750 words - day 1

 Okay... I found in my Dashlane account that I had a password to this site, 750words.com, which means that I joined up at some point in the long ago past, but I have no idea when that was, or if I ever even tried to use the site. But recently I've been thinking about starting to write again, but just don't have any focus, or inspiration or goals, and have only been scribbling in my blog rather randomly... this idea of having an impetus to write daily, 750 words or more, well, I think that is a good enough kick in my pants to help me get my own juices flowing again. So there, I've written 115 words already, even though I don't know if this will be saved where I can export it to my blog for my closest friends to see, or not, or what... hmmm, so what's been on my mind today... the past couple of days I've been thinking about the death of the woman that I married when I was a young man. Her birthday is this week, and her death-day is only about a month later... so I've been recollecting my memories of her, looking at old photos... I'm always looking at old photos of people, family members.. most still living, many not... and remembering what it was like to be with them in life, doing things, talking or not talking, going places, or not... and I look at myself today and see how my life feels different without them here. Can't talk to them the same way anymore, even though I do make feeble attempts to talk to their spirits... something I could work harder at but most of the time I just stay silent, I don't think or say anything to them because I'm just fine being here in the silence of my own company. Life is nothing but a dream, anyway, isn't it? Gosh I'm not even half way to 750 words yet and I'm running out of ideas of what more to say... So in memory of the woman I married I am thinking about baking some Irish soda bread tomorrow. It was something she did many times a week, baking a loaf of soda bread to share with her friends and her workmates, it was her way of having a time of meditation, but also of sharing something from her youth, and of her heritage - seeing that she was from Ireland. It's not near Saint Patrick's Day yet, but the weather has been extremely Irish here in Northern California for the past two weeks. I looked at a photo I took of her a year ago this month when we took a drive over to Half Moon Bay to celebrate her birthday. I'll never be able to make that trip with her again. She had been obsessed with the photos that locals in Half Moon Bay were taking of sunsets over there, there was a few weeks stretch where there were incredible sunsets every night of the week in December and January, and she really wanted to go to see one in person, so we drove over, about a week after her birthday - she was ill on her birthday. My earliest memories of spending time with her were going to the seashore outside of Dublin, Ireland, where we met. We would walk the several miles from Harolds Cross where she lived over to Sandymount and we'd walk along the strand there. It was a beach that reminded me of the strand at Alameda, here in the Bay Area. And she also took me to the shore down at Dun Laoghaire, and Dalkey. She loved being near the sea, as did I, having grown up near Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. And then when we married I took her to live up in Mendocino County, in Fort Bragg and we would walk the long lonely beaches there of the wild Pacific Ocean. This is why I feel I must always live in close proximity to the ocean. Even today, first thing I turn on in the morning is a Youtube live channel that shows the ocean over in Pacifica. The ocean, it's like God to me, it's like looking out into the reality of eternity, you can talk to it and God hears you, and then you listen to it and it's God speaking back to you. I would go to the ocean tomorrow except that the roads are too dangerous to drive on now because of the ongoing storms. I'll have to settle for my photos of going there with Aine last year, and for watching the Youtube channel of the Pacifica Pier.