Friday Lite

Paul Adams Hawkins, Christmas, 2006.

Paul, my ex-husband, was too weak to go to the Grand Canyon Tuesday where he was to be Artist in Residence starting this week.  Then during Wednesday, there were many phone calls as he began fading away.  This Thursday morning, he passed away peacefully at his home in Arizona.  “My village is going,” daughter Margot said.  Tracy, Paul’s number two agreed when I talked with her yesterday.

Opened a Prosebox space where I left a link to this blog.  I did remember to bookmark it here so I can find myself as well as all the wandering friends who are leaving Open Diary site.  So many friends one makes over the years, and as the site collapses we all find new homes.  I don’t want to lose all of them…my village, in a way.

Mammogram scheduled.  I also got a referral for my severe lymphedema.  The referral gave me the wrong number, but the Radiology Department gave me the number for the Lymphedema Clinic which hasn’t returned my call.  I often wonder now what would have happened five years ago when the Lymphedema Clinic was suggested.  I didn’t know what they were talking about so did nothing.  Ah, reality.

My friend Bobbie is driving down today.  Her mother has reached the end-stage of her Alzheimer’s.  Bobbie wants to see her for the last time as she could go at any moment.  I’ll go out with her if she wants me there, or she can come by here later.

In a way, this entry really isn’t Friday Lite.  Perhaps it’s Friday Village.  It does take a village to raise kids, to keep friends, to share lives.  Bobbie commented that being with Mikey as he died was the hardest thing she had ever done.  I just miss everyone in our villages this week:  Mikey first, Don, Paul, and now Bobbie’s mother who I knew as a mother.  It feels odd to have had my father and grandma die in 1966, and my mother die in 89….so long ago, yet I feel so divorced from it all.  Yet they were my village.