Loose Strife

The temperature in Ashfield topped 40 degrees today and the water is dripping from rooftops and filling the streets. We’re not through the worst of it, yet. There’s more snow coming soon and February can be brutal, but there’s a sense that we’ve rounded the turn and spring is in sight. I feel like I’ve personally rounded a turn, too, recently. A lot is happening right now and I’m not sure how it will all work out, but it’s exciting.
I’ve got orders in for hundreds of new bare root plants to go in to the ground in the end of April and early May. Blueberries, raspberries, tree fruit, and table grapes. I’m most excited about the table grapes right now. I’m very bullish about the marketing potential of locally grown seedless grapes. There are numerous new varieties that have been bred recently (most from the University of Arkansas) that are attractive, hardy, and delicious. I expect buyers at farmers markets and local grocery stores will happily grab up bunches; grapes lend themselves to impulse buys after a quick sample bite. So I’ll be putting in a trial plot of over 200 vines on the hillside behind the house this spring among other plans.
I haven’t yet ordered the seeds and plugs for a cut flower plot. Luckily Laura left me with some books on that, but the truth is that she had a tremendous knowledge of flowers that I totally lack. I’ve found old checklists of flowers that she bought and I had no clue how many she planted and how specific she was in choosing varieties.
Probably the main missing piece is a drip irrigation system. I haven’t figured out the best ways to get water where I want it if it’s needed. Usually we have enough rain until late summer, but the density and number of plants means that I better invest in water insurance. But I’m not sure, yet, whether I should get a solar pump to draw water from my stream, drill a shallow well near one of my springs, pull water from the pond, or what. I’ve got a number of options, but I don’t know which is most economical and who to talk to, yet.
In addition to all that, a neighbor and I are looking into growing some speciality crops for herbal medicine. She runs an herbal school and we’ve been brainstorming about crops that might grow well locally and could be profitable.
So that’s the farming update. In the meantime, I’m writing this email from the comfort of my brand new office on Main St in Ashfield. The big draw is high speed internet, which I need for the scientific consulting and software development that I’m just now starting. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire on the science and technology side. Along with some friends, I’m seriously exploring the possibility of developing some applications for the iPhone. It’s sort of a gold rush going on right now and I’m a little late to the party, but it could be a lot of fun to crank out some quick apps.
The other new plan is that I’m starting to do some independent scientific consulting. I never posted here that I finally made the decision to quit my tenure track position at UMass. I’ve been on leave since November ’07 and I’ve come to realize that I just couldn’t make it work and still be the dad that I want to be at this time in my girls’ lives. On top of that, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
It was a very difficult decision because I’m leaving a group of colleagues that are nothing short of spectacular. Kind, supportive, brilliant people. I couldn’t ask for more. I had terrific graduate students, too. But the demands are too high: I would need to be publishing many high-impact research papers in prestigious journals annually; raising $100,000s in grant money annually to support research and pay graduate students; I would have supervisory and mentoring demands, plus teaching and faculty duties. A long daily commute to Amherst would mean daycare for the kids and probably reduced after school activities for them. All this just didn’t fit with what I wanted to do and be.
Still, there is the little problem of cash flow while the economy is in the toilet, so I’ve decided that it’s a little premature to call it quits. But it wasn’t at all clear what I would do until I got an email from my PhD advisor from UC Santa Cruz on New Year’s Eve asking me if I was interested to work with him on research in, get this, metastatic breast cancer. That email really made me pause. Part of my lack of enthusiasm for my former faculty position was that I had lost that strong sense of purpose and I had a feeling that I would never have any real impact on human welfare. I can’t go into the details of the new work right now, but the main concern is better understanding how genetic changes in individuals affect the molecular activity of breast cancer. I’ll be working on a part time basis, remotely, to help put together and maybe later help coordinate multi-institution collaborations.
My office is ideally located (in the only office building in our small town), just around the corner from the preschool and along Lily’s school bus route, so managing the kids should be easy.
