We feast - the spatula, the leap, the dinosaur, a rolling baby, a short, dreamy, nap...

When Margie and I entered Jacob and Lavina's house for Thanksgiving dinner, we found Kalib with a spatula. The word is that he keeps this spatula with him almost all the time now. It has become his favorite toy.

After he climbed onto the arm of the couch, Kalib wanted to be certain that I was watching him.

When he knew for certain that he had my attention, Kalib leaped. Afterwards, he came running to me so that he could look at this picture on my camera's LCD monitor. It was the first time that he had done that.

I don't think it will be the last.

Jobe was there, too. Still in his mother's arms. As you can see, he has great admiration for his grandpa.

Jobe and Muzzy.

As I had never seen Kalib in the dinosaur outfit that he wore on Halloween, he modeled it just for me: Kalibsaurus.

Kalibsaurus runs into the kitchen, ready to devour all that he sees.

Suji - this one's for you.

Jobe, looking for his Aunt Suji, who is 9000 miles away.

Jobe has turned into a rolling baby. Instead of learning to crawl, he is learning to roll. I had to put my foot on him, just to keep him from rolling out of the house and all the way off to India to look for his Aunt Suji.

Gramma and Jobe.

The Ckaleibs.

Jake let's Bryce sample the turkey.

There were two tables - a higher one with stools and a lower one with chairs. It was too hard for Margie to sit on the stools, so she sat at the shorter table. I joined her there.

This is what it looked like, when I stood up and peeked over the top of the crowd. The fellow to the left is Carl, a friend of Rex's and that's Charlie's parents, Jim and Cyndy, next to him.

At first, I was a little disappointed that dinner was going to be at Jacob and Lavina's instead of our house. They planned it this way because I had intended to stay on the Slope for Thanksgiving, but after the tragedy I wanted only to come home.

As it turned out it was, perhaps, the most excellent Thanksgiving dinner that I have ever eaten - much better than Margie and I would have done. This because Jacob and Lavina are on their way to becoming master chefs. They love to watch shows like Iron Chef and other cooking extravaganzas, none of which interest me much.

But my goodness, what they have learned!

Who would have ever thought that you could cook cherries into dressing and come up with something so wonderful?

And it is not just what they see others do on the shows, but the creative thought process that it has helped to create in them. Before they began to prepare this meal, Jacob read up on the original Thanksgiving, when the Pilgrims got together with the indigenous people who had saved their lives and they feasted as friends.

He read that they ate squash, cooked with nuts and berries. So he cooked squash with walnuts, almonds and berries... and... oh my... just ask Lisa... who is still raving over it...

Delicious beyond delicious!

Scrumptious. Exquisite. Tantalizing!

The turkeys were pretty darn good, too...

...as was the company.

We are very fortunate in this family in that we, including those who have joined in to become part of us, all enjoy being together.

I was thinking about various Thanksgiving and holiday TV dramas and sitcoms where people come in and engage in verbal combat and unpleasantness before coming to or failing to reach whatever resolutions are necessary, but it is not that way here.

We all live tumultuous lives in our own ways, but we like to be together.

We are not only family, we are all friends.

Even so, to be quite honest, I sometimes had problems staying with all the conversations throughout, because my mind and spirit was burdened with a huge hurt. After we ate, several of us went into the living room to converse, but my body felt so tired and weary and my eyelids grew so heavy that I could not keep them open.

So I closed them, and reclined on the reclining chair, picking up snippets of the conversation until it morphed into dream bits in my mind and then became a dream.

I have no idea how long I stayed this way, but at some point I dimly heard Charlie's dad speaking of an airplane, maybe a Super Cub, flying at 30 mph and landing on a dime. And then I was in my now broken airplane, the Running Dog, and I was sliding between the tops of spruce trees along the Yukon River toward a frozen slough, covered in untouched, pristine, snow... slipping ever so slowly downward, my power pulled back to the minimum, my prop spinning slowly, my skis soon to slide into the snow.

I could feel the air as my wings slipped through it at minimum speed.

And sitting in the back seat was Soundarya, seeing all this frozen, wintry, magic of Alaska for the first time.

This jolted me to full awake.

I opened my eyes and the above is what I saw.

Elsewhere, I found that the turkey had overcome Rex, who would be leaving for San Francisco to join Ama in just a few hours.

Now, he is with her and her family at Lake Tahoe, where I suspect the snow is probably 10 feet deep - maybe deeper.

Back in the dining room, I found people going at round two - desert. Pumpkin pie and cookies and a superb blueberry crunch that Cyndy had made. Little Jobe was pigging out on some fruit-flavored, dehydrated treats made just for babies.

