March 3rd, 2010

March 3rd, 7:18pm: Last night was truly wicked. I guess the last three weeks of my life – which had been force-fed to me through a blur of coffee, adrenaline, cigars, bites of food here and there (kindly dropped off by caring people – thank you again folks), topped off by the loss of the little guy and then the emotional hammering that accompanied it all hit at once. I have no idea how Kathi has kept it up and hope it doesn’t hit in the same way but I suppose a crash was inevitable. 2 Tylenol PMs and later 3 ibuprofen did nothing to alleviate the pain. I don’t wish that on anybody and I hope it was a one night thing but I suppose it wasn’t a one night thing to get into this shape, so perhaps wishful thinking it will be a one night reconciliation back to health.

Thursday afternoon I leave for Anoka to fix the trailer and pick up Windchill’s ashes. I would guess he’ll finally be back home in the late afternoon or early evening and be back where he belongs.

We’ve decided to open the farm up Saturday, March 8th to allow for those that were unable to say “goodbye” to the little guy to do so if they’d like. I don’t know that we’ll do anything more formal, such as a memorial service – I think his life has been chronicled here as we lived it and breathed it the last three weeks. We will of course have coffee and hot water for cocoa or tea on hand.

March 3rd, 4:07pm: A 3 hour truck ride later and I’m back. And my email box is filled with people hoping that I will continue to post here and I will. I think I need it as much as you do. I also think you need to talk as well. I think we all need to ‘hug’ at a distance (something else Windchill taught me, normally I don’t like people in my airspace and now I find I need them in order to survive, just as he did).

Thus I wish to make an appeal to those with ‘techie’ friends. I will be making a list of the things we need help with to make Windchill’s non-profit a reality. But we have an immediate need that I think somebody can help us fulfill out there – I would like to create an online forum for Windchill and those cared about him. I will gladly continue to post here but I think you need to share your thoughts as well. So many have written such beautiful things, encouragement and concern over our health, poems and songs and pictures. His guestbook – first a way to encourage him, and now a way to grieve for him and say “goodbye” is probably not the solution. It’s a way to shout out at the universe that you care – and you’re doing that and it means so much. I’m sure it would mean a lot to him. And I know it means a lot to those of us who cared for him day and night.

So world I’m asking for your help in creating that forum – either a program I can somehow plug into my website, or a blog site that’s relatively easy to use — but isn’t filled with commercialism either,so we’ll need to find a way to make it affordable to me. Absolutely none of the dollars donated for Windchill are being used to pay for things like the bandwidth all of you fans of his have used with this site, memory space, etc. We feel very strongly those dollars should go first towards whatever the final amounts of all the costs were for his care and then towards his non-profit organization thus I will pay for the site.

By the way, people from all over the world seem to be lighting candles for Windchill – I thought the fact that people have been doing that through his ordeal, and now in his passing, was absolutely beautiful. I think we have our friend at Friends of Barbaro for that:

Candlelight vigil site

March 3rd, 11:07am: I’ve come to realize a big part of the reason I come here is that Windchill made us a family. We could all come here and talk about him, vent our frustrations, our sadness, our anger – and there were people who listened. You’re still coming back – and so am I. And so I’ll tell you what – to help in my own healing, our own healing, I’ll be working on filling in the missing pieces that we never had time to finish. Posting more videos. Posting more pictures. And trying to answer some of the questions that came in. I have to leave for the Twin Cities shortly so I will work on this over time. Later in the week I have to try and give a presentation and pretend that I’m okay. I have four days to get to that point. And in the next couple of weeks I will be working on his new foundation website and as part of that I will move all of this, or at least copy it there – so that those that want to continue to be part of this family can be. Windchill lit the candle. We are determined to keep it burning. And together I hope that we can heal. I go between coherent thought and eyes burning so I can’t promise I won’t slide into hell for moments. But in the end Windchill went through hell and out the other side – and together so will we.