Regarding the girls, Lily and Naomi are generally coping very well. Naomi is as talkative, creative, and active as ever. She never stops play-acting, dressing up, decorating, building, drawing, and so on. She is consistently a very happy kid. She has specific ideas and so she can be bossy, which is constantly annoying Lily, and Naomi revels in her diablito side. Lily wants no part in Naomi’s directed fantasies — especially because Naomi will typically “assign” Lily the baby role. And since Laura died Naomi will frequently pretend that she is an orphan, which is an age-appropriate way for her to come to terms with her loss, but it throws Lily into a fit.
Lily loves kindergarten — the bus, gym, her teachers, and her many friends top the list of favorites. Every day they have recess outside in the snow. I don’t remember my winters being so much fun as a kid. Lily is very thoughtful, but loathe to express her feelings. She’s very emotional and frequently cries and hugs. She’s eager to learn and accomplish new things, whether it’s reading words or doing a handstand. When she’s successful she beams and squeals and jumps around. When she fails or is denied what she wants, she’s furious. For Lily, Laura’s death remains prominent as she continues to mourn the loss. She cries and calls for Laura’s return almost daily and the most unrelated disappointments often collapse into raw grief. But my sense is that this is her necessary and natural grief process and letting her express her sorrow freely and frequently will probably make it easier for her to deal with her loss when she is older. One can only hope.
As part of that grief process, I started taking Lily to The Garden yesterday in Northampton. It’s a twice per month afternoon meeting with other children who have lost a family member. Our first day was a success and Lily is eager to return. We’re very fortunate to have such a well-established and highly regarded program for children so close. (Naomi is too young for the program.)
The girls now take a dance class, which is one of the highlights of the week. It’s a movement class led by a creative dancer who takes the children on balloon rides to Africa, to New York City, and scuba diving deep under the sea. I’m impressed that they both enjoy it together. We always finish up after dance with dinner at Country Pie Pizza.
Even though I started out by saying that spring is in sight, we’re still going to escape from the New England winter weather for a week starting on the 14th and go back to Hawaii! We had such a wonderful time in Kauai last year when Laura was in excellent health. The memories are all very strong and positive. At the time I remember feeling so strongly that we would all — all four of us — be returning together in a year. As many of you remember, it was so hard to be with Laura then and imagine that she would die soon. During our travels it was hard for friends and family to say goodbye to her last year knowing that it would be forever. It was hard to believe and just plain hard.
Since then the girls have frequently talked about going back to Hawaii and I long ago promised that we would. I can’t imagine making a habit of it, but I’m sure that this anniversary trip will be an opportunity for remembrance that we will cherish — except perhaps for the long long long flight.
Remembering Laura will hopefully be a lifelong experience. It’s not something that I’m trying to put behind me. (Case in point is her dresser that I am still happy to leave alone!) But I’m not hung up or stuck either. I’ve come to keenly recognize this as I’ve participated in online mailing list discussions with groups of other young widowed parents. I haven’t found these groups to be particularly therapeutic. Instead I’ve discovered how fortunate I am and my heart aches for the many many people who suffer terribly and endlessly. Some of these widowed people lost their spouses suddenly and tragically. Others just never prepared. And some just can’t function anymore. It’s all so very very sad.
Through online discussions and talking with friends and family over the last 18 months, I’ve become so much more aware of how common it is to be touched by disease, dying, and death. It’s everywhere around us, seemingly hidden, but in full view if we’re tuned in. In that sense, I think my journey and this blog might be a little helpful in turning up the empathy knob. So many people need it so much.
My aunt just died this past weekend. She was diagnosed with advanced cancer this past fall and sent home with hospice. The experience has been intense and terribly sad for all of the family. Nobody foresaw this unexpected turn. My heart goes out to all of them this week and I wish for them strength and perseverance through a long grieving. Rest in peace.
Lastly, a quick appeal: I would very much appreciate any of you willing to take up the mantle, even temporarily, of editor of Laura’s tribute site. There are comments that need to be incorporated into the main text and lots of factual information (dates, places, people, etc.) missing about her youth and young adult years. I know I should do it myself and I feel awful and disrespectful when I remember that it is languishing. Valentine’s Day is coming up. Won’t you be mine?