They are quite tasty. So I had one. Maybe I had two. Perhaps three... it's possible that I even ate four, but I certainly didn't eat the whole thing and I never have.

This is a story that Jacob is spreading and it is simply not true.

If you hear Jacob say it. Don't believe it.

Perhaps I ate five, but certainly no more than that.

The evening ended with Kalib chasing Melanie around the little tent. Or maybe Melanie was chasing Kalib. I was never quite certain who was chasing who.

I was glad they were not tigers, though. If they had been tigers, they would have chased each other until they got hold of each other's tails and then they would both have turned into butter.

That's what tigers do.

About 9:00 PM, Margie and I set out for Wasilla.

The roads were icy and slick. Off to the sides, I could see many dark forms of vehicles that had slid off the road. This one, however, still had its lights on.

At one point, up ahead, across the divide in the oncoming lanes, I barely managed to pick out the outline of a trotting moose silhouetted in the brief flash of a headlight and I could see that we were on a collision course.

Even with the new anti-lock breaks, braking on slick ice is a very tricky thing, so I began to hit the breaks in firm but gentle pumps, always letting go just when it felt like the car was going to go into a spin. I stopped, just in time, as the moose passed through my headlights.

I think of that moose and how it looked in our headlights at the last instant, its eyes big and fearful and I wish that I had got a picture of it. There are times that one must keep both hands on the steering wheel and this was one of those times.

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A snowball for Soundarya; Margie and I drive off to Anchorage and stop at Metro Cafe; a feeling of peace and serenity; raven stories

Margie started the car with the remote at about 1:00 PM. Maybe five minutes later, I went out to clean the snow off of it as she gathered up the things that we would need to take to the Thanksgiving feast. I scraped the snow off the windshield with my hand. Our snow here, at least in the past, is most often cold, dry and powdery, but this snow was warm and wet, so I packed it into a snowball.

I was trying to decide what to do with the snowball when suddenly I thought about an email that Sandy sent to me just over two weeks ago. She had dreamed that she had been sitting in the living room of our house here in Wasilla with Margie, Kalib and me drinking coffee and then she and I had decided to go on a bike ride.

It was snowing, and she was exhilarated, because snow was new to her. She was enthralled by the view of the mountains around her. We pedaled for awhile and then stopped, so she could play in the snow for the first time in her life. "I behaved like a five-year old," she wrote. She dreamed she made a snowball, smashed it on me and then we got into a snowball fight. 

The dream ended when the sound of Anil's snoring awakened her and she found herself not in Alaska, but back in India.

So, Soundarya, this snowball is for you.

Margie came out, carrying the dough that still needed to spend time in a warm place and to rise before she could bake it into rolls.

She looked so pretty to me, standing in the weak light of a dim winter afternoon, the headlights of the car striking her knees.

I thought about throwing Sandy's snowball at her, but I knew that she would not appreciate getting struck by something cold, wet and hard when she was carrying bread dough. I tossed the snowball into the yard, to join the other snowflakes that were piling up there.

Metro Cafe was closed, but Carmen was having a family and friends Thanksgiving get-together there and had asked me to swing by with Margie on our way to Anchorage.

We swung by. Scott was in the driveway, so we stopped and said "hi" to him first.

Then we pulled up to the window, where Carmen gave us each a coffee and a biscotti and wished us a happy Thanksgiving. Then she was joined by her sister, Teresa, Carmen's son Branson and Teresa's son Evan and together they posed for:

Through the Metro Window, study 242,996.88: Thanksgiving Day, 2010

After we shared our few minutes of smiles and laughter, they returned to their gathering and we drove away. As has been the case for every conscious moment since I learned the news, Soundarya's image was in my mind and grief in my heart.

I felt determined to move forward and to have a wonderful holiday with my family, yet I still felt absolutely, hopelessly, bitterly, crushed. There would be no snowball fight - never. Sandy would never sit in our living room and drink coffee with Margie and me while Kalib performed his antics. We would share no bike rides. She would not look upon Alaska's mountains.

The business of her heart and dreams that she had been laboring to launch in Bangalore would never blossom to fruition.

As we drove through the snow on towards Anchorage, I felt a completely unexpected feeling of peace come upon me. In many ways, I did not want to feel it, because it did not seem right, given that Sandy's many and passionate dreams had all been taken from her, but that feeling of peace was there and it just kept growing stronger.

It felt to me like Sandy was there, right there, in the car with us, here in Alaska, and that this feeling of serenity was coming directly to me from her.

