating to their #fundabed campaign today.

Thank you.

Things said, things not said

I had to answer the phone but I couldn’t keep my sobs in check.

“Hey,” came my husband’s voice over the line.

“Hi,” I said, through muffled sobs.

“What’s going on?” After almost two decades of togetherness there wasn’t much I could hide from him. He’d learned almost every nuance in my voice.

“I found the pee shirt.” What little I was trying to hold back came flooding out.

“Oh,” his voice was sympathetic and sad all at once, knowing exactly what I meant by the statement.

There are some items of Ukiah’s we hold as treasures, and some things we’ve just held. As I’ve mentioned before, the more time that has passed from his passing, the harder it is for me to get rid of anything related to him. But there are some things, like the invisible scars that are hiding and make themselves visible when I least expect it.

We’ve been staging the house recently because we are putting it on the market. This is in and of itself a bittersweet thing. The place is so full of memories we’ve made, memories we’ve made with him, memories that for better and for worse aren’t going to be in the new place, wherever that is.

I was doing a massive spring cleaning to stage the house and ran into things that I knew we still had but that I did not know we were hiding. Maybe my husband had been hiding them from me, or maybe I was hiding them from myself. I’m not sure. But I found them and they broke my heart all over again.

The Pee shirt was chief amongst those items. It was dubbed that because every time the hubbie wore it, Ukiah would inevitably soil it in some manner. The bodily fluids housed on the shirt are varied and numerous. Sorry to get gross on you, but it is the truth. The shirt itself is four-leaf clover green with a horse and rider screen-printed on it and some sparse wording that I don't remember. This shirt had seen war, not just of the bodily fluid variety. Swiss cheese ain’t got nothin’ on this shirt. It’s old and ratty and can’t be used for anything other than a rag and I will not get rid of it. You’ll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. (Actually, I hope I get to go out that way, clutching something that reminds me of him, though probably not the pee shirt. I still have his stuffed animals. I’ll use one of those and one of the little munchkin’s while I’m at it. It would be nice to have the things I most treasure around me when I go out. And chocolate. Even if I’m not allowed to eat it, I want it close. But i'll save that for my will. Okay, digressing here, I’ll stop.).

I was clutching the pee shirt when he called. We both let the significance of it wash over us and were quiet for a while, neither of us knowing what to do with our feels. We switched tacks but we didn’t have to say much else. We knew he was there with us in that moment. We let him be. Sometimes the best things that are said are things that aren’t said at all.

Today is the anniversary of his passing, and there have already been several of those moments. Saying things and not saying things because not saying them is just as significant.

But right now I do have quite a few things to say. Mainly the big thing to say is that George Mark Children’s House, an organization near and dear to my heart and a charity that is well worth giving money to is having a fundraiser right now. Their current #fundabed  fundraiser is gaining traction right now on social media and on Indiegogo but it can still use all the help it can get.

The great thing about this fundraiser is you can select the exact amount, type of donation you want to give.  $5 buys a home-cooked meal. $25 buys a week’s worth of diapers and wipes. You can actually choose the type of impact you want your donation to make!

This is huge! It is so important you guys. And so worthy too.

Usually around this time of year, I make a plea regarding my Piggy Banks for Ukiah fundraiser, choosing to make this bittersweet time in our lives worth something by donating to George Mark House but this year I’ll be donating all my son’s piggy bank money (and if my daughter wants, some or all of her piggy bank money too) to the #fundabed campaign.

I would love to have enough in the piggie bank to buy an end of life suite. To be able to give a family the chance to use the same facilities my family and I were able to use when my son was there… to give that gift…. There are no words. None. I’m crying while writing this right now. I can’t even explain.

But with your help? Well, the sky’s the limit isn’t it?

I’m not sure if the Indiegogo fundraiser has the capabilities to let us pool our money for an item, but how great would it be to be able to give them enough to fund a day of care for a patient, or two. And real talk, as someone who as used their bereavement support services, if we could somehow band together to fund the bereavement support gift? I would be beyond the moon indebted to you to make this happen.

Right now, I don’t’ have much in the way of gifts or freebies to hand out to make your donation worth it, except what I’ve done in the past which is to lend my ever so humble blog to you for donating or spreading the word.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for pooling our funds/resources I’d love to hear it. 

Invisible scars

Some years it hurts worse than others. Some days, some moments even, it throbs. It never goes away, the invisible scar I wear, the burden I carry on my back. Maybe you can see it on my face, no matter how good I am at hiding it.  It will never go away.

