“So long old pal..”

To Maggie,

With gratitude for your unstinting, unconditional love, for the opportunity to share in your wild and boundless joy, and for your old soul spirit that will stay with all of us whose lives you touched.   Rest in peace. 

That’s the Facebook version and it does a good job.  The sojourn of goodbyes ends with a solo trip to the lake house where we both have always been the happiest. In the last hours of her life she patiently and thoroughly licked the tears from every inch of my cheeks, eyes, nose and lips.  Now she’s beyond touch. 

The last white hairs…finding them on the cuffs of yoga pants, in the creases of the leather couch that was off limits for at least an hour after it entered our house, on the last of the dog beds I can’t bear to wash and give away.

James Taylor singing..

   Oh, it's enough to be on your way,

   It's enough just to cover ground,

   It's enough to be moving on.

   Home, build it behind your eyes,

   Carry it in your heart,

   Safe among your own.

   So long, old gal...

To Mither

I shall abide my time, and when, at last,

The clamor and the greetings all are done,

Our eyes shall meet, and silently, as one,

We shall relive one moment in the past,

And you shall know, though lips let no word fall,

That in my heart you did not leave at all.

            From When You Return by Anderson M. Scruggs

Today is a winter day of cobalt sky, mounded snow, and cold whose lock on winter must soon give way to lengthening light. Chickadees preen longer on viburnum branches between flits to the feeder. All this you would notice out of your one good eye were you here, sipping Earl Grey in your collared blouse under a sweater matching a good wool plaid skirt or slacks. You would appreciate my long, lithe look, though I am no longer as much of either.

Instead, the sunlight floods onto me alone, as you have stepped one farther reach away. You, who mothered and mentored and drank of my love and respect in turn. The formalities that first bound us never bridled us.  Separated by divergent streams of life, the common river of our connection flows still. 

No one else said “dear” and meant it.  

Whose soft whispered voice and gentle lilt bespoke such command?

It took 30 years for my reading to come to the mysteries that you so loved, but I danced there a while in time to share them with you. 

Blue glass, green carpet, wood furniture and stone, blurring boundaries of indoors and out.

The art of thoughtful conversation. 

Communicating by listening rather than talking. 

Learning the pace of someone else’s thinking.

The art of buying local.

All these and so much more I live out in my life as gifts from you

“And you shall know, though lips let no word fall,

That in my heart you did not leave at all.”