How many seeds are in the sacrifice? How many births from a single head? Life comes through death, and there is beauty in the dying. While one life fades, another blooms in a never-ending cycle. And we welcome a new member of the family–White Rose the lionhead. Rosie for short.
Going Home
We should be eating free pancakes (pfannekuchen) under the pavilion. That was the plan. That’s Friday morning Alpenfest tradition. But Sissy and I instead pack hospital bags–contact lens solutions, glasses, toothbrush, deodorant, a change of clothes. We slip computers into cases and cell phone charges into purses. We don’t know what the next few days hold. […]
When You Need a Little Fixing
I’d forgotten about this post from almost two years ago until the other day when Duane called my attention to it. It was a post I’d linked to one of his “Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays.” A bunch of random thoughts. I decided to dust it off and repost it today. I’d call it kind of a […]
Five Minute Friday: In Which She is Afraid to Say Hello
We’re on the way to school, and I tell Grace how Great-Grandpa is home and can’t drive and is lonesome since Great-Grandma died. I tell her how he likes us to call, to hear our voices. “I don’t know if he’ll be up yet,” I say, “but let’s try.” He answers on the second […]
When You Need to Remember
Ash Wednesday. Ashes. The words triggered one of those grief waves. One in which I remember my mom wheeling out to the living room to say she was rooting for the Yankees while we whooped it up for the Tigers. It’s the last memory I have of being at home with her before […]
Unwrapping the Gift(s)
May 9, 2012 Linking this post with Ann and the 1000 Moms Project to help in the funding of a Compassion International Maternity/Child Survival program in Haiti for a whole year. My mom passed away on November 27, 2011. Thank you, Mom, for the simple gifts, for laughter, and for teaching me to […]
Gifted in Grief
I realized it just this morning. She was my age. She was also a nurse. Instrumental, I understand, in birthing this place. She was admitted the same day we were, to the room next door to ours. She’d done battle for 18 years. A bone marrow donor stood ready, but she could not bounce back […]
Sunday Seasoned Sayings: Death is Gone for Good
I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, […]