It rained all night. I slept with the window wide open because the sound of rain soothes my head and heart. As I sit drinking the perfect cup of tea on this wet morning I remember my dad. I think I started calling him Tom when I was about 13 years old, now I wish I had kept calling him Daddy. You can find Tom’s in the world but you only get to call one person daddy, I adored mine.
Washington state Covid deaths 1265. VOTE BLUE. BLACK LIVES MATTER
Pandemic, Covid-19, virus, wash your hands, don’t touch face, wear a mask, I can’t breathe, stay at home, wipe everything down, sanitize, asymptomatic, super spreader, social distant, stay 6 feet away, wear your mask, don’t touch your face, wash your hands, I can’t breathe.
George Floyd, I can’t breathe, police brutality, I can’t breathe, Black Lives Matter, protest, racism, white supremacy, I can’t breathe, violence, looters, police brutality, tear gas, rubber bullets, racism, I can’t breathe, take a knee, white privilege, Karen, Black Lives Matter.
Climate change, food shortages, weather extremes, I can’t breathe, dictator, white supremacy, I can’t breathe. Wash your hands, wear your mask, stay home, I can’t breathe.
As of 6/6/20 1,149 people in Washington state have died of Covid-19.
Good Morning Sunday, The birds have been singing gladly and I wonder how I could be here for so long and not know their song. So much to discover in my own backyard. I’m seeing paranoia rear it’s ugly head in pandemic posts and news. The latest is that the Democrats are manipulating the Covid-19 virus deaths to defeat Trump. The hospitals are lying about virus deaths to get Federal funds by including heart attack victims. That herd immunity works, look at Sweden. I guess we believe what we want to believe and I believe in community and transparency in government and that taking a long walk everyday is good for you. Have a peaceful Sunday
1,000 human beings have died of Covid-19 in Washington state 5/17/20
I am on the radio @ KPTZ.org.
Monday I had a hard time with myself. I say that because I am the only one who can cause me anguish while I hunker down by myself in my comfortable cabin in the woods where the pines and fruit trees blow their pollen with abandon. I wondered why I was so sad that my body ached. Was it the bad dream the night before where I was challenged with tasks I didn’t know how to do as I worked my way towards this new world we are making? Maybe. Then is hit me, what’s the date? Of course it’s about to be April 28th. the day my father died. Even if I don’t want to remember I always do. I used to think it was the brain that helps me remember but I’ve learned that my body holds all my stories.
765 people have died in Washington state due to Covid-19. Very limited testing.
The word “Easter” and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century. From Garrison Keillor.
I don’t know about you but having to sit with myself without the distractions of the outside world has forced me to look at where and what I want at this stage of my life. Am I too old for dreams? What is the point of me? Whenever it gets uncomfortable my instinct is to run. Move along go somewhere new and start over but I always take my baggage with me so I am still just repeating instead of creating. Just like Spring I am wanting to bloom.
We now have 28 confirmed cases in out county, testing is limited. 4/12/20
I feel the desire to write about my friend Bonnie who died a couple of days ago. I have not seen Bonnie since around 1995 but up until a few years ago we kept in occasional contact. Her birthday, Christmas, maybe my birthday. Bonnie’s birthday was easy to remember as it is the same day we pay our taxes so those would be the two things on my mind April 15.
I have known Bonnie since I was 16 years old. I think my father Tom met her at some bar she was cocktail waitressing at. Bonnie liked to party and she was sweet and earnest and laughed at the right time. At some points she lived in my father’s house and helped care for the younger kids. She knew my family and our friends and we shared memories from my teenage years. When I left home we became roommates in Marin. We danced our way through San Francisco and ended up moving to Lahaina together in 1973. Lahaina Maui in the early 70’s was young and beautiful like we were and we embraced the island and the island loved us back. It was a time of laughter and love and sand.
I spent many hours planning my hour and a half radio show this week, It was a different kind of planning then the last three months. I was looking at the show in a different way. I worked all week on listening to new music and blending in my favorites. I thought the show was done and then I am changing everything again. I keep doing this until I go on the air and even while I am doing my show I am changing the rotation. Something has shifted. My ex poetry teacher suggests that I am creating my radio show like you arrange poetry and I believe she is right. I didn’t know how to express what I am doing but I think she did. Art. It comes in many forms. Big Joy.
Grief, an unpredictable beast. Just when I think it has gone back to the cave, it crushes me sideways. I’m cleaning houses right now. It is a job. I’m in the bathroom of a comfortable home lived in by two mellow artists. The painter wife has a fabulous collection of large and unusual shells she has displayed on the bathroom counter. I look at them and burst into tears. My mom had a good collection of shells that she treasured. Some of them came from the Shell Shop that she worked at in Lahaina, Maui. She would laugh as she told people she sold “seashells at the seashore”. It was 1980 and we were young, happy and living “da kind”.
After Grace died I thought I was going to move right back to the Big Island so I had a garage sale. I sold Graces’ collection of shells. The shells she had for all those years and loved. I loved them too. I was thinking I was being practical by getting rid of them as it is expensive to ship “stuff” to the islands. “Stuff.” Stuff is a bitch for me, I don’t know when to let go.
The hardest part of grief right now is the loneliness. I have never felt so alone. I have lived by myself for 15 years and have loved it but since my mom died I have never felt so by myself. It is a horrible feeling. I don’t want to feel this way. I hear a voice “well change your attitude then.” I would if it was that easy.
I know it’s not the shells that I’m crying about. It’s the discomfort of life changing, of getting old, of losing the family I once had. Eventually this feeling will change. Not soon enough for this big baby.
Spring is slowly arriving in the Pacific Northwest. Tulips, daffodils and now some poppies have been spotted. The fruit trees put on their Easter finery and color has replaced grey. I sit and watch the hummingbirds consume mass quantities from the feeder and act like kids on a sugar high, chasing each other, dive bombing, never seeming to stop having fun. Sometimes I think I would like to come back as a bird. I would love to fly high, gliding with the wind. The ocean of my mind is calm right now and I tiptoe around grateful for the peace. I feel lucky that I have spring to remind me of new beginnings, how so much is possible. I know the queen mum is at peace and as I breathe into this moment, so am I.
My petite estate sale is tomorrow, and I’m okay ready. A so called friend who I have never really had any dealings with except having to go to her husbands boring birthday parties because he is an old friend of my mom Grace and her then husband Rolly called up and offered to help with the sale about three days ago. I called right back and said yes please because I have pretty much given up buying stuff and had no idea how to price ( I have a give it away mentality, which when you are broke is maybe, why you are broke}. So she doesn’t show up the first day she said she might and the second day she calls to say she thinks she is sick and doesn’t want to infect ( so Port Townsend considerate) and then goes on to say she doesn’t price stuff, just waits to somebody asks and then you know makes a party of it and has fun trying to get them to pay a good price. it’s around this point as I listen to the message I hang up as yeah that is how I feel right now, let’s party with my dead mothers’ stuff. So then she calls back and says I just realized what I said to you, I’m so sorry. Guess what? I’m busy and you aint’ helping so goodbye. I had made a sign for the estate sale that said “Make me an offer but don’t offend me. I have attitude.” When I showed it to a real friend who did help she said “that might be a little off putting”. I felt I had toned it down, my original sign was: Make me an offer, but don’t offend me. I’m not in the mood to suffer fools.
The Buzzy Donahue Show 