Slow dancing...

The black taffeta skirt rustled as she swirled across the floor of her bedroom.

Bending and swaying to the notes of the melody coming from the radio.

She let the music and the rhythm lead her around the room.

And she couldn't have cared less that she was her own partner...

. 

Facade....

She took one last look around the house.

It looked bare and unloved now without all the little bits and pieces that dominated the rooms, much like her grandmother's personality had dominated her childhood.

A harsh, cold woman who didn't see a need for empathy or compassion.

Those things only made you weak.

Yet some nights she would wake to hear the strains of Beethoven or Strauss floating through dark and she'd sneak down the stairs to watch as her grandmother sat at the piano.

Alone in the dark with only the light of the moon shinning through the windows, lost in the music she was making.

This soft and tender side her grandmother never let anyone see.

This facade, this side of herself her grandmother kept hidden.

She would never understand why...

Loss...

                               

What is left is a faded blue puppy given to him by a volunteer on one of his too frequent stays in the hospital, several small wooden trucks, a Snoopy pillow case and boxes of photographs.

Over the years you wait for the pain go away but it never does.

It just changes.

It shifts from day to day and year to year and becomes something different, sometimes better sometimes worse.

And you manage to get through the days...at least most of the time.

You hold on tight and breath and even though you are not the most religious person in the world, you pray a lot.

And if you are very lucky you make it through to the moments when you remember things without the pain and you smile...and then you cry again and that's okay.

For Brandon

xoxoxoxoxox

Release...

She was only fourteen.

I listened as all the pain and frustration came pouring out of her.

Time spent trying to hold it all back had made it something thick and black and choking.

I could hear the desperation in her words.

My soul is weary and raw, she said.

Her eyes looked tired and haunted.

Years of anguish had taken its toll.

She wasn't crying because she wasn't strong.

She was crying because she'd had to be strong for so long.