January 13th

Dear Mom,

It's Dad's birthday today. His first since your death, and I can't stop the reel in my head playing his grief. I know we're making a life without you. I know he's not alone and he's made plans to have a birthday party with his friends, but I also know that won't stop the pit yawning before his feet.

He has been so strong through all of this. And I know that's partly because you weren't together and he had no claim on you, but that didn't keep his heart from cracking under the strain of your passing.

It was good to see him with Gary and Deanna in New Orleans, opening up to a world where he wasn't responsible for quite so much.

Also, I keep wondering if there is something going on with him and Deanna. He hasn't said anything, but it seems completely possible to me. I'm not quite brave enough to ask though.

I went to the Desoto Caverns yesterday. I had done some research, but wasn't quite prepared for the light show.

Also, compared to most of the caves I've been in, it's a very short tour. The main cave is huge, larger than a football field, and the ceiling was far above my head, but there wasn't much beyond it.

Still, it was a fun sight. It has one of the largest growing accumulations of onyx-marble stalagmites and stalactites. Visitors aren't allowed to touch the rocks, but they were beautiful. The cave was also was a gunpowder mining site during the Civil War.

Afterwards, in Childersburg, I panned for gemstones unsuccessfully, and went on some of the rides at the amusement park.

It was, all in all, a very satisfying adventure.

Something I find very interesting the longer I'm in the south, is that the war isn't over. I remember being taught about the Civil War in school, and all the books laid it out so simply. Slavery was wrong, the people in the south wanted to keep their slaves, therefore the people in the north, led by Abraham Lincoln were undeniably right.

It's only as I travel and talk to people that I begin to see it could never be that simple. People are never purely good or evil. There are gray areas and belief systems that cause us to act in ways we wouldn't otherwise.

Mostly, I've come to realize, especially after spending some time on the different reservations, walking along parts of the Trail of Tears, and now speaking with people who still believe there was merit in the claim of the Confederacy (Not merit in slavery, ever), that history is written by the victors.

How much of history has been covered up and changed just enough so we can't recognize it for the farce it is? And would we even realize the real thing if it stared us in the face?

Deep questions, I know, for a Wednesday afternoon in Alabama, but it seems as though if we could answer these questions, maybe it would help us iron out some of the bigger questions we struggle with. The inequalities, the inherent prejudices, the lies we are taught as truth, the poison we're forced to drink like water.

It's only as we become adults and begin to see the world and all its societal structures for the travesty they are that we can begin to resist the poison and find something truer, healthier, purer.

I can only thank you for keeping me from as much poison as you could. For giving me a childhood full of love, one where I was fed and cared for. I only ever knew the lack of things I wanted, never things I needed.

It's more than a lot of kids have.

I keep coming back to Dad's birthday. I called him earlier and he seemed okay, even like he was looking forward to this evening.

It's his prerogative to enjoy his birthday, I just hope he really is. I know neither of us is looking forward to February and your birthday, or April and the first anniversary of your death.

There's just too many reminders coming up and I want to hide in a hole in the ground until it's safe to come out without being attacked by the empty grief again.

I told Althea that yesterday. How much I was dreading today for Dad's sake, my birthday for mine. That each date is a mine and I'm not sure which ones are primed to blow.

She didn't question my forced metaphor. She asked me what plans I'd made for those days and if I was comfortable calling her if I needed to.

I told her I was, but I'm not sure. Althea knows more about my mental and emotional health than anyone right now. Since I'm paying her I don't have to worry about burdening her with my problems.

But I'm paying her. She is not a friend, she's a trained professional.

But I don't want to burden my friends with this pain. I don't want to dim Meg's light or put a lead weight on Jasper's smile.

I just want to be okay. I want to be able to remember you without the knee-jerk reaction of that ache in my heart.

It seems like the ache is lessening, and gravity's hold on my heart is lightening, and maybe they've dug down to where my casket has been buried for the last eight months, and they're getting ready to pull me up and reveal that I am, somehow, alive.

Maybe the bell above my grave wasn't clapper-less after all, because how else would I have met and befriended all the people I have in my travels?

Maybe I just couldn't hear it ringing because of the six feet of earth between me and the open air.

Now I can hear them working to lift the casket up and soon I'll be free. Not unscathed, but no longer quite gone.

It will be a beautiful thing.

I will always miss you.

I will always love you.

Bo