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Eileen Goldman's avatar

Lovely, Jane. I send solice in your grief. One door closed another opens. I am holding you in my heart.

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Jane Finette's avatar

Thank you so much dear friend. Yes indeed. All my love for you xxx

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Eileen Goldman's avatar

Thank you, Jane, for this beautiful reflection. It touches me in many ways. As do you.

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Jane Finette's avatar

Thank you so much. I know your heart… and so I know you’re touched by so much in the world. Love you and miss you very much xxx

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Maggie Schroeder's avatar

Jane, as always, your writing is beautiful. It causes me to stop and reflect more than I might otherwise. Thank you.

This past week our family celebrated Sophie's first birthday. I captured a wonderful photo of Sophie making puffy cheek faces at her great-grandfather who recently turned 96. He held her tight with his crinkled blue hands, that tremble from Parkinson's disease, while he stared into her beautiful blue eyes. It remains to be seen if we will celebrate his 97th birthday next year. But it is clear that Sophie's favorite old man passed his love to her just in case he doesn't.

As you said: "Perhaps true reverence for life requires us to bear witness to its entirety — both its tenacious persistence and its inevitable surrender."

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Jane Finette's avatar

Dearest Maggie, thank you for your wonderful sharing and sorry I was flying to my Mum in the UK when you posted and lost track. What a beautiful scene and sharing of love and joy for Sophie and your great Pa...

It isnt easy for sure... but there is so much beauty in these precious moments.. and arent we too lucky to watch and share their magic!

Love you very much xx

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Eileen Goldman's avatar

I love this, Jane. I had a powerful dream last night in which I was very aged and less fully able bodied. It was so real. And then, morning arrives. What a gift if only we could learn to welcome the changes.

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Emily Woodbury's avatar

Dearest Jane,

You have already become bee-less, at this time of posting. I offer this solace via the poem of the day, I serendipitously read this morning:

Sorrow

-Marie Howe

So now it has our complete attention, and we are made whole.

We take it into our hands like a rope, grateful and tethered,

freed from waiting for it to happen. It is here, precisely

as we imagined.

If the man has died, if the child’s illness has taken a sudden

turn, if the house has burned in the middle of the night

and in winter, there is at least a kind of stopping that will

pass for peace.

Now when we speak it is with a great seriousness, and when

we touch it is with our own fingers, and when we listen

it is with our big eyes that have looked at a thing

and have not blinked.

There is no longer any reason to distrust us. When it leaves

it will leave like summer, and we will remember it as a break

in something that had seemed as unrelenting as coming rain

and we will be sorry to see it go.

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