With Gusto

Dear Mike, 

     Your 44th birthday.  I just can't imagine anymore.  You on your way to 50.  You were practically a kid when you died.  My sadness has waxed and waned for the past few months.  I just can't believe it's nearly 20 years since you've passed.  It may as well be a lifetime.  It marks almost 10 years of unfinished business of the heart for me that is utterly wrenching at times.  If I could carry on your gift of pursuing your passions, interests and curiosities with the absolute gusto you gave each and everyone one of them I imagine that you would be cheering, clapping and "wooo-hoooing" like Kerrigan when Notre Dame is scoring a touchdown.  The angels alongside you would be wondering, "What on Earth is he going on about?"  I can see your smile and twinkle in your eye, your signature. 

     I love tradition, but it would be unlike me if I didn't change it up.  In honor of your gusto, our traditional birthday dinner of Mexican food (for your first job at Casa Burrito)  and chocolate eclairs (your choice dessert) are taking a year off in lieu of fresh Salmon and a croquembouche for dessert.  Our latest and fantastic success at our own story of gusto is actually catching a fish we can keep and eat!  And we are learning more and more with each attempt.  We are checking out different fly shops, finding our favorites, listening to suggestions, putting it all into practice, making new flies, practicing knots, scouting locations and researching online.  We even have our own favorite spots on the river to go now.  It's starting to feel like we sort of know what we're doing. when nearly a month ago I really felt like a complete idiot out there trying to figure it out after not much luck in the past.  And lastly I have wanted to make a croquembouche for years.  Maybe 8? 9? Maybe even 10.  Today I'm going to do it.  It's almost like a chocolate eclair ;) 

   I've written in years past that your birthday is like New Year's to me.  It's when my year resets itself, when I reflect on all that has passed and recount my accomplishments or what I haven't.  I still long for the year that I'm bubbling over with giants feats of passions pursued.  Could these small steps will be that giant leap?

     I miss what I imagined you would have been in my life today.  How we could have shared and enhanced each others skills.  I could use your driveway to part out our Volvo when I decided it was done.  We'd probably even work on the repairs together.  I didn't really get that chance with you.  That summer you worked on the motorcycle, I think it may have been your last summer, I could have learned from you.  Tears well up when I think back to that.  I was also scared of you sometimes.  I hate that.  I wish it weren't so.

     Saw this quote today.  "Forgiving you means I no longer dwell on what an a****le you are.  It doesn't mean you're no longer an a****le."  I thought of Randall,  except that I don't think he's an a****le.  But I no longer dwell on him, what he did.  I don't hate him.  I do feel sad for him.  Having to live with what he did for the rest of his life.  I can't imagine.  I don't think I could.  I do wonder what his life is like though.  If he is different.  If it's better.  Like I had hoped for you when you were a young adult. 

     I wish for the stray shards of my heart to find their final resting place this year, right back to where they fell from.  Made from a stronger tissue with threads of quiet and self-love woven through.  A tissue that sparkles like the gleam in your eyes, beaming joy that's powered by gusto. I want to smile like a 3-year-old's deep belly laughs again.

I love you.

Gabby

Gone But Not Forgotten

Dear Mike,

It's been 19 years and a day since you died. I didn't forget yesterday, just busy with my life that is finally slowing down a little. It's still sad.

Much love to you,

Gabby

Time Flies

Dear Mike,


You would be 43 today. My life is like a whirlwind right now. I had wanted to share this day and celebrate your life with more family. I'm just happy I am able to carry on tradition this year with Fionnegan and Corrianna. Kerrigan is hard at work for the family in Portland and working on our house there. We are scrambling to finish it. We're making enchiladas and chocolate eclairs today, after we take care of the horses though. We talk about you. Fionn asks questions from time to time. He wants to bring you flowers. I was thinking that I'd bring him to your grave when I visit next, hopefully in December. Yesterday he told Corri that I might cry a few tears today. I have trouble imagining where you would be in our lives this past year. It seems like other times it's so obvious to me what you would have been doing, what your life would be like. It's been a year of tremendous change for everyone in the family. It's crazy really how it's happened all at once and none of the change... relocation, multiple big moves, home renovations, business ventures and job changes...have been quick or small. Probably much like the year we all had our first child.

It's hard to believe we're nearing 20 years since you died. I've been dreaming of a big celebration of your life in 2015...well, my own celebration of it. An art installation, celebration, experience. A travel through your life and my mind. It could be appreciated by anyone and thought provoking to those that knew/know you and me.
I love you. I look for pieces of you in my life. I notice reminders of you out and about. I always think of you when I listen to Depeche Mode. I listened to them a lot on a recent drive to and from Portland. Loosing you was a mountainous loss but not one that defeated me. My heart will forever be broken open.

Happy Birthday!


Love,

Gabby

Love and Loss

Michael,

It's been 18 years since you died. Loosing you is my great sadness but I took my life back from the pain that stole it. I'm sad that you've missed soooo much of all of our lives and hope one day to share it all with you. A few months ago I came across this quote and I think it describes our relationship perfectly. "You can love completely, without complete understanding." ~ Norman Maclean  Although, as I age I feel as though I understand you more and more.

With so much love,

Gabby

Happy birthday, Mike!

     You would have been 42 today. This year what I miss the most is the opportunity to have known you today. As I continue to grow and get to know myself as myself, a mom and a wife I feel like I would have had a lot in common with you. It seems like we would understand each other, both battling our demons and pursuing our goals in life. I feel lucky and proud to say that my my demons are loosing. I keep picking myself up and we've been making great strides moving forward. I have a wonderful family with Kerrigan,  Fionnegan an Corrianna. You would love our kids. Fionn is glad to be named after you. It's all of our feast days tomorrow:) My goal this year is project completion both dreamt and started ones. A happiest of birthdays to you up in heaven.

Love,

Gabby

Uncle Mike, Can I Call You That?

Dear Mike,

When people ask me how many siblings I have, I say three brothers. Two older, one younger.  And while you're not technically older than me and haven't been for some time now, you still feel like my older brother.  I remember a long time ago, not too long after you died, I was talking to Andy about that.  When someone asks you if you have any brothers and sisters, and if so how many or how old are they.  You want to say the truth that you have three but that feels kind of weird because you have two alive and one dead.  You could say three and leave it at that but that kind of feels like lying because you are withholding information.  The thing is typically a person that asks you that question doesn't know you very well and you don't exactly want to say "my brother was killed" to someone you barely know.  Honestly, now, it doesn't really bother me to divulge that information, although at has been quite some time since you died.  But frankly, talking about how you died doesn't ruin my day anymore.  Sometimes missing you does, or memories I have good or bad, but the bare facts surrounding your death I can handle.

But now, I'm older, I have kids of my own, and I think of you not only as my brother but also as Uncle Mike.  Now, that feels weird.  Like that's a lie.  On a family tree it would be accurate.  I consider you their Uncle Mike even though you've never met them. Or, maybe you have.  I'm often convinced you must be Fionn's guardian angel.  Even though they have never met you there is still a role you play in their life.  I learn so much from you all the time.  There is so much about you they can learn from and connect with.  You would be a great uncle for them to have around.  While I mostly see how you and Fionn would connect on so many levels I know as Corri gets older she too would make those connections.  For one thing, she loves tie-dye as do Fionn, and Matthew.

So would you be their Uncle Mike, their guardian angel up in heaven, their angel on earth when their in need, would you please?

Love,

Gabby

P.S. I get to go visit you soon.  I'm excited because I can't remember the last time I got to.  I've wanted to for so long, but it's been hard to be able to.  I want to do something special for you but haven't figured out what yet.  I'll let you know what I decided.

My Mind Runneth Over

Dear Mike,

I have been doing mindful therapy with our family therapist.  While you have been dead for over 16 years I still get hit with these bouts of sadness.  I used to call them crashes but I don't don't feel I crash anymore.  I am still able to function just not at the full capacity I like to.  I decided to give this different approach to therapy a shot since I hadn't tried and what is there to loose.  Plus, I would like not to be continually hit with these bouts of sadness multiple times of year my whole life.  Or I guess if I had to I would like to be able to function more fully and be more present for my family.  When I have this bout of sadness my mind runneth over.  It's overflowing with imagery, imagery I want to turn into art.  Imagery full of powerful feelings and emotions.  Some I don't even realize I have until I examine more closely.  I have for years felt like something was wrong with me, like I'm crazy or something, because I get these pictures in my head.  My therapist said she thought it was human.  I thought otherwise because it was so dark.  But I was thinking about it and I realized it isn't just then.  I think it's when there is something I am passionate about that it happens.  Like Fionn's school for instance.  It's coming up against some significant change.  Change I want to be apart of because I want to ensure there is a school for him to attend next year that he will thrive at.  Since the announcement about the coming change that must take place for the school's survival I am again overflowing with ideas.  I am passionate about Fionn having a school to attend that is a good fit for him and I'm passionate about serving our community.

