This is the fifth anniversary of Thomas's death. We plan to go to Mass in about an hour, then visit the cemetery this afternoon. Unfortunately it is raining here, the remnants of tropical storm Ida apparently, so this will involve old shoes and not much lingering.



Louise Penny invited me to write her blog entry for today which is an act of incredible generosity for such an accomplished writer whose name is beginning to be very well known indeed (New York Times bestseller list!). The address is http://www.louisepenny.blogspot.com/ I wrote this time about Thomas, rather than our grieving.



And one more thing. It will be announced today by the Montgomery County Executive's office: Ike Leggett has decided to name the Rockville Library the Rockville Memorial Library! After years of campaigning for this, it is going to happen. We are very grateful for this as well. When they put out their press release, I will post a link here.

The anniversaries are kind of strange days I've realized. In other years, I've mourned as we approached the day. This year, the week before was so emotionally difficult because of the Fort Hood events, and also suspecting that something was to be announced at the reception last night with the County Exec. It's just that you reach this point and in fact, the day is easier than expected because you've done so much of the work already. So for this day, my family will gather with a few friends, we will remember Thomas, we will eat and drink, we will celebrate the new life coming --Thomas's older sister Anna is expecting a baby in May. Our happiness will always have a small catch but that is OK.

It has been a difficult couple of days. Yesterday, a soldier opened fire at Ft. Hood and killed 13 people for reasons no one can figure out. This morning, the mosque he had attended here in Silver Spring was surrounded by television trucks (it's on the way to my youngest child's school). I don't deal well with the deaths of soldiers, and in these circumstances particularly it is difficult, someone who should have been protecting those lives stealing them away instead.

It's the first of November, All Saints' Day. We are getting closer to Thomas's anniversary and it is hard. Seven, and now eight, members of the Stryker Brigade in Afghanistan died this past week as the result of an IED. One of our fellow campaigners for the Rockville Memorial Library gave birth to a baby boy this week. She posted a picture on her Facebook page of the baby in his car seat next to his father's headstone in Arlington--it seems our hearts should break.

And then this afternoon in the grocery store, I was stopped by a woman who remembered me from our kids' early school days. Her son and Thomas had been part of a newspaper club together in elementary school but she remembered not only Thomas, but the rest of my kids as well, and asked about each of them. It was astounding and touching. But what was even more surprising was discovering that she knows one of the other Montgomery County families of the fallen involved in the library issue. Connections . . .