I don't want it to. I am sometimes saddened that the burden has lessened, that the grief I feel isn't more. I grieve because there is less to grieve. I'm upset because the scar has healed just a little bit more.

I'm a lot antsier this year. I just want it to be over with. I don't want to think about April anymore. How Ukiah was born on April 15th and how he died on April 5th just shy of his second birthday.  I don't want to be with those thoughts any more and yet those are the only thoughts I want to be with.

For the first time in a long time I put his picture up at a place where I knew it would beckon the question from those that didn't know the story. It did. And even though I didn't really want to deal with it, deep down I did. I wanted people know him again. I'm not locking him away by any means, but for those who don't know the story, it's a hard topic to broach.

I had a son and then he passed away. It's a simple sentence in theory but in the real world it is hard as hell to say. I choke and sputter. Tears I promised myself wouldn't come pour out in a deluge. It's never not going to be difficult.

I'm okay with that. I mean I guess I'm okay with it. I'm not okay with him being gone. And even though the universe gave me an incredible daughter things still aren't square between me and the universe. Not by a long shot.

I don't know what April 5th or April 15th is going to bring my way this year. Joy, more grief, bittersweet tears? Probably, well most likely. But the how of it, the why of it, I won't know until it happens.

There is a way you can help. Well, there's a few different ways actually. First, have a slice of pizza, or a whole pie with family. Knowing that you are doing that on either day would make me smile. Second, consider spreading the good word about George Mark and if you can, make a donation. That would not only make me smile but it would bring tears of joy to my eyes and it would make my whole month brighter.

He's always with me. But knowing he's with you too, in your thoughts on those two days would mean a lot.

On music that finds you and the friends that make it

I’m not sure I believe in fate, the big version at least. That all things are fated to be as they are? I don’t buy it. If free will is just a ruse so that everything plays out according to someone else’s master plan, than what the hell is the point anyway? We might as well not make any choices and just let it ride. But we don’t so our own choices have to amount to something right?

But I do believe in the fate of small things, small moments. I don’t think fate can work on the grand scale all the time. But it can work small minor miracles that make us take stock and really think about it, connections, the grander scale, the bigger picture.

Yesterday I experienced one of those moments.

I go through cycles where I ignore my personal emails and some, if not most of the email newsletters I signed up for, even if they are from writers and people I admire. I tell myself it’s because I don’t have the time, but really its because I don’t want to expend the effort to connect with what that person is trying to say.

I could’ve ignored the @Whereverwriter email post. But I didn’t. I have to admit her lede spoke to me. She got me with Free Gift to You! So I clicked and read. I was surprised to find that someone who’s writing I admired so much was also a gifted musician.

I clicked on her link to her EP and from the first song I cried tears of joy. It was so beautiful. Her voice was stunning and the words gave me goose bumps. I listened to the EP alternating between giddy joy and joyful tears because someone I consider a friend made something so awe-inspiring.

Then I got to The Bridge.

It’s like her words were destined to find me.

I’ve talked about it some on this blog and on my other blog Ukiah’s Heart but I’ve been struggling with depression pretty hard on and off for years. After my son died, I went through a tail spin. Recently I’ve gone through another. It’s the reason I haven’t written on this blog for quite awhile. Composing my thoughts can be downright impossible when I can barely see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes I’m able to dig myself out of a tailspin okay. Lately I haven’t. I finally had to admit to everyone I loved that I needed help. I’m getting help. I’ve had several people tell me variations of what was in Amy’s song for months now, but this time it connected. I mean, really connected.

I wept. I listened to it again and I wept some more.  I kept listening and kept crying. Finally, somewhere between the fourth of fifth listen, the tears stopped, but the connection didn’t.

I needed this song and it found me and now I won’t let it go. One of fate's small little miracle's I guess. It could be argued that I would've found this eventually, that it still would of made an impact. Which is probably true. I try to connect to her site at least once a month to get caught up on what I'm missing in her life. But I could also argue that if I had found it any other time, it maybe wouldn't have resonated as deeply as it had. We're chalking this one up to fate, and Amy's generosity for now.

There are few greater pleasures in this world than when you connect with a piece of writing, music or art. It’s a thing of wonder and pure joy and a person I call my friend gave me that connection. Words can’t express what a gift that is.

So I’m trying to give one back. Listen to this album. Please, if you have a few spare bucks, download it and send that money her way, so that way she sees a few monetary fruits of her incredible endeavors. If you are on social media, link or tweet her album that way it might bring someone else the joy and the connections I received.

