Anniversary approaching

 The tenth anniversary of the day my seven-year-old son Simon died is near: August 6th, 2004. I register its approach in several ways. It comes heavily, and I feel the weight in the heat and stillness of summer air. Even though the climate is more humid and less hot in southern Germany compared with the Salt Lake Valley, the "anniversary effect" of the season still happens. The angle of summer light, the daylight lasting into the evening, the crinkly tug of sun on skin. The late July/early August season takes me back to the last weeks of Simon's life. I don't seek this effect. I barely notice it sneaking up. Then a late afternoon rain shower throws a rainbow in the sky. Or summer sweat dries on my neck like rubber cement and my mind is sent back to the pathways I took around the Utah house: the kitchen, outside in the yard (to the pumpkin), from bedside to bathroom and quickly back. Simon died at home, in a process as fully integrated with our daily lives as it was extraordinary. The memories feel like that, too.

I've been doing exploratory writing about the summer of 2004, looking at the two months of time that passed when we knew Simon was dying. That writing has also stirred up memories and sent me into the archives of Simon's life. In anticipation of the anniversary, I want to present a review. Some of the readers of this blog followed Simon's Place as events unfolded. Even if you've read some of these postings before, I think you will be amazed, as I am, at the extensiveness and beauty of the record.

The summer of 2004

Looking back, I've always identified early-mid June as the time we knew for sure that Simon's disease would run its course and he would die. Yet there seems to be no point in June at which we wrote "Simon is dying." Early in July, there's a footnote that explains his transition into hospice care to help him "die as peacefully as possible." I don't believe we were trying to protect the information so much as we were in a process. Even after the June conversation with Simon's doctor in which he predicted "weeks, a month, maybe two," I think we moved forward day by day. Simon was living, and we were parenting and caring for him as we always had. I don't for a minute believe we were in denial of his approaching death. But we couldn't know what it would be it until it happened.

Since the Simon's Place entries are reverse chronological, you may want to scroll to the bottom and work your way up on each page. I've written (RC) for those links. If internal links on Simon's Place send you somewhere, navigate by date. (Some pages have since become archives.)

What's Happening June 2004 - (RC) the month we learned Simon's cancer was terminal

Photo Gallery June 2004 - Simon looked and felt pretty great in early June but grew sicker

Celebration of Life Party on July 1, 2004 - Simon's chance to invite all his friends (posted one year later)

Celebration of Life Photos - the short version, note Simon's striped chair (I think of him every time I sit in it)

Celebration of Life Photo Gallery - lots of people, lots of photos (web photo galleries have come a long way since then!)

What's Happening July 2004 - (RC) using good moments despite advancing disease

What's Happening August 2004 - (RC) Simon died on August 6th

Grann's Prayer over Simon's Body, August 6, 2004 - a moving and brave offering of thanks

Simon Says June-August 2004 - (RC) especially here, scroll to the bottom and read chronologically

Simon's Memorial Service - the invitation says a lot about what was important to us; remember Mapquest?! Note the links Mary's Remarks at Simon's Memorial Service and Lullaby: Der Mond ist aufgegangen.

Simon the Dragon by Erik Troberg - Erik's tribute, read during the service, is one of many moving tributes linked at the bottom of the Tributes page.

Message Board at Simon's Place - (RC) July and August 2004 carry the sadness of many people. (You can still send a comment there via the link at the top of the archive page. The current page is here.)

Greetings for Simon from All Over the Place!  - if you sent one, you may remember

Anniversaries

For the anniversaries I'm posting something for each year. A few things I've never written about elsewhere, so I'm adding a few photos as well.

First anniversary 2005

Two of a Kind concert at the Hogle Zoo - sponsored by the Simon Craig Vodosek Memorial Fund

Second anniversary 2006

What's Happening 2006 - (RC) a lot of this writing is anniversary-ish

Simon's Way at Brighton Ski Resort - a commemoration in April 2006 (amazingly, the media links are still live)

Third anniversary 2007

What's Happening later years - (RC) I can't recall yet where we spent this anniversary. The bottom-most entry, 2007, is the original Simon's Pumpkin post.

Fourth anniversary 2008

Simon's grave monument (slide show 4) - erected on August 1, 2008 exactly. It took us four years.

