Birthdays and death

My birthday was last weekend. Woody and I worked outside a bit and then he gave me some beautiful birthday gifts. We ate leftovers from the seder that evening and Wood said Sunday night would be my real birthday dinner. He made lobsters, which I love. He cooked them earlier as he likes to eat them cold and I’ll take them any way I can get them.This stalled winter is driving me a little nuts. I want to be outside, but it keeps blowing hard and several times snowing. Monday it snowed hard but by 3pm, it had all melted. We’re supposed to get more snow on Sunday, a few inches, they say. We’ll see. I’m filling the greenhouse with seedings. Mostly Woody has been clearing the perennial beds. Many bulbs are flowering already and if we finally have some mild weather, a hundred more would burst into bloom. It’s hard on the birds and hard on us and hard on all the perennials and bushes eager to leaf out.Last night we dined with friends. I am working hard to finish the FINAL ULTIMATE ABSOLUTELY LAST draft of THE HOUSE AT HOPE’S END. I’ve sacrifice my poetry writing to pushing it through. I must finish it before late April as the mss. from my June poetry workshop will start coming then.I put off the seeds I was supposed to start three days ago. I guess I’ll start them tomorrow in hopes spring will eventually come at last.Everything has changed. The phone kept ringing late last night until 2:20 a.m. I didn’t answer but couldn’t sleep. When I got up this morning @ 6:45. I found that my close friend Dan Lawson was dead. He died during the night as the rescue squad arrived. He was a sweet lovable man and a talented poet. We were very close and I am missing him already. I was planning a birthday party and had his gift. It is only two months since his husband died. As he had no I.D. on him, Cape Cod Hospital had him as a John Doe in the morgue. Woody picked up his Canadian passport from the police station and drove to Hyannis to prove Dan’s identity and to identify the body. His daughter-in-law is coming. This morning Stephen and Dale exercised and fed the two dogs. We have to find a home for them. They are great dogs. I’m not a dog person but I like them, especially Bisquit. I’m in a state of shock. Crying sporadically in between all the phone calls and emails. We had such much fun, the four of us, so much raunchy laughter and Dan and I loved doing things together we could not interest our significant others in. We shared poems. We shopped for plants. We talked and talked and talked. He was my gay girlfriend. God, I miss him already. I can’t accept that he’s no longer in my life and I can’t be in him.