Amy your writing and your music mean something because they meant something to me. Don’t ever doubt that. When you finally release your ebook, consider me ground central for your promotions. I’ll be singing your praises for years to come. Thank you.

Book Review: Son

I don't know what I can say about Lois Lowry, about the book Son, the conclusion to her Giver series, or about all four books in general that haven't already been said by people way more articulate than I. But I'll start with this, I love them. And I love Lois Lowry with the kind of love that I usually reserve for highly revered members of my family. But like family members I love, she can sometimes do things that fluster and frustrate me.

The Giver movie adaptation was one of those things. I have not seen The Giver yet, but the trailer was enough to put me off the enterprise. I just got the feeling that the heart of the whole book was missing. My feeling has always been that in order to bring the book to the screen, the format should be much shorter/sparser like the book was, but that's neither here nor there. While I applaud the effort, I feel like there were several missteps there.

So I read Son with a lot of ambivalence still floating in my system. I wasn't sure if I could trust the journey. Well I'm happy to report that the journey I was taken on was an extremely great ride. I loved this book so much, probably because initially it revisited the world The Giver had taken place in at the very beginning. The way this book intertwined with The Giver and had been so effortlessly meshed with that first story was no easy feat but Lowry handled it with ease.

But this story, like those that came after The Giver is about showing all the fractures in the cultures that exist outside the seemingly Utopian society of The Giver. Where the book really got going is when the main character left that world. The main character, or at least the main character for the first two-thirds of the book is the mother of the baby that was introduced in the first book, Gabe, the baby with the swirling blue eyes.

The story starts with the birth of the child and the mother's grappling with the birth and her inability to keep the baby she gave birth to. At first she just tries to find ways to visit and be with the child but as the events of The Giver unfurl within her life, she finds it more and more difficult to be with the child.When the child is taken, the bottom falls out, both literally and figuratively. She seeks refuge on a boat she hopes will help her find her son but then it sinks and so does her memory of where she was before and of her son, but that was the one thing that wouldn't stay buried.  A tiny enclosed village takes her in where she starts reclaiming her memories and herself.

Where the story really gets going is when she makes the decision to seek out her son by climbing a treacherous cliff that has separated the village from the rest of the fractured societies existing in the world. Those chapters filled me with a sense of wonder and dread and anticipation for what happened next.

The part of the book that lost me was the last third where most of narration and focus is on Gabe, her lost son. A big portion of the wind let out of the sails around that point mostly because it focused on a character who didn't know what we already knew and didn't grab and keep my attention as well as the first two sections had.

Also, *spoiler alert* the ending felt like a cheat or hurried or both. It was interesting that a character introduced in the third book would be brought back and was used in interesting ways, but the pay off didn't quite work because I don't think it was quite earned.

Also, and this just may be me talking, but can she please give me a map so I have a handy lay out for all these different societies that sprouted up after the apocalypse? There was Jonas's Seemingly Utopean society that the first book made me believe stretched over a huge stretch of land. Then there was Kira's society and a third society Jonas was the leader of that the third book focused on. In this book, I felt like two more had been added to that list, a land with seafaring people with whom Jonas's society did a bit of trade and commerce with and the other being the village that was cut off by both sea and cliff. I needed a reference for just how this land was laid out and how far spread apart or close everyone may have been.

But overall it's a great capper to the series that started with The Giver. Not my favorite in the series, not by a long shot but still worthy of your time and a read. It's a solid B.

Runnin' For Rhett's Run Because You Can

"How much are you charging for a full mask?"
"Nothing for this event."
"Really?" I ask. I've been charged everything from 3 to 15 bucks for all manner of face-painting styles. She was currently giving my daughter the full-on Frozen treatment, with an array of snowflakes dotting her forehead and cheeks.
"I never charge when I do the Run Because You Can Event. The family lost their son and he's a beautiful angel and I want to honor that, so I don't charge."
"You know the reason we come here every year is because I lost my son too and their story reminds me so much of my own."
"Bless you sweetheart."

I tipped her five bucks once she finished with my daughter's face.

That was my moment from this year's event.  Usually the event is filled with so many more of them for me. Unfortunately, an injury had me side-lined this year so I didn't run it. I kept my eye out for the kid in the stroke-survivor shirt, but I didn't see him. I missed the bagpipe player because he was out on the course and not at the park. And even though I tweeted that I wanted to meet Randy Seevers and I hoped I'd get to, I didn't.