I was talking to Mom the other day about this project I am working on and how Dad helped me solve a problem with figuring out how to make my idea happen.  At a later time he mentioned to me about a project he was working on and how he accidentally invented a pinhole projector.  He's working on all kinds of stuff in his mind and is frustrated because he needs more time to produce them.  Matt has helped him figure some problems out with projects he was working on.  I love the collaboration going on in the family.  Then I realized it wasn't just me.  Matt must have all this stuff bubbling away in his head.  Remember his sketches?  On napkins, paper, sketch books, whatever was around.  His facebook timeline cover...classic Matt, pouring his brain full of stuff out into production.  Then I realized you too,  all of your lists and ideas.  For a period of time I thought that part of you was something else but when you look at the whole picture of our family I'm convinced this is a family thing.  Grandma Cullen had her concept about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales I think while in the bathtub.  I don't know how long it was before she was free to work on it but I think it was years.  Can you imagine how full her head must have been?  Is this part of the creative temperament?

The other thing I discovered about myself was that this has been apart of me before you died.  I have vivid memories of a pair of pants I was designing prior to your death.  They were going to be the four elements...earth, water, air, and fire.  I had fabric strips ready and colorful, shiny thread especially for the project.  I remembered wearing the unfinished version to work when I went to talk to my boss after you had died but before you were buried.  I never finished them.  I remember living in Las Vegas planning this stained glass, lighted false ceilling of "our tree" (the tree Kerrigan and I would lay under in Santa Rosa).  Later in Portland I was creating these branches wired for lit blossoms and leaves for show centerpieces, all in my head.

Here I've thought this was some messed up part of me and now I realize it was part of me from the very beginning of my life.  My creative soul born.

Love,

Gabby

P.S.  While I was writing this I realized even more.  Like a full pot boiling with the lid on...at a point the contents just can't be contained any longer and they're boiling over.  My feelings were spilling out all over my life.
 

I Bought Fionn a Nerf Gun

Dear Mike,

I never thought I'd do it but I bought Fionn a Nerf gun.  I have been 100% anti-gun since you died.  I don't know what I was before but I was totally ANTI-gun after.  When we were going through the process of checking this school out for Fionn, attending Free School 101, applying, interviewing, attending experience days and then deciding to give it a shot I was aware I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone if he was going to attend the school that seemed to be the best fit for him.  I learned that in the current culture of the school a popular game was zombies and the kids used toy guns with no ammunition.  They had rules about playing with guns...you can only point at someone if it's okay with them and there was no use of ammunition ie. suction darts, or other foam bullet type things.  I actually thought the rules were reasonable.  I also recognized that my extreme sensitivity to guns was because of my personal experience, not Fionn's or probably anyone else's at the school.  I didn't think it was fair for him to miss out on a potential wonderful, perfect for him opportunity because I was hypersensitive.  So, I decided to be okay with him playing guns at school according to the rules and maintaining out rules at home.  At home there is no pointing guns (or gun like gestures or things) at people.

But just the other day I saw we may have to enter a new level.  Fionn has adjusted well at school and while it has taken some time, probably do to his infrequent attendance, he has made some real connections at school and has a few friends.  He was invited to a birthday party.  It's a Nerf Gun War theme...bring your own Nerf guns and ammunition.  Playing with Nerf guns and no ammunition is one of his favorite things to do at school with friends.  I wanted him to be able to attend and participate with the others.  I want him to feel like he belongs.  So I bought him a Nerf suction dart gun and he'll have one to use at the party.

Afterwards, I still couldn't believe I did it.  ME...buy him a toy gun.  I'm okay with it though.  I recently told him how you died.  I didn't go into much detail but he knew you were shot with a gun.  He was sad for me...that my brother had died.  I left it at that.  But, I think it's important too for anyone playing with toy guns to know that real guns DO kill people.

I am still anti-gun.  No one will will ever convince me that it's a good idea to carry a gun or keep a gun at home.  I will never be comfortable around guns.  I will never cross the line into supporting guns for sport for my family.  But, I can support my kids playing toy guns with friends within the parameters we've agreed on.  And most of all, I can support their having and experiencing wonderful opportunities in this world despite my hyper-sensitivity.  So, while I realize some may feel guns for sport or protection might be a wonderful experience, I also know it might not be too and that's a risk I'm not willing to take.

Love,

Gabby

Even More Pictures of You

Oh my gosh, Mike!!!  I found tons of pictures.  And best of all I found the picture of you fixing the Christmas village piece.  It's the one that I have always felt encompassed the overwhelming quality of you.  Like, if you had to choose one description of you, it would sum it up...likes to tinker, take things apart, and fix things or create them into new things.

But it's funny how our mind holds some things to such high esteem and in reality at any given moment something else says so much more to us at the time.  I also found a picture of you doing a wheelie.  I don't remember the picture but, man, it's awesome.   It totally makes me think of the similarities you and Fionn hold.  So today that one is my favorite.  There is one too of you from the last Christmas we shared together.  If I could put that smile into the Christmas village picture I would.  And you were smiling over razors!  