Fifth anniversary 2009

The Simon Craig Vodosek Memorial Fund sponsored this cute guy on the new carousel at the zoo.

Conservation Carousel at the Hogle Zoo
in Salt Lake City: River Otter

Photos from August 3, 2009 remind me we were with the Craig clan in Ohio that summer, and we toured the Mansfield, Ohio factory where the carousel had been made.

Beginnings of a horse.

Another otter...

Sixth anniversary 2010

We placed a gravestone to mark the burial spot of the urn next to the monument at Mt. Olivet. Just in time before moving to Germany that summer. Miriam and I visited the grave (and Carl's mom's) with Carl and Natalia on August 6th.

Natalia, Carl, & Miriam

There was a rainbow.

Seventh anniversary 2011

After another Craig clan gathering in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, we visited in Utah and took a wildflower hike to Catherine Pass with Utah friends.

Eighth anniversary 2012

Posted on Facebook, August 5, 2012:

We joined the people of the Arlington Street Church (UU) for worship this morning and took part in their Joys and Sorrows (great format, by the way, with a half-sheet to fill out before the end of the first hymn and then it's read aloud by a minister who invites you to stand as he reads, over Spirit of Life softly on the piano). We shared: 

We remember our son and brother, Simon, who left us eight years ago tomorrow. We love you and we miss you! 

And we were lifted up by the caring of strangers. After church, we took a ride on a swan boat.

Ninth anniversary 2013

For the solemn date of August 6, part 1
August 6th, part 2

Tenth anniversary 2014

Stay tuned.

Pumpkin update

"I wonder if they're blooming? You never know what a flower does when you're out."

Simon Craig Vodosek, age 4, April 15, 2002

Simon made that comment as we were driving home from daycare. The weather was unseasonably warm, and I'd asked him what he thought the tulips might be up to, the ones he'd helped plant in the fall. Somehow, the quote came to mind today, and I searched for it in my files. You can read the original Simon Says entry on Simon's Place. Scroll down to find April 15, 2002. But then read the whole page. I found many quotes to chuckle over--just normal times with two kids, aged 2 and 4. And some entries help us understand what it might feel like to be four years old and have cancer.

Seeds from the original 2004 pumpkin, just up since yesterday.

Simon frequently commented about nature in ways both cute and thoughtful. Markus and I always believed we heard an echo of Linda Britt, the wonderful daycare mommy who cared for both Simon and Miriam in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She guided the kids' appreciation of holding roly-poly bugs and hand-picking raspberries. Linda's brilliant rule for little ones: one-finger touching. Kids can't damage a flower by pointing gently at it (just by grasping and mashing or tugging it).

On Simon's birthday, May 17th, I planted pumpkin seeds directly in the soil outdoors, taking advantage of the warm spring. Other years, I've set seeds to sprout in the house on Simon's birthday, then planted them in June. Four days later I was on a three-week trip in the USA, solo. I hired Miriam as my tender and waterer. A week after the planting, she sent a photo of the first sprouted seed. But soon she noticed nibbled off  leaves on all the small plants. Markus helped her replant the pumpkin patch. Knowing they truly always sprout, I had placed a single seed next to each yellow marker. To assure success, Markus said he planted a bunch of seeds at each location and covered them with plastic cones to keep the munchers away.

A cluster of seedlings awaits thinning.

Now Markus knows the pumpkin seeds really do come up. It will be his task to thin these out. I told him if you want to overdo things, then plant two seeds instead of one. 

Growing out of the cone, a pumpkin from year "?"

Soon they'll be big enough to evade the munchers. Pretty soon they'll take over the garden. But for now, they make roots and prepare. Here's what things look like today, June 13th. Miriam made 31.50 Euros, by the way.

About five pumpkin plants this year.

The other end of the garden has the returnees of last summer's perennials. On a sprig of lavender, in front of the gaura (whirling butterfly), there's yet another delight: a real butterfly. The German word, aside from "Schmetterling", for this sort of creature is "Falter", which carries the meaning of folding. I find the word poetic. I'm guessing Simon would, too.

White butterfly alight on lavender.

