Knitting :)

When you sit at home all day, unable to work, and your only vehicle with your husband at work, you have a little time on your hands.

So you knit :)





Also through knitting groups, I've found fantastic friends here in Vegas... which is so helpful to my mental health. Moving from the area where you've lived your entire life, where you can the into the grocery store and see your cousin, or wave a pedestrian across the street and notice it's a kid you used to babysit, or even somewhere that your Dad's boss is a kid you graduated with. Vegas, I seriously knew no one... so meeting these wonderful women, who also share a fiber obsession has been a huge help!

Eva

It's taken me a few days to be able to even write anything. To even process.

The weight of you being gone, it just sucked the air out of me.

A glance at my piano. The piano that I played the sheet music on that you bought me while you sang, when those lungs were giving you the life that you always dreamed of.

The pile of red yarn sitting next to my bed, destined to be designed into a shawl to remember you, tiny beads of rouge and silver, glass roses, red of course, to play along the edges.

The lessons you taught me, the ones that you said that I taught you, even though I can't hardly imagine that I could have anything to offer you. I always was amazed that you picked me, chose me, in all my broken and selfish and me ways, that you picked little ol' me to be part of that special group. It's strange looking up to someone who is younger than you, though that looking up was always literal, you made me feel like I should launch into a rousing rendition of "Lolly Pop Guild".

I may appear to a lot of people to be fairly fearless. You saw right through that. Saw all the walls that I put up around my insecurities. That I don't live in fear, but I don't live vibrantly, because if I don't, then I don't have much to be scared of. You're one of the few people that ever saw it, that ever had the words to tell me to buck up. You told me, as my health began to slip, to never be afraid of living. To not give in to the fact that I was sick and to crawl into a hole. That I still needed to live, vibrantly. Lord knows that I try. It's scary. Unbelievably so. You had a way of pushing me, to say what I was scared to say, because I didn't want people to know what I really felt. I don't know how, but you were able to do that. And I know I pushed you sometimes. When I saw a bit of me reflected in you.

Though I don't talk a lot about my faith on here, it's a theme in my life. One that you latched on to. You told me that I helped you find God. It gives me a lot of comfort right now. I rarely proclaim my Christianity, because I'm often judged to be a poor Christian, because I don't go to church, I'm a proud liberal, who is pro choice, pro same sex marriage, and I cuss like a sailor. I'm not perfect. But I do believe in God, and I do believe in Heaven, and I've had experiences that make my faith rock solid. That this girl, who has been told by a few too many Christians that her faith is not worthy because of her beliefs, helped someone believe, by living a quiet believing life. That's a part of God's great miracle.

That's the thing about us. Though we grew up miles apart, in different countries, there was so much that I could see in you, that I felt in me. Not that I could ever be as loving as you. That takes something, a gift that I wasn't quite born with. But yet, we both always tried to see the best in people, the best in situations, even though it sometimes takes me a bit do so, once I dealt with my demons. The same demon that haunted you at the end. Fear. But love was able to calm the demon.

So to you, for you, my Eva, I will try. I will try to be as honest with myself, and my readers, and my friends, and my family, and everything, that I can be. Because that is what you wanted from me.

Dance for me sweet girl. Until we can run, and dance, and play together, never once gasping for breath.