There's a picture of you, Matt and Grandma on your trip back east.  You all look so poised.  And there's another one of the popular golf bag and clubs Christmas present but this one has Grandad too and your expression is priceless.

I also found the pictures of the funeral, a concept that will never settle well with me.  You should have seen our faces.  So strong or maybe even frozen so as not to shatter, yet so, so deeply sad.  I can remember when mine shattered.  I had wanted them to play Tears in Heaven  during the funeral and they told me there wasn't enough time to with all the other specific requests.  I was really disappointed.  And then, out of the blue, there it was playing, but I hadn't expected it, and I just cried.  I couldn't hold it in anymore.  I'm crying now too.  I heard that song on the radio on Friday when leaving the parking lot at Fionn's school.  I was crying and thinking to myself, that if you ever really love a song and you want to keep loving it, then don't play it at a funeral.  You'll always be reminded of being there and feeling the way you did.

Is that what I've been doing all these years, trying not to shatter?  But every so often a few pieces start to fall and I'm left scrambling to pick them up and glue them back on before more and more and more fall off.  By now I think the adhesive is old and it just isn't going to hold up.  The door to my creative soul has opened and its coming out.  

So without further ado here's the pics I told you about, sans the funeral ones.

Anyway,  I did some sketches I'll tell you more about another time.  I also found the books that hold the primary sketches that started all this thirteen or fourteen years ago.  

Love,

Gabby

VULNERABLE

Dear Mike,

I'm feeling too vulnerable.  I'm not sure that I can share all I wanted to with the world.  I hope you can understand.  I think in this case and several others a picture is worth a thousand words.  So I need some time to create what I have to say.

Love,

Gabby

My Broken Heart

Dear Mike,

I was at church recently and was introduced, through the sermon, to Parker Palmer.  It talked of this concept he coined, the broken open heart.  This time that I went it was like the sermon was made for me personally.  Here's Parker's explanation of the broken-open heart.

"There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken. But there are at least two ways for the heart to break— using “heart” in its root meaning, not merely the seat of the emotions but the core of our sense of self.

The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Everyday, untold numbers of people try without success to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to “resolve it” by inflicting the same wound on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens everyday. We know that heartbreak can become a source of  compassion and grace because we have seen it happen with our own eyes as people enlarge their capacity for empathy and their ability to attend to the suffering of others."

I wondered how is it possible to transform my heart, the one on the floor in a thousand shards.  So I may have picked up a few pieces over the last couple of years, but I can't do that my whole life.  I have felt a tremendous healing but I know there is still significant wounds.  I have just started on the road of thinking I have to open my eyes and heart and face it.  Then I read this.

"First, in a culture where the answer  to the question “How are you? ” is supposed  to be “Just fine” even when we are not , we must  learn to acknowledge and name our suffering honestly and openly to ourselves and to others. This is called “becoming vulnerable”—a hard thing to do in a culture that does not respect the shadow, where even among friends we are at constant risk of someone trying to “fix us up,” an act that drives the suffering soul back into hiding no matter how well - intended . We need to find a trustworthy friend or two who knows what it means simply to receive and bear witness to our pain. As we cultivate such relationships, we will find ourselves rewarded with a comforting,  “Welcome to the human race.”  

Second, once we have named and claimed our suffering, we must move directly to the heart of it, allowing ourselves to feel the painfully, rather than doing what our culture teaches numbing it with anesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off by blaming and attacking the external source.  The only way to transform suffering into something life-giving is to enter into it so deeply that we learn what it has to teach us and come out on the other side.  Third, if we are to learn from our suffering, we must cre-ate a micro-climate of quietude around ourselves, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge,  so “that of God within us” can help us find our way through. Nurtured by silence, we can stop taking our leads from the voices of ego and world and start listening instead to the still, small voice of all that is Holy.

None of  this can be done on the cheap.  It requires what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “costly grace.”  But if we are willing to pay the cost, that grace will be given and we will purchase the pearl of great price — a chance to participate in God’s continuing creation of  the beloved community."

While I think about transforming MY broken heart into the broken-open heart I can see that mine might take  on another aspect too.  I have to do something with all the mental imagery it carries with it.  My heart and soul can carry only so much at a time.  But, as I experience the release I feel when I write you a letter, or Fionn a letter, or work on the art gallery in my head, I can feel the clarity of mind they provide.  I long for an even greater clarity.  Or is it clarity?  Maybe simplicity is it.  The film playing in my head, or the picture I look at trying to figure out how to convey the image through my lens, or the strobe of an image waiting to be unleashed.  It would be nice to be alone in my brain with nothing fluttering about for a while.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. Ivan is working on some awesome photography right now.  You'd love it.  

