MemoirMemoirhttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008-08-20T13:57:11ZSquarespaceIt starts...http://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/20/it-starts.htmlLauren2008-08-20T13:26:17Z2008-08-20T13:26:17Z2635064714_95ff1d3956_o

I didn't take this picture. I found it of Paul on the internet and saved it to my desktop. According to my site stats since Paul died, forty-one people have searched for his name on the internet and have ended up on my blog. Even when he is no longer here, he is so very loved by everyone.

What I really wanted to blog about is not the traffic on the internet, but the fact that Paul appeared to me in my dream this morning! This happens often with my grandmother. Since she died three years ago she constantly talks to me through my dreams, always unexpectedly. I take it as a sign that we were so close in life that we talk now even in death.

My grandmother is usually the only one who comes to visit, although she does sometimes bring up the fact that she is there with Sean's mom and sometimes she tells me to tell Sean the weirdest messages... like one time she asked me to tell him that his mom said that she was sorry for missing all of his games. When I asked Sean about it, he said that when she was dying she no longer could go to his sports games and she felt badly about it.

Chills.

I don't know what I believe in, if there is a heaven or a hell or a God or Allah or reincarnation or pure disintegrating back into the earth. I really don't know how I feel about life after death. Maybe seeing my loved ones in my dreams is how I cope. But these dreams are so real to me when they happen and I like to think that they are not simply my subliminal mind missing my loved ones.

This morning in my dream, Paul and I simply had a conversation. We talked freely about how it feels to know that you are dying -- as we talked freely when he was still alive -- and I asked him if I could write him a poem or a letter telling him how mad I was that I was losing such a close friend to cancer.

He hugged me and said "Yeah girl!" as he would. I don't remember much about the dream which is odd for me because I usually remember every detail. But I remember how it felt to hug him once more and to hear his voice in all of his wonderful glory.

My spirits are so very high this morning, because I just had a visit from one of my favorite people in the whole world. Makes me sure that we wont lose touch, even though we are separated by life and death.

]]>The video that would make me lose competency if I were running for presidenthttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/19/the-video-that-would-make-me-lose-competency-if-i-were-runni.htmlLauren2008-08-19T23:22:53Z2008-08-19T23:22:53Z

Funny that I'm more embarrased at the state of our backyard than of the idea that I am making a complete fool of myself in front of the whole internet.]]>Favorite lyric everhttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/19/favorite-lyric-ever.htmlLauren2008-08-19T04:38:42Z2008-08-19T04:38:42ZDSC_8331


I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put our dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again




]]>Bumper stickershttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/19/bumper-stickers.htmlLauren2008-08-19T03:18:19Z2008-08-19T03:18:19ZDSCF5425

I love bumper stickers. I think they are fantastic. Nothing better than having to stop for another stupid red light and having something to read on the car in front of you.

I'm not good at describing myself in one quote. In fact, I struggled for weeks to find the perfect quote to put under my high school photo in the yearbook and decided that nothing I picked could describe me just right. So I picked nothing. No quote.

Nearly ten years later, I've thought of a quote, but it took me this long.

My quote, my mantra, was written by Kahlil Gibran and is this:

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."

In college, I bought my first car and immediately covered it with bumper stickers. I was sooo happy to be able to make my car stand out in a crowd and to express myself through slogans... that was, until I started working at a place where my coworkers were a bunch of 50-year-old gossipers who would report to each other whenever they saw my car in public.

"Ooooh, Lauren slept in Hilltop dorms last night!" or "Hey, I didn't see your car in the lot, where were you?"

After a while, I wished only to blend in, I grew tired of those same bumper stickers even though I enjoyed looking at the expressions of my tailgaters in the rearview mirror at red lights.

Now, I don't have a single bumper sticker on my car. I still enjoy reading bumper stickers, but they seem to be going out of style. Maybe because nowadays people don't want to be bothered. Plus, they're such a pain to scrape off when it's time to sell the car.

What have your bumper stickers said?

]]>Weekend in nature photoshttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/18/weekend-in-nature-photos.htmlLauren2008-08-18T00:24:04Z2008-08-18T00:24:04Zcollage]]>Backseat driver: Samhttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/17/backseat-driver-sam.htmlLauren2008-08-17T23:08:40Z2008-08-17T23:08:40ZDSC_0929

]]>The oceanhttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/17/the-ocean.htmlLauren2008-08-17T03:55:29Z2008-08-17T03:55:29Z
DSC_0392
DSC_0695
DSC_0690

Here's a video of our day in the sun:



Sean had to literally drag me out of bed this afternoon to get me to go to the beach. I wanted to stay under the sheets and mourn. But I'm so glad we went. I missed my little kidlets and they made me feel so much better.

And I caught a few waves for Paul while I was there.

]]>A wake, alive.http://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/16/a-wake-alive.htmlLauren2008-08-16T00:49:15Z2008-08-16T00:49:15ZPaul

Four years and seven months ago, almost to the day, I sat on the living room couch at the cabin in Vermont talking to Paul over breakfast. We had NPR playing on the radio and Paul talked about the death of his father. I had my journal in hand and I wrote down something he said that I thought was so beautiful. I put it in quotes and tagged it, Paul Syvertsen.

The quote was this:

"When my father died, my mother waited an hour before calling the doctor to check his vitals. She didn't want to inconvenience him...My mother never inconvenienced anyone."

I remember thinking then, how amazing that a person could think of others while dealing with such a loss! Didn't want to inconvenience the doctor. I thought of Paul's mother in that hour, sitting with her breathless love, checking her watch and waiting for reasonable calling hours. What a striking image!

Years after, Paul took after his Mum and requested that his wake be on a Friday night so as not to interrupt anyone's work schedule. Paul always thought of others. Tonight we gathered to celebrate his life.

This was the hardest and most remarkable wake I've ever been to. Paul's ashes sat in front surrounded by the things he loved most: his wife and children, his surfboard, his trumpet, his stories, his friends. The room was filled with pictures of beautiful beautiful Paul, smiling with friends and observing nature from his boat.

Among the pictures was one of a bunch of us, taken when we first found out that Paul had cancer. Two words, Paul and cancer, had just been placed together in our heads and here he was faced with this horrendous road ahead and he was just so happy to see his friends.

I made it four minutes before breaking down entirely and Sean walked me back to our car so that I could cry hard. I'm not sure if I was crying happy tears or sobbing in devastation, all I knew is that I felt numb and overwhelmed with this loss of such an incredible friend. I soon gained composure enough to walk back in, and once there I felt as if I should never leave.

My favorite among the pieces of Paul in that room tonight was a poem he wrote, framed neatly and simple on the wall.


paulspoem



Breathe in, breathe out. Stop crying. Be strong. I didn't think I needed to go to Paul's wake. I hate wakes. I already said my goodbyes to Paul, or so I thought.

But he wasn't through saying goodbye.

In 2001, he signed my high school yearbook, "It aint final." We said our short goodbyes as I moved on to college but we never grew apart. And now I realize that even in death we wont lose touch. Because now I can talk with him in my heart and he will always be there to guide me.

He has become for me what has always been important in his lifelong travels of land and sea and sky; my compass.

]]>For an empty box of Cheez-itshttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/16/for-an-empty-box-of-cheez-its.htmlLauren2008-08-16T00:17:00Z2008-08-16T00:17:00Z ]]>I needed it to be Fridayhttp://www.thingsicarry.com/memoir/2008/8/15/i-needed-it-to-be-friday.htmlLauren2008-08-15T11:24:16Z2008-08-15T11:24:16ZDSC_9880

I looked in horror at the bathroom scale display this morning: 96.0 lbs. I've lost a lot of weight this week. This is normal for me because my weight fluctuates daily, topping the gamut at 102lbs usually. Ideally, I'd love to weigh at least 120 but no matter how hard I try, this dream of mine to gain weight seems to be just that -- a dream.

I can't even explain to you how difficult this week has been and I'm sure you don't want to hear all of the details. But to sum up, I haven't slept all week because the dogs are not used to this schedule and everyone feels like they should be awake at 2am after sleeping all day. Work is stressful during this training period. My stomach has been acting up uncontrollably. And I'm in mourning. All ingredients for an awful week.

I'm hoping after today relaxation will set in and maybe I'll gain a few of those much needed pounds back.

Just one. more. day.

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