As I have said many times, notwithstanding my religious upbringing, the preaching and testifying that I myself have done in the past and the fact that I constantly intermingle with people of faith, many faiths, so many of them firm and sincere believers striving to make their way through this hard life into the sweet beyond, I know nothing of God or of the hereafter. It is all a mystery to me and will be for as long as I reside on mortal earth.

Yet that's how it felt to me - that this feeling of peace and comfort was coming to me directly from her - that she was there, in a form that I could feel but not see.

She was giving me the feeling that somehow, in the eternal ethereal, it is all okay.

We drove on. Here and there, drivers had slipped on the ice and left the road, this one to tip over.

This one just got stuck.

They have ravens in India too, but they are different than ours - smaller, and while the black of our ravens tends to also reflect a slight, iridescent blue hue, in southern India that reflection seems to lean more toward a burgundy-brown. Sandy loved ravens. Before she got together with Anil, she once brought an injured one into her apartment to care for it. 

When her landlord discovered what she had done, he was outraged, as it is believed by many in India that a raven in the house will bring many years of bad luck and ordered her to get the raven out. She didn't care. She had compassion for the raven and was willing to be booted out of her apartment, if that's what it took to help it.

Later, she found another injured raven when she was out with Anil during their time of engagement. She cradled the raven in her arms and took a seat on the back of her motor bike, behind Anil. As he drove in search of a vet, she sang to the raven.

"What song did you sing to it?" I asked, via internet chat.

I expected her to name a Hindu song, or perhaps an Indian lullaby - something that I would not even know.

"Safe in the Arms of Jesus," she answered.

They found a vet, but the vet wanted nothing to do with the raven. He scolded her for bringing it to him. She scolded him right back with such intimidating force that he relented and treated the raven.

The raven healed, and when it came time to let it loose, a crowd gathered. The raven looked around, flapped its wings and rose above the packed streets of Bangalore. The crowd applauded.

Such was Soundarya!

Well.

I said that I would not let this blog dwell upon the memory of Soundarya, but would move on, just as life always moves on. 

I meant it, too.

But this blog will never forget her, either.

As we drew near to Jacob and Lavina's house in Anchorage, we passed this guy, blowing the snow out of his driveway.

Then we were there - and there was Lavina and Jobe, in the window above, waiting for us to come in and join them - to join the entire family in Alaska, Charlie and his parents included, for Thanksgiving dinner.

That dinner will be the subject of my next post.

Maybe I will get it up today. Maybe not until tomorrow. 

It will be history by then, but so what?

Each action that we take becomes history at the very moment we become aware of having taken it.

I kind of feel like I have blogged enough for today.

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Transitions - Barrow to Wasilla: iPhone communications to the living and from the dead - I have opened comments on the previous post*

My flight on Alaska Airlines was scheduled to leave Barrow at 8:20 PM, but it was running about one hour late. So I took a seat and pulled out my iPhone to occupy myself. Soon, Hazel Pebbly and her granddaughter, Makayla, whose Iñupiaq name is Pamilaq, sat down across from me and pulled out their own phones while the fellow at left played on his iPad and the woman at right worked on her laptop.

I am not certain, but it sounded to me like Makayla was talking to a young sibling - a brother, I think. It might have been a cousin.

"I love you," she said. "Now you say it..."

There was a pause. 

"Say, 'I...'" she continued...

"Now say, 'love...'

"Good! Now say, 'you!...

"I... love... you!... I love you!"

Sometime after Jacob and Lavina gave me my iPhone, I began to use it to send email messages to Sandy from different airports whenever I would go traveling.

Just before I had left Anchorage to come to Barrow on this trip, I sent this message from Gate C 4:

Hi Sandy,

Here I am, sitting at gate 4, Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, about to board the jet to Barrow. I have been insanely busy, yet I did not even come close to getting everything done that I needed to.

Oh well. It will all come together - it always does. I hope you get a chance to read my blog today - the one about the movie set.

Got to go. It's cold and windy. It will be colder in Barrow.

Love,
Bill

Sent from my iPhone

I felt extremely exhausted that day and a very strange thing happened after I boarded the plane. It was a cold day and the wind was howling. I was so unfortunate as to get a middle seat, squished between two big guys, so I sank myself as deeply into my seatback as I could, folded my arms over my chest and closed my eyes.

After awhile, I heard the engines rev up a bit and felt the plane begin to taxi. I kept my eyes closed. I felt the motions of the plane as it rolled down the taxi-way and made its turns, then heard the engines thrust to full power. I felt the g's as the jet accelerated down the runway. Still, I kept my eyes closed. My eyelids were so heavy I had no other choice. Then I felt the airplane rise into the air. Very soon, it slammed into rough turbulence, created by the wind as it tumbled over the mountains.