Pictures of You

Dear Mike,

Aunt Martha visited a couple of months ago.  She brought some great pictures.  There is an awesome one of you skateboarding which for me is heartwarming to see.  I guess it's because it's you in your element but before I can remember some of the more difficult times together.  I also love how mom is looking at you in the first picture.

Mom and you

Christmas

Same Christmas

I love how excited you look.

At Grandma and Grandad's, August 1980.

Matt and Mike licking the batter, August 1980.

Reading.

Red hat Christmas, 1982

Mike and Matt playing roller hockey.

Mike, Christmas 1984.

Mike, Matt & Andy, Christmas 1984.

Squished family photo,1985.

Skateboarding, 1988.

I tried to put them in chronological order.  It's a little hard in the middle.  Just looking at these makes me smile.

Love,
Gabby

My Great Sadness

Dear Mike,

I really miss you.  I so often struggle this time of year and frankly it's unfair since your birthday is what starts the fall for me and then the remaining three months are a whirlwind of birthdays, feast days, Saints days we celebrate, the anniversary of your dying and the holidays.  Did you realize that we start with your birthday September 28, our feast day September 29, Kerrigan's birthday October 15, Halloween, The Day of the Dead November 1, and All Saints Day November 2, Corrianna's birthday November 4, Fionn's birthday November 9, Sabrina's birthday November 17, the anniversary of your death is also November 17, Dad's birthday November 28, Thanksgiving, Andy and Drew's feast day is in November I think, St. Nicholas Day December 6, St. Lucy's Day December 13, Andy's birthday December 23, and Christmas December 25?  This is in conjunction with normal life.  It's all important to me.  I appreciate all of it.  I want to share the traditions with my family and with my nieces and nephews.  And I didn't include the holiday baking, crafting, and sewing that my soul enjoys.

BUT, inevitably the great sadness, my great sadness, appears.  And while I don't succumb to it in the way I did before I had kids, I struggle to be present and to have the drive to accomplish and celebrate what I hope to.  I feel badly for my heart not being in it.  I hate just trying to pull off the kids birthdays rather than bathe in the joy that they bring.  I regret that sharing traditions and the joy of this season with my children is a struggle for me to provide even a half-hearted experience.  Kids FEEL that.  They will carry that with them.

I miss you.  I miss you every year, countless times a year, but this year I miss you more.  It's not the same pain as other years.  I miss our family too.  I anticipated Dad, Matt and his family and Mom coming out to visit this Christmas and in February but life happens and trips have been cancelled or postponed.  I totally get it but it's still sad for me.  It's the first time I can remember being truly homesick except there's no home where I'm from.  It's the first year I'm irritated Mom's in Ireland and not closer by.  I'm not mad at anyone.  I just miss my peeps.

When grandma or granddad died, I forget which one, mom asked if we wanted some of the ashes from the cremation.  I thought that was so weird at the time.  Now I get it.  It sucks to live so far away from your grave.  It would have been nice to save some to spread somewhere close by so I could visit you.  I came across your shirt I stole while redoing the closet.  It's the one of the skull with the patriotic top hat, I think.  It's incredibly worn out.  I used to sleep in it.  It has so many holes I had to safety pin it to the hanger.  I should burn it, carefully, and save the ashes and spread them at a river here.  Then I could visit you.  Maybe Kerrigan can help me with it.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. I didn't realize it was the sadness I felt until I discovered the tears chomping at the bit to get through the door, the door of my heart.

I Can Cope, Could You?

Dear Mike,


I often find myself looking back at some of my really tough times in life, struggling to cope.  I didn't even realize I didn't have the skills to cope.  Or, they weren't honed enough for me to reach into my tool bag and grab a tool for the difficult thing I was faced with.  I had a few brief periods where I drank too much.  I just didn't want to feel. Later in life I started cutting.  That was by far the most shameful thing I have done.  While I'm not ashamed of it now...it has taken some time to feel strong enough to be honest about that time in my life.  I just consider that I was really sick.  Struggling so much I could not get out of the very deep dark hole I had fallen in.  It was a release of the self hate building pressure until I felt I would explode. And then I'd cut myself with a No. 11 Exacto blade. Usually at least twice.  I have thirty or forty scars from it all on my forearm.  I don't care that people can see it now.  If someone were to ask me about it I'd first think that was a really bold question, but I'd be honest.  What is there really to be ashamed of.  It's the same as any other harmful coping mechanism, just not as popular and it leaves a permanent reminder of that time in your life.  When I was hospitalized after the first miserable attempt at cutting myself I learned a lot.  I learned it was like anxiety and that when I feel that restlessness inside I should do something with my hands.  I learned you should never reread your journals.  You re-experience all those horrible feelings you may have released and you experience those feelings all over again.  I learned to say what I was needing when my needs from someone were not being fulfilled.

