back home...

We are back. I am happy that we are back here. The weather is lovely and somehow this makes me feel that this new year ahead will be a good one. A good one for all of us. With good things to look forward to and good things to celebrate. I know there will be happiness for all of us, in same way, whatever way that may be. Happiness and sadness at the same time. I guess this is how things will be for a long, long time.

Things went well. Not much talk about Alice. And sometimes I like that. I like to keep her for myself. Of course I want people to think of her and how sad her death is but sometimes I like to keep her all to myself - she is mine and sometimes I am like a spoiled child and I don't want to share her. Odd, I know. But that's how it is.

And sometimes I want to share her and sing her name from the roof tops. But that is for me to decide. I don't like being forced to talk about how I feel.

I thought about Alice as I watched Minnie play with her cousins and felt sad that Alice will never get to play with them. She wont get to play at my childhood home in the country. She won't get to sneak to the enormous gardens and pick raspberries and strawberries hot from the sun.

I am not religious or overly spiritual but you know, I think somewhere Alice will be with her new friends. Her most special friends that I can't meet, not until one day in the distant future... She will be with Ezra and Hope and Sam and George and Douglas and William and Ciaran and all the other babies that couldn't stay here.

I see their photos and hear their stories and feel their mothers pain and grief and anguish. They don't have their Mama's but I am sure they have each other.

I wish you all much love in 2009 and I am thankful that we have each other too...