Turbulence is nothing new to me. I kept my eyes closed as the plane climbed through, buffeted and jolted until finally it rose above the turbulence. The flight smoothed out and the roar of the engines settled into pleasant background drone.

After we had been flying for what seemed to be half an hour or so, I suddenly heard a new sound come from the engines - that kind of minor acceleration that a pilot will use to shift directions or change speed while rolling on the ground.

Startled, I opened my eyes and saw that we were rolling on pavement. I could not believe it. How could we have landed without me feeling the jolt? I looked beyond the runway into the dim winter light, expecting to see the hills and vegetation of Fairbanks, but instead saw those that border the Anchorage airport.

I had dreamed the whole thing.

Now, the plane really did pull onto the runway. The engines accelerated, I felt the g's, the plane lifted off, then flew into a blast of turbulence and began to climb through it - exactly as I had experienced in the dream.

After we landed in Fairbanks, I sat in my seat doing nothing as departing passengers left the plane and others boarded. After awhile, I decided to tell Sandy of the experience, so I pulled out my iPhone, opened an email to her and wrote this:

Hello again...

Now I am sitting inside the jet as it waits outside the Fairbanks terminal for the new passengers who will fly on to Barrow with us.

It looks pretty cold out there.

I had a pretty strange experience after I boarded in Anchorage, I was clamped into the middle seat between two big guys, I just sunk as far back into seat cushion as I could and ... Oo got to power down

 
Sent from my iPhone

I did not get to finish, because the Stewardess had given the order to shut down all electronic devices.

The next evening in Barrow, I received this email back from Soundarya:

Hi Bill,

My laptop crashed again & I wondered how long I had to wait to read your mails...I'm glad I could!

Guess you had a squeezy journey?

You are quiet busy! Takecare...don't push yourself to the extreme.

Gotto rush now. Sorry for such a short mail. Will mail you later....

Love & Stress-Free hugs!

Sandy

These were the last words that she will ever write to me. Perhaps what I wrote above was the last of my words that she ever read. I did send her three emails in the short span between Anil's death and hers, but I do not know if she ever received or read them. I suspect that she didn't.

After I stood up and got into the security line, I heard someone call out my name. I turned and saw a woman looking at me and waved shyly, because I was not quite certain who she was. Then I heard the same voice as before call out my name again and say, "over here!"

I had been looking at the wrong person. It was my friend, Misty Nayakik from Wainwright who had called my name. She was with her young son, Caleb. She had just come in on the jet from Anchorage with her special man, Kennedy Ahmaogak, who was elsewhere in the terminal waiting for their bags to arrive.

He has been receiving treatment for cancer in Anchorage. Happily, that treatment has gone well and Kennedy is doing well now.

Finally, we boarded and then the jet was climbing into the darkness above the Arctic Slope.

Jeffrey Maupin, an entrepreneur, was sitting in the "C" seat across the aisle from me. I had been assigned to seat "D," but "E" and "F" were empty, so I scooted over to sit by the window. Not because I wanted to see what was outside - only blackness could be seen out there - but so I could lay my head against the wall and doze.

I did, too, and every now and then I would slip off briefly, only to find that my dreamy state was every bit as dark as the blackness pressing in at the window.

Jeffrey told me that every time he sees me, he thinks about his college days. I told him that I everytime I see him, I think about his college days, too.

I was working for the Tundra Times then and I did an article on Alaska Native college students. I interviewed Jeffrey in a place where Native students gather but that interview was continually interrupted by female students who saw Jeffrey and swung over to say "hi," to get his attention and even to flirt a bit.

They all seemed to be quite interested in him.

I reminded him of that.

"Could you tell me where those ladies are now?" he joked.

Once, many years ago, I was walking down the street in Barrow when Jeffrey stopped and offered me a ride.

I wasn't really going anywhere and neither was he. We were both just wandering about, to see what we could see.

The Running Dog was in top flying condition then, so I told Jeffrey to take me to the airport. I jumped into the front seat and took the stick. He jumped into the back. Then I took him flying, weaving about over various of the myriad million lakes of the Arctic Slope until we found ourselves near Atqasuk. I then brought him back to Barrow.

"Wow!" he said. "I was born and raised here but I never saw the country like that before."

That was then.

"Do you still have your airplane?" he asked, from the seat across the aisle.

"Yes," I said, "but it's wrecked. It doesn't fly anymore."

This is now.

