After quite a while, I'm ready to begin again. Recording/writing I mean. I've had some trouble with my Dragon (dictation software) -- thought it was slain for awhile, had some people helping me to repair the damages and it seems to have healed itself. Anyway, now it seems to be working and working well. And when it works well it is an amazing tool and relief and miracle for me.

Now I would like to offer you a new Turtle Journal. It has been increasingly more difficult for me to communicate -- my voice is weaker because my breath is weaker. I can no longer type on keyboard and I am learning how to use other assistive communication methods. I use the breathing machine -- which is called a Bipap (it means that it helps me breathe in and out -- thus it is a bi-machine) -- all through the night and I should use it more during the day than I do. But I am so active that I rarely stop to rest and use the machine. And now that it is Spring -- though in Boston it's hard to tell what that really means because it ranges from 40° to 80° on any given day with very strong winds -- I'm trying to get outside and sit under a tree -- or go to Jamaica Pond or to the Arboretum or to JP Licks.

Since I am getting weaker and more and more things are slowing down for me -- I am really feeling much more the pace of the Turtle these days -- I am changing a lot of the ways that I do things (often against my strong will). So the Turtle Journal is going through some major transformations also. One thing that I would like to do more often, as I have started to do, is to offer excerpts, unfinished entries. Since they are not really in finished form -- for I often don't come back to finish them -- I must move on (I seem to be using that phrase a lot lately -- "to move on")... and you can find these entries on the web-site TurtleJournal.org under Bob's Turtle Diary. I don't have any entries from this month in there yet but there are some from March and April and I think it will be easier for me to keep people updated through these types of entries rather than doing a whole Turtle Journal. As you see I could not get one out in April.

So instead of giving you a big update right here, I will continue to produce this month's Turtle Journal. And please keep checking back to Bob's Turtle Diary for more updates.

Once again I would like to thank my friend and JP neighbor, John Burkhardt, for all the work he has done on the Turtle Journal web-site. Please check out the photos and poems -- as there are new ones all the time!

I would like to say one thing about the rest of this Turtle Journal. I've called it Blessings and Prayers, for two reasons. One, I have many blessings and prayers that I would like to offer to my readers. But more importantly, Ginny and I are finding ourselves filled with more and more blessings lately, as we share more intimate feelings together and as we take account of all the gifts that we receive daily. I think you'll see what I mean. Enjoy reading this month's Turtle Journal.

By Gin

The water gathers
From the sky, from the mountains.
Melting, it pours
From my heart.

The many streams of love converge
Into hot tears, caught in too few moments of quiet.
Emptied into
Your hands.

Take these, dear love,
Offered as my heart’s gift
To soak and soothe your pain
And mine.

The gentle snowdrop blooms first
From sun and April shower.
Our hearts spill over with love
Forged from grief and whirling storm.

Yet, it carries us to safe harbor,
This river.
We breathe here now.
Our hearts held together in this elbow
Of peace.

Here it is, 11:45 a.m. Monday, no Tuesday, May 13, and I'm finally getting to 
write to you -- I wanted to get one out in April, but as it turned out there was too 
much going on around me and inside me for that.

Depression Is not quite the right word -- I've written a lot about Storms and 
Dragons and all kinds of things that the eat away at me or through me like fire --

One part of that phase -- which is the longest and most intense for Ginny
and me --is the process of saying goodbye to loved ones.
The process of saying goodbye is really the process of saying hello and living 
            into each moment.
But sometimes (maybe all of the time) that is really done only when you say 
            goodbye.

(Think about it, think about the tears and the words said when you say goodbye 
            after a visit with your loved ones. Think about how real are those 
            moments.)

I've had a lot of opportunity for that lately with visits from my cousin Chris, my two 
friends John and Lisa, and of course, Simone, -- with whom I say hello and 
goodbye in that way at least once a week on the phone.

But really, it's been Gin and me.
We've been practicing saying goodbye to each other practically every day.
And in our saying goodbye, we have tears, we have lots of memories, there is 
lots of love & joy and sadness, and the understanding deepens each time.

(Yesterday, Sunday, May 18, we went to Forest Hills Cemetery and spent 
two or three hours walking around, sitting in the sun at the lake, watching 
the birds, having pictures taken of us, by John, and beautiful flowering 
trees, being with each other, thinking and talking about burying my body, 
my ashes -- placed in the earth in this beautiful Cemetery. -- It was an 
excellent exercise in being present in the moment to each other.

And there's plenty of forgiveness.
Forgiving myself mostly.
But also forgiving others.

(As I have written in one of my other poems -- one of the longer ones, I have had a challenge with forgiveness since it all began -- in my infancy, with this time on earth.)

The forgiveness comes in many forms...

Plenty of darkness, of anger, of pain -- all that yucky stuff that is so easy to 
            wallow in -- has been there.

But it can easily fall to the wayside like a snake shedding its skin.
And move on.
And move on.

It is a mystery.
It is a journey and a mystery.
And we must carry on.
In the words of Margaret Rowell, my teacher of music and life,
a master of both, "We must carry on."

I was doing my shopping on the other side of town over by Fresh Pond in Cambridge. I had other errands in the area so I stopped to shop. Almost done, I headed round the corner into frozen foods…to get microwavable lunch – Saag Paneer and Vegtable Korma by Ethnic Gourmet – (I really like these, give ‘em a try!)

As my cart and I rounded the bend, I heard my name being shouted out. I turned to see an old friend of mine …boyfriend… from many years back look at me in a split second transformation of disbelief, relief and genuine good will to see me in my current condition. He hugged me. "Are you o.k.?" he asked. "Ginny, I heard from Marcia that you were…terminally ill." We all used to work together at the public TV/radio station in Cambridge. Many of my colleagues are still there, 20 years later.

No, I told him. I was o.k. I’m losing my hearing, but otherwise I’m fine. I could feel the tears well up, but I couldn’t talk. I didn’t want to break down and cry in the middle of frozen foods in front of someone I hadn’t talked to in 12 or 13 years. Years before Bob and I were married. I just made small talk.

Inside, my mind raced. Silently, I chattered: "No, it’s really, Bob, my husband, who’s got a life-threatening illness and it’s breaking my heart and my heart will break right here…all over this frozen spinach and that’s more then I can stand right now and I wish I could tell you…but not here, not now..."

Then, I looked at him and the thought seized my mind like a flash of fire. Still silent, it tore a hole through whatever we were talking about out loud. "Wait a minute! You heard I was dying and you didn’t send me a card!? You didn’t call?! And the others too?!"

Now, I wanted to run. The thought stuck with, me shouted at me. Run! Get outta here. I did have to pick someone up in Watertown in 10 minutes. I said my goodbye and wished him well despite my flash.

Groceries in the cart. Out to the car. Into the trunk. I got in the car and just cried and cried and cried. It hit me. All the times, I had heard that someone was sick or suffered badly and didn’t call. Didn’t send a card. Oblivious to knowing how much it matters when you’re in such pain. Now knowing.

Louse. Rat. I just watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Bob. Audrey Hepburn’s two favorite descriptions for the bad kind of men she’d been hangin’ around ... Rat. Louse. I felt they were me. The tears poured out for all the times I’ve been afraid, not even knowing that I was…wanting to run…away from sadness, away from pain…ultimately away from love. I sat there in the car. Me and the spinach both melting. Thank God.

A week later I called Marcia and left her a phone message about my condition and Bob’s illness. I wrote a note to John, and told him too. I haven’t heard anything back. I did hear from myself though. Maybe that’s what really brought me back to life… in the frozen foods section.

Prayer (Evening)