What I did get was a chance to express, however briefly, what Rhett Seevers and his story meant to me to someone there. And it really means so much. As bereaved parents, its hard for us to find a place to put our energy and emotions that had pretty much been given fully to the children we cared about. But the Seevers created this race and their foundation to have a place to put all of that, as a way to remember Rhett and all the gifts he gave them and so my family and I make the hour and a half trek every year to remember Rhett and to remember our own son and to honor the journey he took us and is still taking us on.

One of these days I will meet the Seevers and I'll shake their hands and tell them how important this all is to me.  But right now I'll work on getting injury free and getting race ready for next year so I can hear the bagpipes play and brighten up my day. To the organizers of the event, thanks for a great day and all the great days your race provides.

The Ballad of Halloween Costumes come and gone....

....or a conversation about my current halloween costume woes.

"So what are you guys doing for halloween?"
"I don't know and I'm not going to know until my daughter's made a decision."
"Well, what is she dressing as?"
"I don't know and I'm not going to know until she makes a decision."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I've been the halloween store twice, I've been to Target twice, and we still might have to go back at the eleventh hour just to appease a three year old."
"You can't be serious?"
"Let me tell you the whole story just so I can prove to you how serious I am. The whole month I've spent convincing my daughter she was going to be Merida for halloween and I almost had her convinced, to the point that I bought a bear costume because I was going to be the mother bear to her Merida. Then I got the bear costume."
"And?"
"And she saw it and decided she was going to be a bear for Halloween. No manner of me convincing her otherwise was going to change that. So I decided I'd go the Halloween store and try to find a bear costume and we'd both go as bears. But I made the mistake of taking her to Halloween store, and that's where the whole story really goes wrong."
"How?"
"Well, for it started with her reaction to the store in general. She lit up like Christmas lights and yelled like only a three-year-old in a Halloween store can yell 'Look at all the dress up clothes!' Thus began a thirty-minute crisis of indecision that apparently only a three-year-old can have. She made so many snap decisions I thought her head was going to spin off like the little girl in the exorcist. It kept rocketing back and forth from Elsa to Anna to Tangled to Merida that I couldn't keep up with flights of fancy. I finally convinced her that it should be Merida, because we already had the dress and that's what I wanted her to be all along. I even bought the slippers, the crown and the gloves to complete the look that didn't need to be completed, but if it got us out of the store I was all for it."
"So why is it still a question?"
"Well the next day happened and instead of Merida she decided she was going to be Cinderella and she would not be deterred. So then we went back to the store, found the Cinderella dress but then the whole head turning happened again and then she decided she wanted to be the girl from Tangled. So we bought that outfit."
"So a decision's been made."
"No, now we're just getting to the good part. This morning she wakes up and says she's going to be cinderella, again, even though we didn't buy the dress, and we're still in part trying to convince her to be Rapunzal from Tangled, or Merida or Elsa or one of the millions of costumes we already have for her, but SHE WILL NOT BE SWAYED AGAIN. So then my husband does a last second hell-mary pass and says he'll dress up as Cinderella for halloween if she'll just stick with going as the character from Tangled."
"He did what?"
"I know. We're not to the kicker yet. She went into my closet and started pulling out outfits for my husband's Cinderella look."
"You're kidding."
"Do I sound as if this is something I could make up? Apparently, just to get my daughter out the door this morning, my husband has promised to take her back to the store to purchase a Cinderella wig for himself just to appease her. So like I said before, I have no idea what's going to happen tonight until it happens. If we dress up as the mother bear from Brave, a man in Cinderella drag and the girl in Tangled, and you get pictures of us on your phone as such, just know it was because of a very adamant three-year-old who would not could not be swayed."

The following conversation is either a real conversation I had about how my Halloween is going so far to my mother of all people or a sketch just rife for a Robot Chicken send-up. I'll let you be the judge.

Review: Red Band Society Pilot

I get that I'm, what, three days late with this one and you've probably read every review you were gonna read on this show anyway, but now that I've watched the thing a bunch of times (....yes, like four times now. Shut up.), I feel like I still have things to say, naggy things that won't leave me alone.

And let me just say that I like it before I get into the nit-picking. There aren't enough disabled characters that are nuanced and not just there to make the main character feel better about himself. And although I'm a little upset that actual actors with disabilities are not playing these characters, (representation matters!) I'm happy that a story about kids like this is being made at all. And the afflictions really run the gambit. It's not just a "kids with cancer" story. Which it shouldn't be. 