In front of me sat someone with nicely coiffed hair.

When we began to draw near to Fairbanks, the pilot turned on the landing lights. The glow reflected off the leading edge of the wing and the tiny little stabilizers that run most of its length.

Then we were on the tarmac in Fairbanks and it was a shocking sight. Rain was falling, splattering against the window and pooling in slushy puddles outside. It used to be that even when the warmest Pineapple Express would blow in off the Pacific to turn winter-time Anchorage and Wasilla into a slushy mess, Fairbanks could be counted on to remain well below freezing, if not below zero. The snow there would stay good and dry.

Long-range forecasters predicted that this would be a cold winter, but so far it seems to have been warm - the warmest yet. In the past, when I would go to Barrow this time of year, the temperature would usually stay below zero the whole time that I was there. This time, it never went below zero and it got as warm as +32.

And Fairbanks! Look! The temperature in Fairbanks was about +40. Forty below would not have surprised me, but +40?

My niece Shaela had called from L.A. before I left Barrow. She said it was about 40 there.

Before we left Fairbanks, the plane filled completely up, they closed the doors and then the mysterious and enchanting stewardess delivered the preflight briefing. Her gaze seemed to reach somewhere way out beyond the fuselage walls.

I wondered what she could see that was invisible to the rest of us?

Lighted signs pointed the way as the pilot taxied toward the runway.

Then the plane was airborne and we were rising over Fairbanks International Airport.

A week or two ago, Sandy sent me an email to tell me that she had taken up the study of Spanish. She asked what language I would most like to learn. Iñupiaq, I answered, followed closely by Apache so that I could speak to Margie in her own tongue. Next would be Tamil, so that I could talk to Soundarya in her native language.

After the jet landed in Anchorage, I called Melanie's phone and Charlie answered. He said he would tell Melanie and she would leave for the airport right away. When I stepped into the terminal, I found that I had entered at Cate C-9, the one farthest from baggage claim. That was okay. I needed the walk.

The last place that I ever saw Soundarya was at the Bangalore Airport. Murthy had hired a big, van-like taxi-cab operated by a trusted driver and much of the family had come along to say goodbye to Melanie and me. Anil and Buddy traveled on Anil's motor scooter, sometimes zipping ahead of us, sometimes falling behind, sometimes right alongside. I sat in the passenger seat so that I could take photos. Sandy sat behind me and leaned forward so that her head rested on my seatback and from where she could lay her hand upon my shoulder. When my camera would go down, she would clasp my hand.

Sometimes, she would lean her head against my shoulder.

After we arrived at the airport and left the taxi, she again took my hand in hers. It was a complicated process just to approach the airport terminal and only ticketed passengers were allowed to enter. Melanie got through the outside confusion before I did and entered the terminal ahead of me. This worried me a bit, because I did not want to lose sight of her.

Sandy kept hold of my hand as I worked my way through the bureaurocracy and then walked to the terminal door, where a guard stood to see that only those with tickets entered.

I showed him my ticket and my passport. He motioned me to enter. Still, Sandy held firmly and warmly onto my hand, but remained outside as I passed through the doorway. Our arms began to stretch. "Look!" Sandy's mom, Banu, said. "She is going to the US with him!" The family laughed. Then the stretch grew too great. Her hand slipped away, her fingertips brushing mine as it did.

I turned, looked at the faces of all the family behind, then into her eyes, filled now with a painful mix of joy and sorrow, moistened by tears. I walked on. Sandy disappeared from sight. I searched the crowd for Melanie and found her - although she would fly out on a different airplane.

Melanie arrived at the baggage area before I did, but thanks to the heavy traffic had to park a good hike away.

As I hiked toward her, I came upon little Iqilan, held in her aaka's arms..

I am not certain that I have spelled her name correctly. If I haven't, her Aapa Charlie is invited to correct me.

I had always believed that one day Sandy and Anil would get off the plane in Anchorage so that I could finally give that tour of Alaska that we so often talked about. I would have Woody Guthrie plugged into the car's stereo system through the iPhone and the first thing she would hear would be him singing, "This land is my land, this land is your land..."

Then I would drive through Anchorage and would show the sights. Yes, even this diner. I have never eaten here, because some of my children have and they were not impressed. If she wanted to, it would be okay, but I doubt this diner has much of a vegetarian menu.

Margie and I went to this new movie theatre complex for the first time about two weeks ago. Afterward, I wrote an email to Sandy and told her about the movie and that if she got a chance to see it, she should watch for a certain kind of black taxi-cab that we had talked about before, a kind that I have seen only in London.

