Grieving Ryan

  A year ago I had them together. The twin blonde heads that for so many years bent together over a newfound wonder, bobbed side-by-side in a shopping cart, knocked against each other as only siblings can and then looked out for each other.  A year ago they talked and laughed together, and then I never saw them together again.  Thanksgiving was the same as ever: Grandma's golden bird and fluffy mashed potatoes. The steamed carrots the grandkids like - the ones Ryan once ate until he started turning orange on a diet we hoped would help him heal. The same dog with silky ears that grounded him when he could stand to be with us. The same two cats that kept him company when the people were too much for him as the dog was for them and they all retreated to the back room.  I knew he wasn't well, but I didn't know how to give him the help he claimed he didn't need, and I didn't know how urgently he needed it.  Ryan was still here a year ago, still laughing, still smilin...

Anacortes is the place I came when I left my old life. I drove away from two decades of friendships built and communities connected. I left behind the homes and parks and hiking trails where I had raised my babies and I headed west.  Skagit County had received my mother, my brother and I after her marriage ended before my fourth birthday. We lived on the beach and tromped through muddy sand. We lived at the lake in a drafty cabin just up the driveway from my first best friend. We lived in small town LaConner where I walked to kindergarten and feasted on raspberries in my mothers garden. My life grounded in the saltwater beaches and evergreen forests of this land.  It became the place that has always felt like home to me.  Marriages, first my mother's second and later my first, led me away from this place.  I was away most of a decade before I came back the first time.  When I left again I made sure to come back often. Maybe that's why I never rooted in Atlanta d...