"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,"

It's times like these that I reach for my trusty old beloved collections of poetry. I started the month with T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I celebrated my mother's birthday, the first since her death, quietly while I attended a conference. The following Monday, I texted my middle daughter, who works about a mile from the finish line of the Boston Marathon, to see if she was okay.

I've kept myself busy, perhaps too busy. I haven't had as much time to write as I would like, but there is so much that needs to get done. Yesterday, I went to an Institute of Medicine Roundtable, then rushed off to hear Ken Lenz declare his candidacy for First Selectman in Orange and up to Woodbridge for the Preliminary Town Budget meeting.

And they tell him, "Take your time. It won't be long now.
'Til your drag your feet to slow the circles down"

During my years in Woodbridge, Ed Sheehy has always been our First Selectman, tall of stature and as steady as any Nutmegger from the land of steady habits. Ed was at the meeting last night as a well crafted budget was presented to the town. There was little discussion, for the budgets under Ed's watch have been the most sensible I've seen of any municipality.

This morning, as I drove to work, I received a phone call. It was the sort of phone call that you know is bad news before you answer it. Not because of who was calling or the time. Yes, it was a little early in the day for that friend to be calling, but not that out of the normal. It was just the sort of feeling you get. I was about to get on the Parkway to work. I had my headset on so I could answer the call without pulling over, but I wondered, should I change course, not get on the Parkway to take the call?

After the Preliminary Town Budget meeting, First Selectman Ed Sheehy went home and later in the evening suffered an aneurysm and passed away in the middle of the night. At least that is what I think the call said. I'm still in shock. The unflappable Ed Sheehy, steering the steady course, never doing anything unexpected did something total unexpected and now, I'm trying to make sense of it all.

The drive to work was quiet. There was a cold grey mist, not quite rain, not quite tears, hanging over the road. I passed a pond where the mist, over the rippled water added to the sense of the storm and the droplets that gathered on the car windows did role down the glass like tears.

I return to my book of Walt Whitman

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.