She answered that it would take the movie at least 45 days to reach India, but when it did she would go and she would watch for that taxi-cab.

The movie? Clint Eastwood's Hereafter. It begins with what can only be the tsunami that struck southern Asia in December, 2004 and that killed over a quarter million people, including many in India. Matt Damon stars in the movie as a psychic with the ability to help the troubled living connect with their dead loved ones and then bring them comfort.

Despite the late hour and the fact that she would only have to turn around and drive back to Anchorage, Melanie drove me home. I don't remember precisely when we arrived, but I believe it was after 2:00 AM. I was very glad that it was Melanie who picked me up.

We both needed to spend some time alone together. It wasn't enough time, but it was good time.

As you can see, the warm weather that has gripped all of Alaska was here, too. I have not seen any forecasts, but Melanie tells me that it is supposed to get cold in a day or two. Below zero.

I hope so. It bothers me when the climatic world gets so off-kilter as it has been lately.

We passed by Eagle River, but did not stop to eat.

And then we continued on to Wasilla. Maybe because I was so tired, I forgot to take any pictures after we arrived. I will take plenty of pictures at our Thanksgiving feast. It will be at Jacob and Lavina's this year.

*Although I had disabled the comments on the previous post, a few readers left comments elsewhere and made it clear to me that I had been unfair to readers who themselves mourn this loss.

I know it is too late to accommodate most of those who would have left comments, but I have gone ahead and enabled comments for that post.

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Soundarya Anil Kumar - "Sandy": April 13, 1979 - November 22, 2010

Upon the death of my soul friend and muse, Soundarya, I am left to bear the unbearable grief and to ponder the meanings of love, in all its variations, in the many different ways that it comes to us.

There is love of blood and kin, love that we are born into and that descends from us – the love that we feel for our parents, our brothers and sisters, our grandparents, our cousins, followed later by that powerful love which we feel for our children and grandchildren – so strong; the love we feel for our nieces and nephews.

There is the love of romance that we strive for, seek out and when lucky find sublime, other times foolish, and sometimes only deep and bitter heartache.

There is the love that we share with friends – sometimes we slip easily into it, sometimes, we meet and do battle first and in our combat discover respect that leads to friendship. There is the love that we earn with each other by working hard together, sometimes enduring hardship as we do.

There is another kind of love that if a person is lucky, might happen half-a-dozen times in one life. It is that love that you recognize at the very moment you meet a person. I use the word, “recognize” because when you meet that person both you and she feel that you have always known each other, that you have been bound together at the level of the soul for your entire existence.

This can be the love of deep friendship, or of romance, or both.

This is how it was when I met my friend, the late Vincent Craig, whose funeral I took readers to in May. It is how it was with Margie – in fact, this recognition came to me weeks before I met her, when I first heard her name spoken. I loved her the instant her name struck my ears. Before I ever laid eyes upon her or even saw her picture, I wanted to marry her, to make babies with her and to spend my life with her.

I first met Soundarya in August of 2007 at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to Sandy’s cousin, Vivek. At the moment I looked at her I felt a warm feeling of closeness, as though I had always known her, that she had been my friend for all of my life and would always be. I did not ask for this friendship, I did not seek it out. It was just there. I would never have mentioned or even hinted at this to her or to anyone else, but after the wedding feast she asked me if I would walk with her.

As we walked, a bird landed high in a tree above us and Sandy delighted in that bird. She saw baby monkeys, leaping across roofs and jumping onto window sills and was again delighted. When she spotted a kitten in a yard, she squealed with pleasure and made the woman who owned the kitten hand it over her fence so that she could hold it for a time. 

And there has not been a day since when I have not felt the bond that was just naturally there between us.

I feel it now, even though she is gone, but now it manifests itself in the midst of a huge new hole torn into my heart. I will carry this hole for the remainder of my life, for it can never be filled. There are many other holes there.

The number just keeps growing.

I call her "Muse" because when I returned to Alaska following my first trip to India, I began to think about my photographs differently. I had always tried my hardest to make my photographs good, even though most of the time when I shoot I feel that I am creating nothing but junk, yet I never let this feeling stop me but I always work to create a decent picture that might speak to a large audience.

After I met Soundarya, I began to shoot my pictures for an audience of one. My photography became an effort to interpret my world in Alaska to a young woman who had spent her entire life in the equatorial tropics of Southern India. I felt that if I could successfully interpret my world for her, then perhaps I could interpret it for anyone.

Before I went to bed last night, I tried to call her three times to see if I might somehow lend her comfort after the tragic death of her husband, but I failed to reach her. Why didn't I call her ten times, 20? Why did I use Skype?