2014 Writers at Work Fellowship in Literary Nonfiction (part 1)

I attended the Writers at Work annual conference for the first time in 2005. I was a website-writer (I hadn't adopted the word "blogger" yet). Together with my husband, Markus, I had posted photos and written updates about our son's life with cancer at Simon's Place from 2001-2004. Simon died when he was seven. In the early years after his death, I wrote about grief. I posted little movies of him (pre-YouTube). I wrote up quotations of things Simon said, gathered from journals and bits of paper. I archived his life.

At the 2005 Writers at Work conference, which took place at Westminster College in my Salt Lake City neighborhood, I took Brenda Miller's workshop in nonfiction. We wrote imitations (like painters copying masterworks). We wrote from memory. I "met" Joan Didion and Bernard Cooper. A year later in 2006, I worked with Jesse Lee Kercheval in a generative workshop* in which we wrote fiction, poetry, prose poetry, and nonfiction over five intensive days.

The 2007 Writers at Work nonfiction workshop was in the hands of Chris Cokinos. Chris was a non-stop source of reading recommendations, and I chased many titles down. I was on my way from being a person who had never heard of Vivian Gornick or Mary Karr to someone who had read their work. That was the year I realized I needed more than a great conference each June, and I started taking semester-length writing and literature courses as a non-matriculated student in the University of Utah Department of English. From 2007-2010 I took one or two per semester (Timothy O'Keefe, Karen Brennan, Matt Kirkpatrick, Paisley Rekdal, Melanie Rae Thon).

I won a scholarship to the Wesleyan Writers Conference in 2008, and I traveled back to my early undergraduate haunts in Connecticut for a week. (I transferred to Oberlin, where I ultimately graduated.) Abigail Thomas's workshop at the 2008 Writers at Work conference in Salt Lake City came immediately after my Wesleyan week. There's no real comparison between the two conferences. People seem to make connections at the Wesleyan event, but if you want to work on your writing, go to Utah.

2009 took Writers at Work (and me) into a period of transition. I attended the conference that year, up at the Spiro Arts Center in Park City, with Eileen Pollack, whose write-it-real approach to a generative workshop challenged the smooth coating around my work.

I missed Writers at Work in 2010 and 2011. I believe there was a conference hiatus in 2010, which was during our move from Salt Lake City to Germany anyway. In 2011, I languished in writing isolation over here in Germany. In 2012, I put myself on a plane and went back to Utah for the conference and spent a nonfiction week with the very funny and also very serious Steve Almond. Same story in 2013, only that year I veered into a mind-opening poetry workshop with Katherine Coles (ask me sometime about the hamsters…). The current conference location at Alta Lodge in Little Cottonwood Canyon is mountain getaway.

Many of the years since 2006, I've entered my writing in the annual Writers at Work fellowship competition. Always in nonfiction, always from my work about my son. Aside from that Wesleyan scholarship, I haven't sent my work much anywhere else. Although I've received valuable encouragement from instructors, consultants, and workshop attendees over the years, I never made it into the finalist group.

Until this year. I submitted an essay in January, called "Objects of My Attention". Finally, here was an essay where the pieces seemed settled, the parts seemed authentically named, and I felt done as a writer. I'd love to see what a professional editor's eye and hand would add, but I felt content. I admit that my hopes crept very high when I learned I'd reached the finalist group. Then on March 11th, I awoke to find an astonishing email from Writers at Work: this year, I won!

Perhaps the lapse of a full month before I have written here about the competition win gives an idea of how moved and stunned I am. This year's nonfiction judge is Robin Hemley, whom I greatly look forward to meeting at the conference in June. His remarks about my essay mean a great deal to me. I have begun to study Robin Hemley's work, and I will be back with a report.

Today, I feel happy about this recognition of my writing. I am arranging some readings here in Germany, in Oberlin, and in Salt Lake City. There will also be a reading at the 2014 Writers at Work conference. The material is difficult to read for an audience, and I need as much routine as I can get. I'll post dates and times here on the blog. Perhaps you can attend! The essay will be published later in the year by Quarterly West.

Meanwhile, I can't enter the Writers at Work nonfiction competition ever again. It has provided a sturdy motor for my progress, but now it's time to strike forth in new directions!

*A "generative workshop" means you write new work together and you don't have to bring diddly with you, as far as words on the page, and some years that's a huge relief.