Reunited

Some good did come from the two days of wake and funeral for my cousin Judy, and that was getting to see my cousin Jeffrey again. Jeff and I are only a year apart in age and we grew up together. He is actually my first cousin once removed (the child of my first cousin) but our close age and the closeness of our families at that time meant that we were together a lot. We stood up together in my sister's wedding (I was 6 and he was 5), and spent many weekends at my aunt's cottage on the lake. Jeff and his parents moved to Connecticut when he was 11 and I hadn't seen him in over 30 years. In all that time, I had always remembered him and thought of all the fun we'd had as children. From the moment we saw each other across the room, there was that flash of recognition and we spent the time together, afraid to let each other out of sight. The amazing part was that he remembered me the same way I remembered him.

Back in the 70's, when they moved away, pre-teens didn't have a lot of options to staying in contact. You could write letters, sure, but who really did that? You could call on the phone, but the cost of long-distance calls was an issue. Now, we can communicate so much more easily, through calls, texting, email, skype, twitter, facebook. This time, I have all his contact info and I plan to use it.

Death and Memories

My cousin died and we buried her on Thursday. She's the first of my generation to die. There was a very nice write up about her in our local paper.

The funeral was sad, as most are, but made even sadder by the fact that her 87 year old mother was sitting in the front row. Instead of a standard service, the family chose to have certain songs played between prayers. Before one song her husband told a story. Judy had been suffering from dementia for some time. She didn't always remember who she was talking to or what she was talking about, but she remembered all the words to her favorite songs. He would put the songs on and she would sing along. The song he played then was "The Way We Were" and everyone was in tears. In the quiet moment after the song, I heard my little 2 year old great niece whimpering softly, upset by all the weeping around her.

When my sister told her husband to let us know if there was anything he needed, anything at all, he said, "Bring her back."

Creatively Depressive

I've been wondering lately if my husband and I have been together so long now that we just natually suck the energy from each other. Since he's been laid off, he's started painting, which is a great thing. He's feeling really good about the stuff he's creating and he should, because he's a very talented artist. But since I've been back to work, I'm feeling more and more depressed.

I felt so happy, hopeful, rested and calm while I was unemployed. Working every day makes me all stressed and angry. I never want to talk to anyone when I get home and mostly, I just want to sit around all evening, occassionally perusing my Twitter feed for anything interesting and watching TV. No, really. That's all I want to do.

More and more, I just don't feel like I have the mental energy to write any posts, or read any books, or do anything at all productive. If it involves thought on my part. I'm just not up to it.

So I'm just wondering if it's possible that there's only just so much creative energy to share between the two of us and, if that's true, is he using it all up right now?