So I sent her an email, told her about the Iñupiat song, "praying for you," and since I am not much good at praying myself, went to bed with that song in my head, my brain struggling to project the words and message from Arctic Alaska to a grief-stricken soul in tropical India.

This morning, I tried to call her again at her brother's number, but the phone system refused to recognize that number.

Then, at lunch time, I set out to walk from the North Slope Borough to Osaka Restaurant, and was amazed to see this beautiful moon hanging over the ice of the Arctic Ocean, but in my stress, grief and worry, I had forgotten my camera.

I went back and got it, and shot this picture - as an interpretation of my world in Alaska for my grieving muse, Soundarya, in India.

It was very near to this same time, perhaps during this very time, that she decided this world had become too painful to bear, that she was going to join her husband.

So that is what she did.

It is a decision that I strongly disagree with, but there is nothing that I can do about it. I want to, I keep thinking there must be some way I can, but I can't.

After I got the call, I spent some time just walking, trying to stay away from the roads, because I did not want anybody to stop and pick me up. I bought a coffee from Thelma at Aarigaa. It was hot when I began to drink it, but soon turned cold.

I just walked and walked. Sometimes I shouted. Sometimes I screamed. 

At one point, I noticed this other person walking. 

Right now, I want to do but one thing - to go home, to hug my children and grandchildren, to tell them how much I love them, to scritch the cats behind their ears. I want to hold my wife close to my heart, for a very, very, very, long time.

Thanksgiving in Barrow is a unique and beautiful thing and I had planned to stay through, to cover it, blog it, and then after I returned to Wasilla to have a late Thanksgiving dinner and late birthday party for Lisa, my youngest, who just turned 25. Now, I just want to go home to be with my family, so I guess that is what I will do.

As for my soul friend Soundarya, I want to reach backward in time, to call 20 times, 30 times, 40 times... to reach through our cell phones, wrap my arms around her and say, "Hang on! Hang on! You can get through this. You will always feel the pain but still you can get through it and you will laugh, you will smile, you may not believe it but another young man will come along for you and you will love and be loved and will live a life that is good and fulfilling."

I can't do that. She is gone. That is that.

So I will go on and I will laugh and I will smile and I will love and be loved and will live a life that is good and fulfilling, but not a day will pass that I do not feel this horrible loss that I suffered today. This blog will not dwell upon this loss or upon my lost Soundarya, but will move on, as life always moves on.

And Sujitha - Ganesh - you must get through this, too. You must! You must! And your beautiful parents! Vivek, Khena, Vijay, Vidya, Kavitha... Murthy, Vasanthi... on and on this list can go... Barathi, Brindha... on and on

Please note: I have disabled comments for this post*. I know I have many readers with big hearts who will wish to offer words of comfort and condolence and I appreciate that, but I do not wish to read any words of consolation. And if you wonder how I could write this in this situation - this is how I deal with grief. I write. And I take pictures. This is how I get through it.

It is now nearing 3:00 am. I must go to bed. How do I do that?

Thank God that I am not in a hotel but am with the Ahmaogak family. They understand grief, they know love and they give love. They have given it to me in abundance.

Soundarya!

*Thanks to a couple of comments left elsewhere, I have realized that it was unfair of me to close comments here. I just felt that I could not bear the pain of reading those comments, but this was wrong. If anyone reads this and is moved by compassion to say something about Soundarya, I must open the door for them to do so. So I am now, nearly 36 hours after the original posting, opening this up to comments. I realize that multitudes of readers have already passed through and that there would have been some among them who would have commented but who now never will, but for any late comers, or returning visitors, the board is now open.

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Little Alan offers the blessing on Sharene's birthday; sad news from India

Yesterday was Shareen's birthday, so her brother-in-law, Alan Snow, served up a dinner of both chicken and steak fajitas. When the time came, many gathered around the table in Savik's house. Sharene's son, little Alan, named after his late father, sat on her lap and offered the blessing.

It was a good, sincere, short blessing, as little Alan knows how to get right down to the point - to thank the Lord for the food, ask his blessings on it, say "amen" and then get right down to eating.

Those familiar with Savik's table as it has appeared here before will undoubtedly have noticed that one face normally present there was missing. That would be the kindly face of Myrna, Savik's wife. Shortly before I arrived, she was admitted to the hospital here in Barrow and then a few days ago was medivacced to Anchorage.

Myrna and Savik's daughter, Ginger, took this excellent picture of her parents just over one month ago on Savik's birthday. This copy hangs on Roy's wall, right next door, where I am staying.

