Summer Afternoon, Asher Brown Durand

Today will never come again. Thomas Merton

Merton was an American Trappist monk, activist, and poet who died in 1968.  He was only 52 when he died and his death has raised questions that he was possibly murdered because of his anti-war activism. But his brief observation on a summer afternoon is a good reminder about relishing every day. And using every day.

My father died last week and his last days were hard, his absence a painful new reality, even though he was more than ready to leave his failing body. He’s the last of four deaths that have happened in the past five months. I keep writing down the mix of emotions and memories I’ve been going through in the past few months because grief has never been so consuming.

I wrote and mailed a lot of Christmas cards in December and crossed off more names on my list because they’ve left the planet. Meanwhile, yesterday a deep, summer-blue sky enrobed the skies that had been so overcast lately, and it was vast and endless, and sapphire. I was outdoors pulling apart a cedar garland to recycle as a friend chopped up the recently bespangled spruce. The garland had draped around my door and was wound with two kinds of lights and while it’s a hard to extinguish seasonal magic, the newness of the year is also settling in more. Especially since afterward we walked then visited a food cart pod.

And then watched two episodes of the phenomenal first season of Deadwood. It requires a tolerance for salty language and corpses and exquisitely villainous scoundrels, but oh the Shakespearean heights and impeccable acting. It’s based on real-life denizens like the hard-drinking Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock, but also some of the first movers and shakers and the thousands drawn to the richest gold strike in the country’s history.

The attention to detail is breathtaking –think lawless roads of near-impassable mud and layers of realism, down to every shoe, stocking, pair long johns, mustache, and appropriately greasy-haired citizens and pasty-faced smallpox sufferers.

So now to face 2025 with resolve, practicality, and gratitude.

Because every day is obviously a gift. Every day a chance to spread some light, make someone laugh, create art, tell stories, hold up your part of the world.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart