Decas Horribilis

Well, I am glad that decade is finally fucking over. Not all of it was bad; it was the decade during which Walter was born. He has been the highlight. Nancy and I attended First Night Spokane again this year and had a lovely time. At midnight we stood in front of a bonfire in the middle of Spokane Falls Blvd in the rain and watched the fireworks. I honestly had a sense of relief that we were entering a new decade, even though I have never put too much concern into arbitrary time. The past ten years has honestly been hell: Morgan dying, Nancy and Seth moving to Mexico, grad school, Morgan dying, Republicans, poverty, war, Morgan dying.

I have had some good hikes in the past year, been on a few camping trips, spent a lot of time in the sunshine but the year, like the decade, has been dominated by one central event. In May, on what would have been Morgan's 23rd birthday Nancy and Seth and I had an interment ceremony at Greenwood Cemetery in Spokane. Until then Morgan's ashes had been here at home. Making a decision was too difficult but we slowly began to talk about it and come up with a plan. I guess we just needed the time because it was so big. Deciding on a monument was also difficult but in a way very comforting. We managed to acquire two of the last spots in the older section of the cemetery and also one of the most diverse; just across the road from the Japanese section and over the hedge from the Jewish area. Morgan would be so jiggy with that. She used to like going to the Jewish cemetery to see the Hebrew words and the stones on the markers. Many of the head stones in our section are from the 1800s. We researched Victorian grave customs and designs and came up with a plan. But in the end, we changed it all around and created something strictly Morgan.

I am not sure I can put into words what the act of memorializing Morgan has done. Perhaps it is another piece of peace. Something lifted for me, but in the same act of release there was a new understanding of the depth of our collective loss. I know it brought the three of us together with our grief. We were able to have a lousy Christmas together this year and actually talk about how lousy we felt. There is always a huge elephant in the room when the three of us are together for a special occasion. It should be a quartet, not a trio and there is nothing we can do about it.

Nancy wrote the poem based on some Victorian styles. She wrote it to be the point of view of the the three of us individually.

This is a name Morgan gave herself. We found the name and title written at the beginning of one of her journals.