I found this photo among clippings and quotations that Laura saved. The inscription on the wall says:

The hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.

The photo is clipped from a June 2000 National Geographic and shows a walkway into the London Underground in the South Bank. I’ve discovered that the full poem is “Eurydice” by Sue Hubbard and was commissioned for this access to the subway. In Greek myth, the forlorn Eurydice tragically dies and her husband, Orpheus, descends to the underworld to retrieve her. The stanzas are placed along the walk with the apparent effect that the poem can be read in either direction, starting at street level or underground. The full poem follows:

I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,
the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.
Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train’s wet glass,
Will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards
of Roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids heavy
with sleep, to the city’s green edge.
Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.
You turned to look. . .
Seconds fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.
This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.
Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.
I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.
Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.

I have received a few requests for suggestion regarding donations that might be made in Laura’s memory. It took a while to come up with some recommendations, but here are two:
First, the extent to which our friends in Western Massachusetts have offered their support was very comforting, uplifting, and even surprising to Laura — although it shouldn’t have been. We love our little town, too, and all our helpful new neighbors and friends, here. The preschool is one of the many businesses and organizations that helps create a sense of small town neighborliness here. It is also a place where Lily and Naomi met most of their new friends during the last two years and where I also made new friends with parents and teachers and connected with the community.
Lily had been in a very expensive preschool in Northampton before with outstanding facilities run with precision and report cards. Kids attended art and music classes with special teachers. But Lily seemed a little anxious about preschool and I got a sense that she just wanted to play. The Ashfield preschool is a different affair. It’s run on a shoestring budget in a very easy-going style with delightful, but modest, facilities. There’s less concern about thematic elements tying together the day’s activities and more interest in simply fostering a nurturing social environment where kids can play and learn to behave well with each other. And on most days the kids help to bake their afternoon snack. It’s a good fit for us.
For those reasons, I know Laura would have been delighted to be remembered by a contribution to the preschool. Contributions to the 2008 annual fund can made to

Ashfield Community Preschool
103 Baptist Corner Rd
PO Box 19
Ashfield, MA 01330

The second recommendation comes from our friend Julia Flannery, who has been tremendously helpful over the last year. She has arranged for a story time at the Lilly Library to be named in Laura’s honor and a plaque to be placed in the library. Julia explains that Laura met Julia and several other mothers when she took Lily to “lap time”, a story time at the library for children under 18 months. These women formed a mom’s group that regularly met for playdates and later organized a monthly night out. The group has now grown to about 30 and include many of our close friends.
In addition to the personal connection to that reading group, Laura was always fond of libraries. She worked and volunteered in libraries since college, was an active patron (to say the least), checked out hundreds of children’s books that she read to our daughters, and loved the public libraries for their egalitarian ideal and contribution to local community. (I remember well when we visited the Seattle Public Library and the Library of Congress. In both places she couldn’t stop taking pictures.)
Contributions can be made to

The Lilly Library
Mary Ann Tourjee, Director
19 Meadow Street
Florence, MA 01062

and indicate that the donation is for “Lap Sitting: the Laura Kulp Memorial Storytime”.

There will be a memorial mass for Laura in Northern Virginia on November 28, the Friday after Thanksgiving, at 11 AM at St Michael’s Church in Annandale. A reception will follow the service. My intention is to have another event in Virginia primarily for the many hometown friends of Laura’s and her sibs from catholic school and for anyone else who couldn’t make it to Ashfield last month.
If you are interested in participating in the service, I eagerly solicit your reply (dkulp@dizz.org). In addition, if there is interest, there will be an opportunity for anyone who would like to speak to do so during the reception. I also encourage you to bring to the reception any mementos (or Mentos!) that you’d like to share. I’ll have a table for stuff.

