Tears - Rain - A flood

I forgot to mention one other thing about Jenn. The medical examiner found a pulmonary embolism as well. It was not infarcted, which I guess means that it had not caused an artery in her lung to burst. Still - her girlfriend who found her said that there was blood in her lungs. As with a lot of things about Jenn and her death, it's unclear.

Still though, I can't imagine something like a pulmonary embolism not hurting tremendously. Add the pain of a degenerative back condition where your disks are crumbling to that and the confusion that a drug like Amantadine brings on and it starts to make sense why she might have reached for the painkillers.

Last Weds. we headed up to Poughkeepsie for the ceremony for Jenn. My step-sister, parents and a few friends of the family were there and I started to weep as I got out of the car and walked toward her headstone. Seeing her name there on the black granitewas a bit surreal and for a second I was taken back to October 18th, 2004 when we buried her. I'd been there before, but not with family and not with family gathering around the same way they had those months ago.

Father Rock, a Fransiscan priest who's a good friend to the family came to say some kind words about Jenn and to lead us through a few prayers. As he went along, it started to rain and he said it was a blessing. Maybe it was. The strange opening in the clouds right above us sure seemed to indicate it. Above us and a bit to the east was a bright blue eye with light streaming out of it that disappeared when Father Rock finished up.

After the ceremony we went to St. Andrew's Cafe at the CIA and had a bite to eat at the place Jenn loved most. It drizzled a bit, but nothing too bad.

Down in Westchester it was a different story...

It rained a bit up in Dutchess, but it POURED around Westchester. I think five inches of rain fell in just a few hours. The SawMill River flooded and roads got shut down everywhere. Anywhere there was a road with River in the name, there was a flood. That means the Sawmill River Parkway, The Hutchinson River Parkway and the Bronx River Parkway. To get home we had to drive through a section of the Saw Mill Parkway where the water was as high as the doors of our Santa Fe. We saw some other trucks blasting through -- so we did too. But just for one moment there I thought we lost traction and were actually floating. Drifting down into a swollen SawMill River would have turned a bittersweet / downer of a day into a Mongolian Clusterfuck of a day. As Clarisa might tell you a Mongolian clusterfuck is just like a regular clusterfuck except that it's a clusterfuck without hope.Yet here we are. Mongolian clusterfuck avoided. Score one for us.