When Fionn was around 2.5 years old his usual meltdowns had gotten especially horrible.  These were not the typical terrible twos tantrums you hear about.  They were increasingly louder and becoming more violent in nature.  I began to feel fear from them sometimes.  After discussing what was going on with someone knowledgeable, whom I respected and trusted, it had never occurred to me I hadn't taught him how to express his feelings, given him words for his feelings, showed him other safer actions he could do to express how he was feeling.  I hadn't given him skills to cope.  It was the second blind spot I realized I had in parenting.  The first really being rather insignificant in comparison.  I was embarrassed and felt so badly that I had partly created what was happening.  We worked for a solid year before really seeing the fruits of our labor of giving him these skills, words and tools to use.  I see now we still have to really keep an eye out and help him to reach into his tool bag and choose a tool to cope with whatever he is faced with at the time.  Sometimes it's dark in that bag and there's no light nearby.

I wonder...could you cope?  What were your tools?  I can think of obvious unhealthy tools you had.  Drugs, alcohol, maybe even some adrenalin rushes from extreme risk taking.  As I think more I would say art and even poetry.  Dad has one of your journals and you have this poem or rap that you wrote about the cops.  Then I wonder how much art is an expression of one's self vs. one's feelings.

I don't bring up this topic to blame anyone at all.  It's just that now that I'm a parent and have been I can see that despite the very best of intentions we all have blind spots or at least I do and I wonder if you LEARNED healthy, effective ways to cope or you happened upon them.  I can imagine how much of what you went through would have been so much more difficult to handle with a missing tool bag.

Love,

Gabby

P.S.  I've taken a somewhat conscious break from this blog.  While I feel it is a good thing for me,  I struggle to find the balance of having the emotional space I need to dig around in this part of me and to be present for my children.  But I was reminded that this great sadness keeps showing up and it may be valuable to listen to it.  I do truly believe that but it's really very scary for me to do.  I don't exactly have a good track record.

New Year's (Without You) Resolution

Dear Mike, 
It was your birthday yesterday.  It didn't even occur to me until Dad pointed it out that you would have been 40.  That's so hard to imagine.  When we were young(er) I saw you as being so grown up.  It was only recently that it occurred to me REALLY how young you were when you died.  I was waiting for you to get your life together, each year thinking "this is the year".  Now I see you were truly so young.  You must have felt so much pressure from all of us to "get it together".  Having been on this growing up journey myself I see now that not having it all figured out by age 24 is pretty normal.  I mean some people do but they also are likely to have a rude awakening as they age and have realized all they did not get to discover about themselves maybe from the responsibilities in life they incurred, intentionally or not.  This summer I also discovered that I have lived nearly half my life without you.  THAT is just crazy for me to realize.  Embarrassing too.  The loss of you has harshly impacted pretty much all of my life since you died.  The few years after I often thought, "when will it let up?".  I would ask doctors, friends, therapists and even research how long does grief last. Lots of people and info say one year.  I haven't checked recently but now if someone were to ask me I would say "It's individual".
I've never been a big New Year's person but I got to thinking about it.  I seem to treat your birthday as a New Year's of sorts.  I anticipate it whether I'm looking forward to it or not and now even try to make preparations. But much of how my year goes depends on how this time of year goes, your birthday and the anniversary of your dying.  To make it more complicated there's numerous birthdays and Feast Days now too.  While writing this I've only just discovered that beginning yesterday, your birthday, at sundown, is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year's.  Maybe a part of me is Jewish at heart.  I keep thinking to myself each year that this is the year I will accomplish all this stuff I've dreamt of.  Sound familiar?
We celebrated your birthday with a special dinner yesterday.  Julie and Sawyer came over, Kerrigan was working late and we had tacos and chocolate eclairs.  Well profiteroles really, but they tasted sooooo delicious.  We're going to continue the tie-dye tradition but really we'll do that this weekend.  I have spent a lot of time prior to your birthday this year thinking of what I need to do to continue to heal.  I was surprised to realize I still have these wounds that are not healed yet.  When I heard about Katie that's when I knew I wasn't all better.  Part of me feels if I can just get all the art of my journey, part of life with you and mostly of life without you, some big wounds will close.  My heart was pounding when I put the link to the blog on facebook but after the initial shock I felt soooooo much better.  I could focus, paid more attention to my kids and just had this relief...that it was done, my feelings were out there, and I wasn't hiding anymore.  Since I felt that, now I really think I'm onto something. I don't even think I could imagine the incredible release of energy when that project in my mind is complete.  I hate to even think that a New Year's resolution is pointless because frankly I do but I want to succeed at this one so badly.  It's like now I WANT to wear my heart on my sleeve, when for so long, really, the feelings and images have been this dark spot in my soul where only on lookers could see the repercussions of it's presence.
Love,
Gabby

P.S. My favorite thing about this blog is you're always looking at me.  I love the connection with your eyes, your smiling eyes.

