Thank God..

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

I'm Not a Forgotten Woman

Pat and I are watching a documentary, "The Forgotten Woman," which is more sad than "Water" because it's the true version, about the widows in Vrindavan. I've gotta watch cheerier programs. Before this, we watched the latest episode of "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," and that episode had some especially poignant scenes.

Let's put it this way: I can't keep absorbing all this sadness without also blogging...and without getting more sleep. Yesterday, I went to my mom's for dinner on the way back from work (it's not really on the way, but...) and felt more sadness. The top step in front of her house had come off the day before when our 16-year-old nephew Zach stepped on it and the slab of slate sat off to the side.

One July, I remember sitting on that slate-slab with my oldest sister, Deb, staring up at the tulip tree in our front yard. Already, the stone was warm from the summer-morning sun. Who knew that less than a decade later, my dad (z"l) would be dead from bile-duct cancer? The problem, too, is that I'm on the last few pages of Joan Didion's *The Year of Magical Thinking*. She wrote that grieving is passive while mourning is active.

"If this is what God had in mind for women," I just heard a woman say in Hindi, with subtitles, "He shouldn't have created them." She's crying. Thank God, I was able to live peacefully with Pat in India.

Tomorrow, I will be more hopeful.