How do I describe the moment this morning when my publisher called to say she was holding a copy of my published book  in her hand? I begged her to grab the spine,  inhale its magic, caress the front and back as if it were living, breathing. When my co-author, Nancy, and I first met in January 2009, it was a few short weeks after her daughter, Rachel, had died. My son, Alex, had died 4 years earlier, on July 17, 2004. We asked ourselves if writing a book together would keep our kids safe and with us forever. After all, they had died atrocious deaths, we were both heartbroken, and words were the only oxygen keeping us both alive.  We wrote for more than one year, non-stop, chronicling word for word, this life after death. The endlessness of the process gave us purpose. Always another step. Another reason to get up in the morning. Another chapter needing to be written. 

As we impatiently await the arrival of our own personal copies, there is a sacredness in knowing that what we are actually doing, at last, is setting our children free. Their lives, whatever messages they were intended to deliver out into the universe, are enroute to being shared.

The sky is filled with exuberance and dancing clouds. Tuning out everything else, I stop to listen to symphonies and choruses of Alex, words, music, memories, laughter ~ a moment of long awaited self-return. Dare I say, I feel human once again?