Pictures of You

Dear Mike,

I heard about a someone playing a video of old pictures at their loved one's memorial service. I would have loved that. Here's one I made of a few pictures I had and from others.

Love,


Gabby

Your Soon-To-Be Birthday

Dear Mike,

You know last year when your birthday was coming up I couldn't wait for it. Really, because it actually looked like I might accomplish what I had been hoping. A birthday to celebrate and honor you. I had attempted it the year before and we managed to do the dinner. We eat Mexican food because your first job was at Casa Burrito and we have chocolate eclairs for dessert because at least when we lived in Van Nuys that was your favorite dessert. I used to go with mom to the bakery. I can still see it in my head. Last year I got it together enough to do the tie dye too. I remember you enjoying it so much and so it's really the best thing we can do together in your memory. It was FANTASTIC. For one thing the recipe you left in that book was perfect. I managed to get the last ingredient and I just couldn't believe how great they turned out. They were so incredibly vibrant. And it was easy, even with young kids.

Soaking in soda ash solution.

Drying a bit.

Trying out the spiral pattern.

We each did our own.
After the dye application.
Isn't Fionn's awesome?!?!

This year feels different. I'm more tearful. Not sure why although I can think of several contributing factors. The trigger from R loosing her cousin in such a violent way, a classmate in high schools death, maybe even seeing that woman get hit by a car. But all I can think about is the art. The art I've kept in my head for what, 6 years now. I have to get it out. For you, for me. It's just scary. I'm afraid it won't turn out how I envision it. But I want to put it out there. I want to show my journey, even see it myself. I want to let go of the incredible pain some of it holds. That has to be it because when I look at some of it with my minds eye it brings back so many horrible memories. Some of it is quite beautiful though. That would be awesome to look at and enjoy. I hope this year I can make all that art from inside me.

Love,

Gabby

My Awakening

Dear Mike,

Anna recommended this book to me a couple of years ago, The Shack. I was struggling so much with the loss of you. All these years I've had these crashes where all I can think about is the loss of you, how you died, and would obsess with trying to find the man who killed you because I wanted some more answers. The TRUTH whatever it may be. This time, a little over two years ago, I was pregnant with Corrianna. Anna, Ivan, and Deb all reached out to me and so I read the book which changed my life. There is this line in it, "Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly, and if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place" - William P. Young, The Shack. It had never occured to me that these huge parts of me had been paralyzed by pain. I had been wondering where the old me was.



Since reading it I have been healing wounds I've had since your death and this spring some new growth in me started to appear. We planted a vegetable garden.




Our family poured our hearts into it. It was the best we could do on our budget and in the amount of time we had. It spurred so many other projects in the garden and we accomplished them.

This one's from our dahlia bed. Isn't it "bodacious"? Now I've got this itch for some competition. My next hurdles are to run a 5k, particularly the Starlight Run, and to participate in the Petal Pedal. This fall I'm starting my second attempt at the Couch 2 5k and I've found a Couch 2 100k for bicycling so I can prepare for the Petal Pedal.

Your ability to decide, "this is what I want to do so I'm just gonna go learn all I can about it and then make every attempt at getting the end result I desire until I've achieved what I set out to do" is something I feel like I can only hope to accomplish but I'm going to try my darnedest. I thought my life was too messy and bogged down to break away and give my whole heart to something I dreamt of. Now I know I was just dormant, but I'm re-emerging. I hope to pass this powerful trait of Uncle Mike's down to my children so they can know just what a go-getter you were.


Love,


Gabby

Ode to My Brother

Dear Mike,

K's obituary was published the other day. It talked of her college accomplishments, her recent jobs, a new found calling in a career of beekeeping with her dad and how much she loved her dog. The biggest impression left was her beautiful smile and how much fun she had in life. That is how everyone seems to remember her. Before your obituary was sent in it was a huge ordeal. I had no say in what was written but don't even remember anything but the argument surrounding what picture of you would be attached. At the time my favorite picture of you was the one of you working on the Christmas village house trying to fix it and you had long curly hair. It seemed to be the most recent picture we probably had of you but also the one that said the most about who you were. After reading K's obituary I'm sad that yours was so vague. I don't remember it saying anything about you, what you enjoyed doing, what you looked forward to, what your accomplishments were. So here's my ode to you, my oldest brother whom I dearly miss, and am privileged to remember fondly now while we celebrate your life rather than continue to endure the pain of your loss.

