Let the story begin

Most of my life my friends and family have told me they like what I write. They say.."write more". So I did. I wrote letters to my Grandmother when my Grandpa died and she got lost in this world. I wrote letters to my Son as he traveled the west chasing dreams. I have written love letters to my husband, my children, my grand-children and my friends. I wrote poetry and short stories. I became confident, the words flowed easily, I simply wrote the words I saw in my head , the words I felt so deeply in my heart. Five years ago everything I thought I knew disappeared. The words in my head went to black, there were days I needed them... bad, but they were gone, I could no longer see them and what I felt was too black and too personal to be written.
When your child dies, the world goes black. People care, they light candles for you everywhere in the hope that you will find your way back. Back.... not to who you were because they are not who they were..but back nonetheless. Mike had a posse...people he may have never known would ride on his behalf. But, ride they have. So much of what I will write is for Mike,  it certainly is for me and I dedicate all of it to the "posse", you know who you are.

And then there is this: I have spent the first four days of the New Year as so many have. Cleaning, sorting and throwing. I am organized to a T, but throwing comes hard. If there is any emotional attachment, family connection or memory associated with an item, I can find a place to put it  back. We live in Mikes house. Everything here is a memory. Everything is an attachment. For five years I have only randomly looked through Mike's papers, his letters, the things he held on to. Even in death, privacy is there. Yesterday, in a box marked "sled dog stuff" I came across Mike's training journal. It is a notebook filled with pages of times, miles, snow conditions and stories. Mike simply loved this sport. He trained, he raced, he read constantly, he fed and watered dogs twice a day for almost 10 years.

This is what I know: Mike threw himself into a sport of competition and never once became competitive. His journal entry dated December 27/1991 ends with him writing an excerpt from a poem written by two women that Mike idolized in the sport. "The trapline twins"
"a feeling of wild joy and gratefulness filled me, more a thought than a whisper. This is just as it should be, the wind, the stars and the dogs and me."
It is where Mike was then and it is where he is now.

till next time.