For Katie, and Saying Goodbye

Katie, just this past Christmas.

Yesterday, my good friend Shameless Agitator lost a dear member of her family. Katie was only 10 years old but packed those ten years with a hundred years of joy for her family and friends. She was a fine little lady.

It was a sudden, very sudden, loss, and that's the very hardest kind. Here one minute, gone the next. It's frightening, unsettling, and so sad.


I will miss Katie, and my kids will, too. She was really a special little doggie. My son remembers her from when she and he were very young together, playing with our friends children.


Shameless's family is very special to us. We've all kind of grown up together. So when the losses start coming, they come to us all.


So this little song, a song I sometimes think of when I think of my mom, is for Shameless and her family, who has lost Katie, Grandma Cook, and little Amber, too. It's by Tim O'Brien, whose wonderful songs are full of shadow and fight and grief and joy and play. As Shameless said today, there's no way to cover up or distract from the pain. The only way is to work through it, and learn.


Much love to my sweeties and to anyone who has had to let go and say goodbye. In those sad hours, stretching on into days and darker nights, time passes and takes with it our pain in measured doses.


Time to Learn

The hand is cold that once held mine

I can't believe you've really left this world behind

I can wait and I can hope

I'll get over this in time

It takes time to learn when someone's gone for good

They're not comin' back like you wish they would

In the empty hours when you miss them so

Then it's time to learn to let them go

Your last hours we never knew

We never had a chance to say goodbye to you

Words unsaid and things undone

We'd just begun and now we'll never see them through

It takes time to learn when someone's gone for good

They're not comin' back like you wish they would

In the empty hours when you miss them so

It takes time to learn to let them go

It takes time to learn that you're gone for good

You're not comin' back like I wish you would

In the empty hours when I miss you so

Then it's time to learn to let you go

The hand is cold that once held mine