And there really is crack casting all the way through this sucker. Yes, Yes, blah-blah-blah-Octavia Spencer kicking but and taking names-cakes. She is as advertised and she is a perfect composite of hard-assed nurse with a heart of gold that I have ever met, and I've met several. And can I just say how happy I am that Griffin Dunne is slowly morphing into Harry Dean Stanton. Maybe every generation will have a person that slowly morphs into him so that we'll have a Harry Dean Stanton forever. Because he's a national treasure and we need him to live on for the generations (Okay, I have no idea where that came from).

But there were two pieces of casting that made my girl-of-the-90s heart sing. For starters, Thomas Ian Nicholas.The second I saw him I suddenly reverted to the version of me that saw Rookie of the Year for the first time and swooned, just a little. Although You do not know how hard I laughed when Thomas Ian Nicholas was the guy who bought them all beer. I don't know if it was meant to be some American Pie call-back but I took as such. I also can't wait to see how his role will develop.

But the absolute best casting was Wilson Cruz. I did not know how much I missed him on my TV until he came back. He is my everything and I will be returning to this show just to make sure he has a job. And yes, I could count the number of lines he had in this episode on both my hands. But with Wilson Cruz even small amounts is awesome Wilson Cruz.

But there's a lot of incongruities that just didn't track for me in the pilot. And I'm not saying a TV show is going to get every beat right when it comes to hospital life, but there's so much that it got wrong that it just bugged. There's so much that bugged that I'm not even sure where to start. I could go with Leo's eyebrows and how disconcerting it is that a kid on active chemo who lost all his hair could still have bushy eyebrows that are subscribing to some sort of 'Peter Gallagher Eyebrows of awesomess' regimen for some reason. Why couldn't they just go all the way with it? Cancer patients lose or thin out their eyebrows too. Why can't you show that?

And the sped up timeline with which everything took place bugged me too. Are you telling me that within the course, of what, a few hours Kara would just get a room? And by the end of the same day they have a diagnosis for her? Just like that? "Oh did the EKG, MRI, ultrasound and nuclear test all in the same day and we got these results. Wow, we're efficient." Yeah, like that happens. Honestly, I would've loved to seen her driven crazy by the the hurry-up and wait of the ER. She would've tried to eviscerate someone there. And the other thing about Kara is that the doctor and parents just talked about Kara's condition in the middle of the foyer so that she could overhear. Blah-blah-blah-HPAA-privacy-regulations-blah, more blah-blah-blah about Every hospital's patient's bill of rights is different but there is generally a clause that the patient has a right to know everything about their diagnosis and treatment. And I know these sort of hallway conversations do happen all the time, but it just felt like a plot point and not what would really happen.

And the less said about Jordi being admitted to the hospital and going into surgery the next day. Are you actually telling me that he didn't have to go through a bevy of scans and tests before he gets the magic surgery of life-savingness? Yeah, no can't buy it.

And, okay last bitch session, so what Leo had one class in the morning but somehow had the rest of the day to find out he was getting a new roommate, get in a lunch with a hypochondriac and take a plastic surgeon's car for a joy ride? Last I checked, classes at a hospital are still pretty regimented and longer-ish? Every high schooler now all the sudden wants to live in a hospital so that they only have to read Henry the V for an hour and can spend the rest of the day doing whatever the hell they want.

And I know I should shut up and stop bitching about it not hitting every note of real life hospital stays. So I'm gonna stop and say that I co-sign this show because the coma boy used farts as revenge and Dash fakes a wheezing episode and I laughed my ass off at that. It won me over despite it's obvious misrepresentations into parts of hospital life. I'm willing to give this show a solid shot. Grade: A solid B.

My Birthday Wish

Another Day, another year older. Oh what joys! Instead of waxing philosophic on another year, I'm just going to reblog the post I did for last year's birthday.

So my birthday's coming up in a week or so (August 27th) and I really don't have a lot of expectations. Dinner out with Fighting Nun, a good day out with  the whole family, my mom sending me homemade cookies, one or two small things, nothing big.  And that's the way I like it. A fuss being made over my birthday is old hat and I'm over it.

But there's something I'd like you all to do for my birthday if you've read my blog, or my tweets at all. I think you can probably guess what that is. George Mark House looms and will always loom large in my mind.  It's like an old friend who I forget about for big chunks of time but when I get back in touch, I fall right into my same rhythms with it.