A few weeks before Laura died she quietly bought almost $500 of books and DVDs from Amazon mostly for the girls. It was during a spate of energy and awareness, seemingly, that she filled her virtual shopping cart. As the boxes arrived over the coming days I realized what she had done, but by that time she was bedridden, talking poorly, and not very cognizant. Still, insensitive ass that I am, I confronted her with the 3 foot stack of media. She said that she had a hard time seeing the screen and figured that we could return the ones she didn’t want. But when I handed her a book to consider she slowly turned every page, looked at each carefully, closed the book and put it aside. “Keep or return?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she replied blankly. A half dozen books later she went to sleep.
Ultimately I made some unilateral decisions and returned the duplicates, redundant books, and others. (A little foreshadowing, I’m afraid, of the many decisions to make with other things now.) But whether I ultimately kept each item or not, the full invoice was a glimpse into what had been occupying Laura’s thoughts. I felt pretty confident that From Here to Eternity or a kid’s book about the 50 states was probably not a critical purchases, but rather a fleeting thought or maybe even a mistake. Other purchases couldn’t be so easily dismissed. Laura purchased 15 books about Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.
She had been collecting Day of the Dead skulls, skeletons, and other stuff for some time. The girls were familiar with the accoutrements. She saw the Mexican festival as a way for Lily and Naomi to remember her and to be connected with her Mexican heritage. The children’s books on the Day of the Dead were a way to teach them about the celebration and to prepare them for her death.
The timing of her death at the beginning of October gave the kids and me just enough distance from the event so that by the end of the month we were eager to build an ofrenda and decorate her grave this past week. The ofrenda is a sort of alter in the house where you place candles, photos, food, and memorabilia of family that have died. Lily and Naomi were very excited and rushed around the house gathering items that reminded them of Laura. A doll and blankets that Laura made were first. The girls and I chose photos that we liked. We added favorite candies. Some butterflies. A rosary. Then Naomi started piling on pretty much every toy and dress-up item that she could find. Lily started screaming at her: “You don’t understand!” I explained to Naomi again that we were adding things that reminded us of Mommy. But she repeatedly insisted that the blue dress-up feather boa, the mini trophy from the costume contest last Halloween, or a doll that her grandmother gave her all “remind me of Mommy.” It was hard to argue.
Lily wanted to draw a card for Laura to put on the ofrenda and later to take to the cemetery. She asked me to draw a bench and then she decorated it with flowers. The bench was Laura’s gravestone. Several times since Laura died Lily has asked where the gravestone was. I had told her that I would have one made soon and I had also mentioned that a bench — perhaps like the marble ones near Laura’s grave — was an option. Laura and I had talked about gravestones and a stone bench was one of several ideas that appealed to her. She liked the idea that her grave was a place to stay a while and rest.
Of course the Day of the Dead preparations were not exactly taking top billing last week. Several times a day Lily asked when she would be wearing her costume to school and when we were going trick or treating. Lily was overjoyed to be a cat this year. Naomi was a fairy princess, which wasn’t much of a stretch for her — just her usual daily dress-up costume — but I didn’t argue.
Halloween is an adorably cute event in Ashfield with all the town children parading down Main street and collecting candy together at a dozen or so houses. I wrote about it last year and rereading it I was struck that Naomi was fearless and thrilled throughout the evening. This year both of them hardly let go of my hands. It might be an indicator that Naomi is less confident and more clingy than she used to be. Maybe it’s related to Laura’s death. Maybe she’s just older and more aware of her surroundings and of the possibility of getting separated and lost. Maybe she’s just becoming more like her older sister. I don’t know.
I do know that when it comes to Laura’s death that the difference between them is dramatic, but not unexpected given their ages and personalities. For example, several nights ago I pulled out a children’s book that Laura had bought last spring about death called “I Miss You.” Lily recognized it and hid it under the dining room table. When I later produced it again at bedtime Lily adamantly stated that she didn’t want to read it. I said that it was a book about death that we all might like to read because it might make us feel better about Mommy’s death. Lily said no, but Naomi eagerly said, “I want to read about death.” So the three of us read other books together and Naomi and I read “I Miss You” by ourselves. Surprisingly, the next night Lily mustered the courage to ask to read the book, too. As I read it again, Lily held me tight and cried, and then I cried. Then Naomi started to pretend to cry and pout, “I miss Mommy.” Lily screamed, “Naomi, you’re faking it!” and flailed her arms at her sister. “No I’m not,” she said almost mockingly.
Although Naomi’s emotional connection to Laura’s death does not appear to be very strong, she is clearly working to understand the facts seemingly beyond her age. Conventional wisdom says that three year olds cannot grasp the permanency of death, but neither girl has ever suggested that Laura would return. During the week after Laura’s death on our way home from preschool, Naomi said, “Daddy. I’m not going to die. And Lily isn’t going to die. And you’re not going to die.” We’re all safe, she assured herself. Last night, she suddenly asked me at dinner, “Daddy, Baba and Yaya aren’t dead, right?” She was making sure that death was not just someone being out of sight for a long time.
The day that Laura died I decided that we would all be away when the car came to take away her body on a stretcher in a bag. I had heard from others that it was a traumatic experience and I didn’t want the girls or me to have that imagery. So I timed the pickup so that the girls, Laura’s family and I would be taking a walk down the road. Before we left that morning the girls made goodbye cards and laid them on top of Laura. When we returned the girls ran upstairs to see that she was gone and they hugged me and cried.
Afterwards I wondered whether Naomi or Lily would ask when Mommy would return. They didn’t see her removed, so a young child would reasonably suppose that Laura had left on her own. But that never happened. Still, it might have been helpful to have had a private casket viewing later in the week. I had chosen not to because I thought the family had had enough time with Laura after she died and Laura had been adamantly against the expense involved in preparing the body for viewing. In fact, she had long wavered between cremation and burial not because of any particular interest in scattering or saving ashes, but because she thought it was unnecessary to give any attention to the physical body after death. That wasn’t what was important.
But it is important I’ve found from a child’s perspective in particular and more generally for everyone symbolically during the funeral as well. And so it was not surprising, but eloquent coming from a child, when Lily asked on the day of the funeral, “why is it made of wood?” The casket, that is. As I struggled to answer, she said, “I wish it was made of glass.”
It’s been almost a month now and the girls seem to well understand Laura’s death and they are as comfortable talking about her as I could hope. Lily doesn’t like to confront the pain directly with words, but what five year old would? And she is happy to recollect the past through pictures, books, and other things even if it makes her a little sad, so I feel relatively confident right now that the girls are coping well.
Yesterday morning we decorated Laura’s grave for Dia de los Muertos with flowers, Lily’s card, and another butterfly. We read some stories including “Caps For Sale” just because Laura liked to read it to them. We dawdled a while. And when we got home I found this month’s edition of the Ashfield News. An obituary notice that I wrote was in it that said:

