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In order for me to blog, I rely on some sort of quiet time to get my thoughts together. Generally, I have a million ideas floating around in my head, and then while I'm driving to work, and after I've become sick and tired of NPR, one of those thoughts crystallizes into a blog. I start seeing paragraphs, anecdotes, and quotes. Every once in a while, like this past Tuesday, I'll just sit down and pour out what's inside my head, but most of the time it takes a little while longer than that. So I spend a few moments on my morning commute thinking it all over, and then when I get to work, I'm ready to splash it all on my screen.

However, recently, work has been getting in the way of putting all these wonderful and enlightened ideas into words. Like this blog, for instance. Last night, as I was putting laundry away, I started to consider American drawers and cupboards as compared to Dutch drawers and cupboards. I had the whole concept all outlined in my head. I was going to talk about our pantry, my mom's pans, and a friend's sewing room, and somehow convince you that Americans care less about well-organized storage space. But once I arrived in my office, all these interesting anthropological insights were immediately pushed to the back of my mind as I was faced with the order of the day. And today's order is what I really want to share with you. I promise I will talk about cupboards and drawers at some other point in time.

You see, this morning we buried a much-esteemed co-worker who died of Leukemia last Friday. His name was Charles, he was barely 60 years old, and he was the chair who hired me on a temporary contract almost two years ago. This man was more than my boss. He was the man who saved me from a life of a stay-at-home military spouse by responding to my inquiry with the following words; "The opening you applied for has already been filled, but a faculty member just quit yesterday. Can you start work next week?". The man saved my life. And my husband's probably.

Charles was what my kids would call "a cool dude". He was stoic, never got too worked up about anything, didn't believe in bureaucracy, and always had his faculty's back. When he told us he was diagnosed with Leukemia last summer, we could not believe anything but that he would pull through. Then at last December's commencement, he told me he had been told the doctors could do little for him, but search for a bone marrow donor. Because of a lack of African American bone marrow donors, his options were limited. And so Charles passed away.

His funeral service was in an African American baptist church. Having never been to an African American funeral, I was curious to see if it would be any different from the standard white American church funeral, with lace handkerchiefs pressed to red-rimmed eyes, a wheezing organ, a choir consisting of old ladies, and at least some sort of rendition of "A mighty Fortress is our God". And my goodness, it was different. And I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that I liked it better. The Gospel choir sang slow, almost dragging songs that just cut right through you, the higher tones sometimes were so close to wailing, it gave me goosebumps. Everyone walked by the open casket, and everyone was given the opportunity to say goodbye. And people cried. They didn't sit up straight in their pews, holding it all in, they let it out. People around me were humming along with the songs, praying out loud, and crying out "Amen" when they felt the need. At one point during a song, we could even hear the widow crying out in her grief. It was heart-wrenching, yet cathartic at the same time. Why pretend everything is OK when it's clearly not? At least this way Charles, had he been watching, knows that he is truly missed.

So today has been an off-day. It's hard to get back to work when you've just said goodbye to someone you know you will miss sorely. It's even harder to blog about closets and drawers when all you can think about is someone's widow. So I did what I do every once a while, I just let it out for you to chew on. And to top it all off, I really did not know what to do for a title. Sometimes silence just says it all.