Missing You

Dear Susan,
It's a Thursday night and your local memorial service was on Sunday. It was a very nice service. The Rabbi's voice was so beautiful, I could hardly stand it. I can understand why you asked that she come to you and sing on your last evening here.

Ruth talked about you as a friend, I spoke about you (well, cried through my reading) as a family member and read my entry from a few weeks ago. A colleague spoke and Kim spoke. You would have been really proud of her. She made it through with no outbursts and what she wrote was, as you can imagine, beautiful. She shared it on her blog so I'm sharing it here too.

Dad told me to read mine through aloud on my own and I did that, but it didn't matter. There was a lot of grief in that synagogue, all for you, and I couldn't hold it in. But I don't embarrass easily so I didn't really care that I cried through the whole thing. At least I remembered to enunciate.  Were you listening?

After the service we all went downstairs for refreshments and chatted about you. There were over 200 people there! Some people approached me and told me that I did well. I was proud of myself. Swiss Baker catered and I had one of those chocolate nut cookies that you make around Christmas time. I thought to myself that you make them much better and then I had to focus on not losing it, realizing that I would never have one of yours again.

I'm missing you tonight.

Here's what Kim wrote; 

My dear dear Susan,
In the much-too-short video you left for me, you told that me one of the most important things to you in our long relationship was that I had come to share with you your love for Switzerland. Many of our sweetest memories together (and then with Gus) were there, the homeland of your beloved father Gaudi, who inspired in you his own love of Switzerland. I am so grateful you shared with me: Basel, Samedan, the Engadin, hiking . . .
Remember in 1996, when we stayed at Il Fuorn, in the Swiss Nationalpark?
On the way there, we stopped in Zernez to find hiking boots for me. You explained in apologetic but, of course, very good Swiss-German that I needed boots that were curt und brite (short and wide). The shopkeeper found some, and then made a custom fit for me by pounding out the toes with cobbler's tools.
The bus into the park went up an incredibly narrow, winding road next to a sheer drop-off. Just in time, I turned to follow your finger, pointing at the Tannenhäher, the bird your Dad had told us about, as it dove down to the valley below.
Remember the hallway at Il Fuorn?
 
It was lined with simple wooden doors on either side, most of them with dirty hiking boots carefully placed outside. We opened the door to our room, and found another door behind it. We decided the second door must be further insulation, against hallway noises. How Swiss!
It was October, your father's favorite month of the year, and the larch trees were bright yellow. As you would throughout your life, you reminded me: they are the only conifers that are deciduous.
The Hirsch, the Swiss elk, were in rut. In the middle of the night, a deep sonorous bellow, turning into a sort of shriek, woke us up. Remember that there was a bright moon that night? It was still difficult to see through the darkness, but finally we found it. There was the Hirsch, right outside our window, maybe a hundred feet away.

Until it got too cold and we had to dive back under the covers,

we stared out the window at the Hirsch in the field, with the path behind it that led to many other trails, along rivers, through Murmeli meadows, where the marmots whistle at passing strangers, up and down the shoulders and peaks of  mountains. 

Mountains, like Munt La Schera, which we first climbed together that year, and that we enjoyed so much that we later took Gus. To keep him going, we played Tour de France. You were George Hincape, I was Ivan Basso, and we chased eight year old Lance up the mountain, resting for all-too-frequent tire changes.

At the top: turn around and around and around.

You can see forever.

Mountain air surrounds us, its cold wind balanced by the warm sun in the brilliant blue sky.
We made so many wonderful memories together.
Being with you, and with Gus, on top of Munt La Schera, is a memory where I always know I will find us, together as a family, drinking in the spacious beauty of peace on earth,
and in the heavens.
Are you there now? On your pink cloud?
Wherever you are, I love you forever and ever,
your honeybean.