Blow Out the Candle

The next Monday, June 1st, we left for Bermuda. We needed to get away, to decompress from all the activity, all the people and all the stress of the last 13 months. Sandra and I travel together well, we enjoy the same things and run on the same schedule. The resort where we stayed was very nice, we enjoyed touring the island, dark and stormys (rum & ginger beer), sunbathing, snorkeling and played golf together for the first and last time. The weather was beautiful.

A couple of remembrances. This was the first time I understood snorkeling. When I was a kid, you have to remember that the US was taking its garbage three miles out to sea and dumping it. So the water was dark green and almost opaque. Not nearly as clear and aqua as it is today. Now granted, if I took mask and fins to the Jersey Shore today, I probably wouldn't see much either. Being in Bermuda, in a secluded cove was like swimming in a tropical fish tank. Very cool. I also was stopped at the dining room for not having a jacket. So I bought a proper English, double-breasted blue blazer that I wear to this day.

We spent the week there, flew back to Philadelphia, and went to the Jersey Shore for the weekend. We spent almost every weekend that summer at the Jersey Shore. Our dear friends, Mark, Karen and Claudia lost their father. He had a condo in Sarasota, FL and when he died, they sold that place and bought a house in Ventnor, NJ. After Spencer died, they presented us with a key to the house on a Little Mermaid key ring and told us our bedroom was on the third floor across from Mark's. We spent 7 summers there with that family, who are some of our dearest friends to this day. Their love and compassion was instrumental in getting us through one of the most difficult periods of our lives.

By the eighth of June we were back at work. It was comforting to have a place to go, something to do, a way to get lost in something other than our personal difficulties. We started attending meetings at CHOP for grieving parents led by a social worker named Mae Page. Mae was in her late 60's, kinda hippyish, but very compassionate. She also introduced us to Compassionate Friends, a support group for grieving parents. We didn't pursue CF much as neither Sandra nor I were feeling the group therapy thing. That was not the kind of fellowship we were seeking. We did work with Mae Page's groups for a while though. A lot of talking. I remember one of the exercises involved everyone sitting in a circle, lighting a candle, speaking of their child and then having to blow the candle out. It sounds hokey, but the thought of blowing that candle out gives me the shivers even now.