Laura K. C. Kulp
1970 – 2008
Laura K. C. Kulp, 38, of Phillips Rd, Ashfield, died October 5, 2008 after a year long battle with cancer. She was born the second of five in a close-knit family on April 10, 1970 in Annandale, VA, where she was raised.
While attending the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA she met her husband, David Kulp. She graduated in 1992 with a B.A. in Linguistics and joined David in New Zealand to live and then travel through Australia and South East Asia. They returned to the states, married in 1994, and then settled briefly in Baltimore before moving to Santa Cruz, CA. She was occupied with libraries, pottery, photography, art, kitsch, and music among other pursuits while continuing to travel to such places as South America and East Asia. They later moved to the East San Francisco Bay area for several years where their first daughter, Lily, was born in 2003.
Shortly thereafter the family relocated to Northampton when her husband took a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She quickly developed close ties with many mothers in the area and gardening became a passion. Their second daughter, Naomi, was born in 2005.
In 2007 the family relocated to Ashfield where she hoped to turn her enthusiasm for flowers into an agricultural vocation. Instead, she was struck with advanced breast cancer and for 15 months careened towards death through tremendous ebbs and high tides as family and friends from town, the region, and afar held her close.
An utterly devoted and loving mother and wife, she leaves her two daughters and husband in Ashfield; her parents Joe and Natalie Coleman and her siblings Heather Arbeen, Elena Shacochis, PJ Coleman, and Justin Coleman, all of Virginia; and fond memories among many. She was buried in Plain Cemetery. The family requests that flowers be given to someone you love as a reminder of how precious and fleeting life can be.

But what really delighted me was a column written by the preschool director, Patricia Donohue:

