Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

The other night I got a text at 2:30 am. "Jeff just passed away." I couldn't believe it. I still can't. My friend Bridget -- the one who carried me through the worst work of dismantling our lives in Kauai, who has been there for me for nearly a decade of raising babies, nursing, potty training, parenting, homeschooling, working-- her husband Jeff died suddenly of the flu. He was a beautiful man. A hard and lean Portuguese Hawaiian Paniolo-- soft spoken, bright eyes, long white ponytail. Thick pidgin, soft voice, gentle with all the babies, gathering the children into his lap. How can he be gone? He wouldn't show up to a party, but he'd show up to build you a fence or move your house or brand your cattle. He'd work harder and longer than anybody. Life is a little surreal-- the last time I saw him was when he and Bridget had packed up my container with our whole battered dusty lives inside after my own crusty Hawaiian cowboy died, leaving his stunned and b...

I've stumbled into the life of being my grandmother's caretaker. I got here, to Orem Utah, in April of 2016, with the intention to stay for about a month, maybe a summer, as she recovered from treatment for leukemia, and some of the weird ailments that were caught up in that knot of disease-symtom-treatment-side-effect. Weeping legs, wounds, swelling, rattly boxes of medications to be halved, powdered, gagged down, remembered. And then admonitions to get enough fiber, to get enough vitamin D; to make sure the sleep apnea wasn't becoming a problem, to have distilled water on hand-- don't forget the probiotics! I've always loved this grandma, so much. She's so positive and kind. This is where I'd come as a teenager in tumultuous Washington DC, wrestling with being a round peg in a square religion, to detox and feel loved. She was a sacred place, a living sacrament. So when the specter of her mortality reared up, I felt urgently that I wanted to come and ...