I've done fundraisers and little things for them in the past with varying results and because I haven't had much time to organize myself, this one will be small and will probably have the same results. But I'd like to try and send them as much love (and money) as possible. I still have a small bevy of bracelets I made for the last fundraiser. On a first come first serve basis, I'll give those bracelets to the first five people who donate to George Mark House between now and my birthday. As always, if you've been saving up loose change for a rainy day, cash it in and send it. And if you do, let me know and I will parade you with as much gratitude as I have.

Just donate to George Mark House using their page, send me an email receipt ( tyliagardner @ hotmail (dot) com )  and where you'd like the bracelet sent to or or DM me on twitter with the information and boom, we're in business. Don't feel like donating, especially if you're not one of the first five, but you'd still like to donate?  No problem. Just tweet, or social media a link to George Mark House and you can have my blog for a full day. Want to promote your book , your blog, want to force my blog to post silly cat videos for a whole day? I will hand you the keys to castle if you give George Mark some love between now and my birthday. Seriously, any bit of love you can provide to George Mark house is enough and will garner you my love and and respect for the end of days. It's not only appreciated by me but George Mark House as well. Not enough people know what they do and how important they are to special needs and bereaved parents like myself.

They just recently had to stop their bereaved parent meetings, much to the chagrin of myself and parents like me. Tell them that their services and their support of my family and families like me is appreciated by throwing them a bone and some love, however small.

[Ed. Note: I've decided to extend my Birthday Challenge until the end of August, you have until 12:00AM August 31st to win loot or space on my blog!]

 I'm not doing a fundraiser this year. I 'd like to save that for Ukiah's birthday, but If you do chose to donate  a little bit of money to George Mark House between now and their annual gala and tell me about it, I still have some bracelets and some jewelry lying around that I'll gladly send you or I'll make you something special! But mostly I want their message and what they do spread out to the world. If you can,  tweet about it, put a link and their banner on your own blog, put it on tumblr. I don't care, just get the message out. I won't hand over the keys to my blog this time, but I will keep the karma rolling and tweet anything you want out to the world. On my birthday all I want is for George Mark House to shine and the message of what they do to reach as many people as possible. Thank you. 

My #PitchWars Bio

What should I say about me that hasn’t been said already?  I’m a bad picture taker (you knew that). I frequently ramble about nonsensical and pop-culture things (you knew that too, just check my archives). I’m frequently sleep deprived and someone is ALWAYS interrupting my dreams (I still haven’t reached the exciting conclusion to my Logan Marshall Green Vs. a Viking dream. Come back dream, come back!)

A thing that you probably don’t know about me. I wrote a book that I’d really (really, really) like to get published, which is why I’m trying this #PitchWars thing out. A thing you should know about me is what inspired the story and what my going motivation is for getting it published and out into the world.

Well, there are two motivations really. The first is my son. He was born on April 15th, 2008. He died, in our arms, at home April 5th, 2010. He’s the inspiration behind the story. I saw him and so many kids like him in the NICU just like him fight invisible monsters on a continual basis. I saw all these incredible little differences in all these incredible babies and they changed me.

I’m not just a mom, I’m a full-fledged momma bear with the world’s sharpest claws and the fiercest love. I’m not just a momma bear to my two kids but to all the kids. And I mean all of the kids. I don’t care if you’re a grown-ass adult with your own mortgage and your own kids. If you want a mother to utter the words “I love you” just so you feel some motherly love in your life, well I’m the person for the job. Need some right now? Fine. I love you! Need a little more? Okay. I love you. Done. My son taught me that we all have an infinite bottomless well of love to give. I not tap into mine and give out freely.

I’m also a mom that loves freely and openly and most importantly, happily. I know how to laugh and enjoy things things with an open heart in ways I could have never imagined. My daughter taught me how to do that because she is not afraid to be who she is. That’s a hard lesson I’m trying to learn.

It means I have to not be afraid to be who I am and go after the things I want, and that’s to be writer and to share my son’s story and the journey he took us all on and sharing how he continues to affect my life.

So, enough about me. What about the book? The book is called The Broken and I've been known to say that it's part sci-fi (although paranormal or magical realism might be more apt), part auto-biography. It's YA because  I'm targeting kids who were in my son's same position. All of my son's victories and a lot of his defeats are in the pages of this book. It's about growing up to find out you are a lot stronger than you think you are, that you're not just a diagnosis or a disability or all of the unkind things the people around you say that you are. It's about finding a voice and finding out that its strong.

I look forward to meeting all the mentors and fellow writers and everyone whose embarking on this year’s #PitchWars journey.