From the end of the banquet table where a dozen children are eating lunch together, Benjamin shares a story about his dog finding a skull in the woods. “What is a skull?” Owen asks. “I can tell you, ” Naomi offers, “because I have one in the Days of my Dead book at my house.” Quite likely Naomi’s alteration of the name of this traditional Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead, is merely an innocent 3-year-old misremembering. But I also wonder if it might actually be a very decisive, precise choice of words. Naomi’s mother, Laura Kulp, died on October 5th at home, surrounded by her daughters Naomi and Lily, her husband David, her parents Natalie and Joe Coleman, and her brothers and sisters.
The news of Laura’s death leaves us all with the same heavy feeling of helplessness and grief for such an enormous loss. Repeatedly the same questions are asked, the same concerns expressed. We ponder the grief Laura must have felt knowing she wouldn’t get to watch her children grow into young women or to fulfill all the dreams she and David must have had when they moved into their beautiful Ashfield home only a year and a half ago. And most immediately, we ask each other, how do we best take care of Naomi and Lily right now?
David provides the best answer when he brings Naomi back to school. Following his lead, we ask other preschool parents not to offer the words of consolation that they would with another adult. Children at this age cannot grasp euphemisms like “passed away,” and death is something that only year after year will they come to understand more fully. But for right now, the best we can do is to try to make their worlds as secure and uncomplicated as we are able.
A week later at the Saturday Farmers Market, Naomi’s grandmother is wearing her Day of the Dead shirt and I tell her about Naomi saying she had a book about the holiday. Natalie describes the way she has for years decorated her porch and celebrated Dia de los Muertos with her children and grandchildren and how year after year, they anticipate the day she will unpack the box of plastics skulls and catrinas, the plastic skeleton figurines. Laura had bought books for her girls to begin sharing this part of her family heritage with them. I ask Natalie how we can bring some part of the holiday into the preschool.
The Day of the Dead celebrations can be traced back 3,000 years in the ancient cultures of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. It was believed that on this day it was easier for the souls of the departed to visit the living. Part of the tradition, then, is to cook the favorite foods of friends and relatives who have died, to construct an alter and set their photos on it. November 1st is known as Dia de los Inocentes, Day of the Innocents, and in most regions of Mexico, it is the day to honor children who have died. November 2nd is know as Dia de los Muertos.
Another tradition is to visit the cemeteries where loved ones rest and to bring a beloved food or flower. Since walking in the cemetery is a regular part of our week here at preschool, I think perhaps this would be a good year to begin our own tradition of taking a Day of the Dead walk there. I think about how the teachers here have already practiced this honoring of the dead for all of the years that I have worked here and for years before when my own children came here, how they have shared their own enjoyment of the beauty of this cemetery on Baptist Corner Road and their reverence for the meaning of such a place. I think once more about how lucky we are to live here and care for our children here.
Naomi examines the choice of colors of chalk and after some thought, she picks up the purple. On the huge slate board that hangs in the Great Room she draws a person who is wearing a long dress. She adds a crown and says the picture isn’t finished yet, because, oh yes, that’s it, she needs to put in the fireworks. It’s done now, she announces. This is my mommy in her wedding dress. She is wearing a crown. And there are fireworks all around.
Dear Laura, I hope that where you are right now, that you are being treated royally and that you are surrounded by the sort of brightness and wonder and magic that comes from fireworks.

I’ve receive some requests for the photos from the slideshow that was playing during the funeral reception. Besides a couple extras, most of the photos were either from a collection of my digital photos of Laura from 2000 to the present or from PJ’s scanned photos of Laura that are mostly from her early years. You can watch nice, large slideshows at both websites. Unfortunately, there’s a big gap of pictures and memories from the 90s.
While you’re watching you can listen to the music that I had playing with these photos at the reception by clicking the “play” triangle, below.

As a teaser, here are a few of the 566(!) photos.

