Jenny's Birthday

Yesterday ...because we all knew how it would too hard on her birthday itself... Sue, Chris and two of Jenny's friends (Liliana and Nadia) and I visited her grave, then went to dinner at Boston Market. I think it was Jenny's choice to have her birthday dinner there last year... her first non-kid birthday party, now that she had turned thirteen.

Something in air, the leaves and pumpkins and hints of Christmas in the stores... something about it, or perhaps all of it, is more than a small reminder that Jenny won't be here for her most favorite time of the year... beginning with Autumn camp at Hulbert and going through Christmas.

Now that I am working more at home... actually looking for work more than actually working... I feel the emptiness in the house more. Between the upstairs office and the rest of the house is Jenny's bedroom, with its unused bed and silence. Smokey, her cat, sometimes sleeps there. Sometimes I, too, lie on her bed trying to remember how she sounded, how she laughed, and how my world was different before she died.

The world can be a cold and heartless place where rules take precedence over decency, and where the dark side of humanity gropes for power ahead of caring for those in need. But when Jenny was here, I didn't notice this quite so much. Somehow I felt hope. Perhaps if there was a decent person like Jenny in this world, there might be others also. Perhaps the world was not so cold and heartless a place after all.

I have spent a lot of effort lately avoiding finishing the book based upon earlier messages from this website. I know it will be helpful to those who are suffering as I am. But it is hard, because writing this book is not helping me right now, and unfortunately for those it might help, I am not the sort of giving person Jenny was, who seemed so able to care even when it was an effort.

But now that I have written some, I do feel a little better. So perhaps I will make some more progress tonight.