Today it has been three years exactly since I last saw and spoke to Thomas. He had asked Anna and me to come out to Washington because he knew he was going to be deploying sometime in October. We had planned to come in the previous February, but I got very sick in January and ended up in the hospital instead. Looking back now, I am glad. We might have just decided to settle for the long visit we had with him in July and let him go off to Iraq without seeing him again. Since the original plan was just for Anna and me, it seemed natural that it would be just us again. We met him at Sea-Tac where one of his friends dropped him off as we landed and drove north with my sister and her husband to visit for a few days. The weather was incredible, clear blue skies as only the northern piece of my home state can produce them. I have pictures but the are buried in my old computer files somewhere and they are really hard to access. Maybe I'll try though tomorrow and add one of Thomas, the way I last saw him: lanky and shaved, khaki pants, blue sweater, baseball cap, wolfing down a Taco Bell meal outside the walls of Ft. Lewis.

OK, this is the next day, and I discover that he was wearing jeans! Maybe all of that Army khaki was more than he could take. It took quite a while to pry this image off of the old computer but I think I've rescued it for now.

That July visit is worth a few words, but maybe not today.

We are buying a new table and chairs for our dining room. You faithful readers may remember that I was a bit obsessed by our lack of chairs. We are buying six new dining room chairs to go with the new table. I'm a little conflicted about the new table: the old one was where we all sat as a family for most of our time in this house. I bought it at Salvation Army in Hyattsville Maryland mostly so I could have the chairs that came with it. The chairs have been steadily disintegrating, despite my reupholstering efforts four years ago (I own an electric staple gun in the wake of that experience). However, the table is terrific. While Thomas was living at home, and whenever he returned, he ate dinner sitting at that table, always to my left on the side facing north. When he died, it was as if someone had bombed our home and left a crater at his place at the table. But, we have learned to not notice it so much any more, and maybe a new table will help us let that go a little more . . .