The sun still sets in the west, it appears. In fact, these last few weeks are the spectacle that makes New England famous. The rose highlights on the clouds cast by the setting sun almost seem like a reflection of the maple trees and the burning bushes.
Over a year ago, as a housewarming present, Laura bought me a sculpture by Brian Andreas. It was a strange thing that sort of looked like a horse with 8 multi-colored legs and 2 heads with human-like faces. Hair of twisted copper wire flying back suggested movement. I hung it on the wall in our bedroom; you can see it in on the wall in the photo of the girls jumping on our beds. On it was printed, “feels like some kind of ride but it’s turning out just to be life going absolutely perfectly.” I finally took it down tonight.
I’ve wanted to get rid of it since last July, but it seemed disrespectful. The irony is more than just that Laura had cancer. It is that despite odd twists in our life together as we jumped around the country and the globe from one place or career to another, everything has always seemed to be just the right thing at the right time. There is almost nothing that I regret in the 19 years that we were together; one of the few exceptions, and I’m not trying to be sappy, is when I selfishly broke up with her for three months in the summer of 1991.
Moving to Ashfield seemed to be the last part of this perfect ride. At first Laura thought I was having a midlife crisis when I talked about moving to the country, learning to farm, selling what we grew at farmer’s markets. She was happy in our quaint yet cosmopolitan little town with her new friends and didn’t like the idea of being alone in the country. She imagined bears stealing our kids. Over time she realized that I really was having a midlife crisis, but that I was serious. And after a long while she became fully committed, partly because she started to think about what she wanted to do with her own life after the girls started school. Finally when we found our place in Ashfield it seemed that the stars had aligned and there was no doubting what we should do.
So in this spirit of enthusiasm for the next crazy move in our dog-legged course we began a new chapter in a new home christened with a new sculpture proclaiming that all is right in this mysterious world. And that was when Laura was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.
…
It has been almost two weeks since Laura died. There’s not much feeling since the funeral a week ago, which disappoints me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been taking the time to just sit and reflect, but instead I’ve been keeping myself busy with projects and kids. Maybe I’m just exhausted emotionally and relieved mentally and physically from the daily challenge of taking care of Laura, the girls, and keeping everything together and everyone informed. Whatever it is, there’s this strange, unexpected emptiness. I think I have more anxiety about my future right now than I have grief! I plan to look for a bereavement support group, if I can find one. I want to hear someone say, “Oh yeah, I remember that stage. And for me, a month later…” I also want to hear how other people dealt with all the stuff. I now have clothes, books, jewelry, letters, crafts, decorations, and so on that need to be sorted, saved, shared, donated, or thrown away. No rush, I say to myself. But I think about it frequently.
I’m not all composure. Today, when Janice left another comment on the Fade Away post, the faucet turned on again, at last. Everyone should read all those comments again to feel a tremendous breadth of emotions and know how deeply Laura touched so many people. And I’ll just add that when I look at that photo she says, “I love you,” so honestly. So sadly. I would reply, “I love you,” and she would quip, “I don’t know why,” in her self-deprecating way… I also see her wordlessly say that there is so much between us that can never be condensed into words, that things are the way they are — just so — because we literally grew up together, from 19 year old children to today, forever on a winding ride.
There’s something particularly moving about still pictures and sometimes songs that speak to us more poignantly than movies or memories alone. And there’s something deeply comforting in collectively responding to our shared grief. I found that to be so with this website as with a funeral. Indeed, it occurred to me last Saturday afternoon, as I looked across my front yard at hundreds of friends and family, that Laura’s funeral might not have been so big without this site. I know that sounds arrogant and disrespectful, but hear me out. I am not saying that it is my writing, instead of Laura, that brought people together. I am saying that this site allowed many more people to follow Laura’s suffering and death much more intimately than would normally be the case, and I suspect that created a sympathy that called us all to come together.
Whatever the reason (and I apologize if my argument was rude) last Saturday was a beautiful, great day and I believe part of its greatness was the presence of so many people from so many parts of our lives. At least for me there’s nothing that could more concretely convey how great a woman Laura was, for one is not great by personal success, but by the love that is returned in multitudes that was once given away.

A couple odds and ends:
If you have any digital photos of Laura that you’d like to share, please email them to me ASAP and I’ll include them in a slideshow at the reception. Old photos are welcome, too, if you happen to have scanned them.
There will be a musical program at the funeral preceding the service beginning at about 10 am while people arrive.
I’m looking for a volunteer that is willing to run my video recorder. I’m also looking for someone who can take some stills at the reception. Please email me if you are interested in either of these.
Don’t forget to add your vignettes or facts to the tribute page. I would appreciate if someone could try to incorporate some of the posts in the “threads” section into the main document.
Thanks.

Yesterday it occurred to me that all of you out in the ether might enjoy contributing to a jointly written tribute to Laura. I’m not up to the whole task right now, but now is probably the best time to capitalize on everyone’s interest and attention.
So, I created a page on a website that allows anyone to edit. No need to sign up or anything. Just click and type. It’s a similar idea to Wikipedia, but it more generally allows people to create sites about absolutely anything. In our case, our page is at http://laurakulp.wetpaint.com/. (Is it me or does wetpaint.com sound slightly lewd? Not my doing, so ignore the name, OK?, and just contribute!)
There have been many brief comments here from people recalling memories of Laura. I think it could be very moving to see all that unified into a single tribute. Thanks!