Michael Christopher Cullen was born September 28, 1971 and died November 17, 1995. He loved to read. He could read the fastest in our family which for some reason was a big deal. He was always taking something apart and creating new inventions. One time he made a hovercraft out of the purple "Miami Vice" hairdryer and a shoe box. It really worked too. Another time he took apart an old Xerox machine and the ink powder got everywhere. He was a skateboarder in a bicycling family. He could always be seen with his skateboard doing tricks or just getting around town. He was into graffiti style art, pen and ink drawing, silk screening and tie-dye but I think he finally settled on tie-dye. He once wrote a rap about the cops too. I wish I could hear him do it again. He even tried his hand at lip-syncing. He and his brother Matt did the song Rockin' Robin. It's the only moving picture of him that I know of so if you're reading this and you have a copy I'd love it. Although, I remember him looking rather awkward. He really enjoyed music but I only really remember stuff from the 80's. The Pet Shop Boys is probably what makes me think of him first. But, I know he also liked techno or whatever they played at the underground clubs or raves.

He had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've known. He cared so much for others, was willing to do most anything for anyone to help them and so often put the people he cared for first. He needed to put himself first more often. He had this incredible ability to persevere. He'd fall or fail but he'd pick himself back up and was immediately devising a new plan to make it happen, whatever "it" may have been. He spent so much time learning, researching, planning, and dreaming of the life he wanted to live. I can remember him staying up nights doodling and jotting things down in his notebooks. I so often thought to myself this time it will all work out for him. "By the time he's this age" I frequently thought.

Mike was also so well known for his grin. His friends called him "Grin". And as I recall his tagging said "Grin" too. As I write further I admittedly am writing based on what little I know. I realize I don't have all the details and that the topic may evoke a lot of feeling for some but I want to be honest about the Mike I knew. He enjoyed smoking pot. I imagine that if he ever had owned some land and lived a self sustainable life like he dreamt of he would have been growing pot too.

I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff but I guess I've said what I'd like to. He's incredibly missed by his family and friends. I bet he has no idea how much, especially by me. I like to think he's our guardian angel. Fionn and I pray our guardian angel prayer and light the guardian angel candle each night and I think of him keeping watch over us.

So Mike, that's what I wanted to say. One thing I have realized as I wrote this, which has taken me a while, is that it's crazy how our experiences can taint our memories. I was so sure of how I remembered your obituary. But, since receiving it it from a librarian in Ventura I actually wonder if I had ever read it. It's not at all how I remember and the picture is the one I would have chosen. Not the one mom and I argued over. I'm putting a copy of the obituary in too.

Love,

Gabby

Skateboards 'n' Oregon

Dear Mike,

I was at Hood River with the family on the Fourth of July. We went to Rotary Skate Park that had a BMX track for Fionn to ride on. But really it was pretty much a skate park. Did they even have those when you were around? I don't remember them, but now they're cropping up everywhere. Fionn and I were sitting at the edge of a "punchbowl" watching this guy with long dreads test out a skateboard that was like a long board.

It was pretty awesome watching him move so smoothly round and round. After he'd finish a run he'd go back up and chat with his buddies giving feedback and bouncing ideas of ways to improve it back and forth. They kept at it. Before you knew it one of them would produce another board to try out. They were all pretty unique looking. I could totally see you being there, had you lived, with skateboard inventions of your own. That so would have been YOU. Later we were walking to the car to get something and these same guys were at the trunk of a car. One of them pulled out one hell of a skateboard something. It was like a skate board on a ski with a long leash and the Velcro part you'd imagine attaching to your wrist was really big like it must go around your waist. "Dude, I wasn't expecting this!" It seriously looked like something you'd come up with. It really got me thinking. Had you ever even been to Oregon, much less Portland? It seems like this would have been the place for you. All the outdoorsy stuff, the art, sustainable living. You would have been in your element surrounded by people who were just like you. You kinda seemed like a pioneer of sorts in LA. But your ever constant interest in inventing, skateboarding, pot, tie dye, and your dreams of living off the land would have been right at home here.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. You're heavy on my mind lately. R's cousin was murdered the other day. I am shocked that I would meet this circumstance more than once in my life. It and you are all I can think about. So I'm digging a patio and keeping my hands busy.