Babel

My Dearest Love,

I just watched "Babel," a movie that I think you would have liked even though there were many sad parts. In the end, one of the major threads was about how we love our children. I have to admit that I am a little drunk as I write this and a little leaky around the eyes. I had to hug both of our children good night. I wanted them to know how much I love them even though I don't know how to really tell them.

Tonight I miss you a bunch. Sometimes I feel adrift without you. I am doing OK overall, I think. I think I have the money thing figured out. I get the bills paid. I am taking the kids to Europe for three weeks this summer. I think that I am insane when I sit down and try to do some of the planning for that. This is what you were so good at. I wish you were here now to help. Although, you always got too wrapped up in it and worked yourself into a frenzy by the time we left so that you were always getting sick and on the verge of collapse upon leaving. What kind of way is that to start a vacation.

I have the passports. I have the plane tickets to Amsterdam and back (oh, get this. K said, when I told her we would have to spend a day in Amsterdam, "Great, we can hit a few coffee-shops."). I have a couple of tickets on some cheap airlines with addresses in Eastern Europe to Budapest and back. That will be an adventure. I have a hotel reserved in Szeged - who knows?

Then there are two weeks that aren't planned. Better make sure I have both credit cards. I hope that you are watching over us when we get to Paris. That was always more your city than mine. If I had my druthers, I'd just rent a canal boat for a week and float along doing sweet fuck all. Send the kids into the nearest village for wine and cheese whenever we ran out. But, that doesn't do it for the teenagers. They want big cities and clubbing. I'm going to be a wreck by the time we get home. Be our guardian angel won't you?

PS I finally took your toothbrush out of the holder and pitched it. With love.

Mother's Day

My Dearest Love,

It will be Mother's Day in about 10 minutes. We are having a small thunderstorm as I write this. It is very nice.

There is so much to tell you. It's been too long. Your daughter is off at prom tonight. She looked beautiful, even though she thought that her dress was going to fall down any minute. It was a white strapless thing that made me think of Tinkerbell even though it was a long gown.

I went off for dinner with all of the abandoned parents. Our daughter has been giving me a very hard time, urging me to spend more time with the parents of her friends. I normally defer, as I was not all that eager to spend time with people whom I did not already know. I have had little energy to invest in new relationships. But this time, I told her I would do it.

And, surprisingly, I had a good time. After a bit of an awkward start, the conversation began to flow (perhaps induced by the three bottles of wine I ordered right off the bat). And by the end of the evening, we had all had a few laughs and I for one, sincerely enjoyed the company.

When I got home, I found the kitchen in a mess, your daughter's room a disaster, and all the lights in the house on as our son felt a bit insecure alone in an empty house after dark. I have turned the lights out, but the kitchen is still a mess. Tomorrow is another day.

I have to report that things are not any better with your sisters. Whatever thawing out there was disappeared when I sent word of my decisions regarding guardianship and related estate affairs. I am once again the devil incarnate. Be that as it may, I feel secure in the decisions and do not regret them for a moment. I do not spend much time thinking about this, but when I do, I regret all of the negative emotions that have been bandied about. Life is too short for that.

Yesterday, I went back and reread my journal entries from a year ago. It was about this time that we went back to the transplant team at the U and told them we wished to end treatment. I remember how hard that was. We were finally drawing a line in the sand having known for some time that it would come to this, but not ever really wanting to actually get there. You fought so hard and for so long. To have to admit that the end was now upon us was about the most difficult thing I could imagine.

I wonder about my own time now. I am once again bare headed as I dealt with my impending hair loss as I have done before - by shaving my head. I have done three rounds of the old odious chemo treatment compounded with a bit of the new - the mono-clonal antibody cocktail. It's icky, but bearable, and it seems to be working, though I must admit that I don't look forward to spending the rest of my life experiencing a chemically induced hangover every three weeks. Shit, I can do that any time I want and at least have a little fun getting there.

OK, enough whining. You would be proud to see how your children have grown over the last year. Your son is shooting up like a weed and your daughter is even more beautiful than when you last saw her. I guess those statements could be construed as presumptive given that I don't know whether you are watching us now from whatever viewpoint you might have. Whatever the case, I honestly do mean that you would be proud. They are good kids.

So, now I sign off. Your daughter is due back at any moment to pick up supplies for tonights overnight festivities. I will try to stay awake until she does. In the mean time, happy Mother's Day, love.

D.