Well, I can't figure out how to edit these blog entries once I post them, and Azimat tells me that my word "sautered" from yesterday's blog is really "soldered." Go figure. Yeeks, do I hate mistakes. I questioned her, thinking maybe there are alternative spellings of that word, and she told me she was a spelling champ in high school. Azimat (aka Lane) was the editor for the book, so who am I to question her? Except she says don't send this until she double checks it. How very like her, and I'm ignoring her advice--how very like me.

Meanwhile, here's clear evidence for me of how lack of presence, of staying awake, can leave me stranded on shore rather than flowing with the current: Today, I received email message from Ada in Ketchum that I left not only my yoga mat, but my address book at her house! I knew about the yoga mat, and had already gifted it to her in my mind and bought another one at Target. But the address book??!?!

I have some of the contact info I need stored in the computer and iphone (which is working now. . .) but not all of it, as I didn't quite finish that task before I left Bloomington on July 25. And, of course, the next address I need, for Rita in Bend Oregon with me due there tomorrow afternoon and a book event tomorrow night, I do not have stored anywhere but that address book.

Quick flurry of calls to various people, none of which produced what I needed. Then, amazingly enough, I did find Rita's phone numbers on an old email (actually, this is not amazing at all; what's amazing is that I didn't think of it to begin with!). Called her, and she didn't answer. Left message. Someone else there called back immediately, and gave me the address, yelling back and forth over loud rock music in this internet cafe. Then my computer refused to go on the internet at this cafe—and of course Azimat and I had just paid for our chai muffin and tea! So couldn't google the address. But the internet did work for Azimat's Macbook, across the table from me, so she googled it, and I sat down in her chair and laboriously wrote down directions (in absence of a printer). Such is life on the road for she who falls into a trance and forgets where she is, what she has, what she's doing, whatever! Reminds me of my old friend Chuck's mantra for me, "A good gypsy leaves no traces." . . .

Last night's event felt wonderfully warm and present. About 18 people there, apparently more than usually attend events at this wonderful new age center in the middle of Boise. There were a number of people in active pain present, especially a widow of about my age whose husband of 47 years died only 11 months ago, and who has not been able to utter the words "my husband died" on the phone to insurance people and others with whom she must deal. I had asked her if she noticed a different response from people on the phone when she uttered those words, and that's when she muttered that she does not say those words.

This was the first time I had heard someone in active grief say this, and of course it immediately magnetized a sympathetic response from the whole group, which was, up to that point, enjoying a spot of tea around a large table before retiring to what I had jokingly referred to as "the other side" (of the room) for the reading/discussion event within a circle of chairs and couches.

So often I and others discover how individuated our various responses to grief are. Over and over again I am humbled to realize that, despite going through my declared year of "conscious grieving," I truly know very little about the range of responses evoked in humans to the death of a loved one.

The atmosphere of this evening felt slow and stately and very respectful. Many incredible, miraculous, evocative stories, as usual, and what stands out for me from this night is the beautiful young woman who worked as a nurse's aide at a nursing home and actually functioned as a senstive and very observant angel in the dying moments of her patients' deaths. Over and over again she would discover an intuitive way to help that particular person make his or her transition. An example here: the man who was afraid, deathly afraid of what he was experiencing as the horrible dark (his way of symbolically depicting death), and she swiftly grabbed the bedside lamp and shined it directly on onto his face to comfort him.