Those who know Myrna know that she has long been a church-going woman of faith and prayer. Now, I am certain, many pray for her.

Thankfully, she has improved significantly and might return home tomorrow.

I am not certain what birthday this was for Sharene, although I have known her for many more years than two, but two was the symbolic number of candles placed on her cake.

After the candles were blown out, little Alan became fascinated with the design on the side of the cake. His fascination proved catching.

In the evening, I took a walk along the seashore. The ice ivu piled up on the beach glowed in the light from Barrow.

After I departed the seashore and stepped back onto the road, a snowmachine pulled up alongside me and stopped. It was Jimmy, and he wanted to know if I needed a ride and where I was going. I told him I was just walking, going no place in particular except eventually back to Roy's, which was in the opposite direction.

He said he was going no place in particular, but was just riding around.

So I jumped on the back of the snowmachine and went no place in particular with him.

It felt good and it made me want to have a snowmachine, right here in Barrow, and to be able to climb on anytime and just go where I want to go.

A lot of people have snowmachines in Wasilla and snowmachine about Wasilla.

It isn't the same, my friends - it just isn't the same.

I slept in wonderfully late this morning, Sunday - for the second day in a row. I did not get up until after 10:00 AM. I tried to check my email via Sharene's wireless on my iPhone, but for some reason the iPhone had purged itself of the password and I could not log on.

I could have logged on with this laptop, but it has been giving me so much trouble that I did not want to fool with it. So I set out on foot to Pepe's for breakfast, reasoning that I could wait that long to check my email.

After my Saturday sleep in I had also gone to Pepe's for a late breakfast and I had greatly enjoyed it. Everything tasted so delicious, from the ham and eggs-over-easy, hash browns , the wheat toast with raspberry jam and, of course, the coffee, which I savored in slow sips.

Joe the Water Man was there to wait on me and to say witty things. Fran heard my voice from the other side of the partition and called out to say "hi."

So I wanted a complete repeat of all that pleasant wonderfulness today.

I sat down, pulled out my iPhone, logged on and about a dozen emails poured into my phone. One caught my eye before any of the others. It was from my friend Kavitha in India, a cousin to Soundarya, and was titled, "a very sad news." I suddenly got a feeling like someone had kicked me hard in the gut.

I opened it up and read. Then Joe came by to take my order, but I could not make the words. I could do little but stammer. Anil, Soundarya's husband, had been killed in a car crash early in the morning. Then I found another email from my nephew, Vijay, informing me of the same thing.

Eventually, I did place my order, but I have little recollection of eating it, or of how it tasted.

I stayed in Pepe's until after noon. Then Vivek called me from Minnesota and we talked for awhile. This was one time that he felt bad to be in the US rather than India. He and Soundarya were born five days apart and are as close as cousins get.

I left and began to walk back toward Roy's house. 

As I walked, I looked at these wires - one small part of the link that binds everyone in today's world together. This car came by. 

I felt helpless, unable to do anything. Given my present circumstance - no visa, little money - India might as well be on Jupiter. I cannot get there. I cannot lend comfort. I can do nothing to help out.

Still, I hope that Soundarya and all of her family - which is also an extension of my family - knows.

She knows. They know.

I still wish I could be there.

I needed more time to walk and think, so I headed toward the ocean. I walked down a street which I thought to be empty of traffic. The weather was extremely warm for this time of year, but it was a bit windy, so I had pulled the hood of my parka over my hat.

My parka hood muffled the noise enough to cause me to not hear a pickup approaching from behind until it was very nearly upon me. I stepped to my left, turning to look as I did, and saw that I was stepping right into the path of the truck.

It was okay, though, because the driver had spotted me and was approaching cautiously.

It was Roy Nageak. He told me that he was going to try drive out to Point Barrow to check out the ice conditions there and wandered if I wanted to come along? I did. I hopped in and off we went.

The snow was drifting, though, and we had to stop well short of the Point. We did make it past NARL, however.

Roy also gave me some interesting and good news, which I plan to make a report on later.

Remembering:

Anil on his wedding day.

Soundarya, on her wedding day.

Anil and Soundarya, at the threshold.

Folks - you know how us humans tend to get all wrapped up in us vs them? In our differences of religion, race, ethnicity, country of birth? These things need not separate us. We can love right through these differences.

Forgive me if I do not post tomorrow - Monday. I am almost a day behind schedule, anyway. I am tired of wrestling with this malfunctioning computer. I need to think. And I need to find a way to contact someone.

I plan to post Tuesday - hopefully with a summation of the Elders Youth conference.