I have just realised that today marks the one month anniversary of the adventure that is this website and blog.
Happy One Month Anniversary 🙂
A huge thank you to all those who have been encouraging, to all of you who have decided to follow this somewhat eclectic offering.
I am still learning, so I also thank you all for your patience.
Some great quotes about learning on BrainyQuote HERE
Today is also my mother’s birthday. She would have been 71 today.
On Monday, it was the 18 year anniversary of my mother’s death. The anniversaries (and her birthday) are easier now than they used to be, but I still miss her terribly. I also miss the lost opportunity of knowing her better as an adult.. She made some fascinating life choices and I would have loved to have known more about them.
I have always taken the time across these two days that fall so close together, to honour her and all my Ancestors.
It’s also something I choose to share, because I believe she was a person to be celebrated, and because I think sharing loss and grief and the anniversaries around those occasions are as important as sharing those around happiness and achievement. It’s deeply personal, and there is a part of my natural reserve that does shrink a little at sharing, but I think it is important.
Grief is the price we pay for love: Queen Elizabeth II
I like to remember my Beloved Dead, this is part of how I share their stories, how I celebrate their lives, and how I honour them.
Mum: I still wish I could pick up the phone to call you.. at least once a week. I wish you could have delighted in your grandchildren.. you would have adored them. I wish you could have seen the various weddings, and the other children join the family. You loved children and weddings. I like to think you would have continued to be a role model about ageing gracefully, and well. I would have liked to see you become a celebrant as per our discussions just before your diagnosis..
I buy flowers for you, every year. And I often feel like you send reminders and kind of messages of encouragement… usually when I need it the most.
So I have also come to the conclusion that death does not end relationships, it just changes them.
Happy birthday.
What is Remembered, Lives.
Photo of my mother and I at a family gathering – sometime in the late 80’s, I believe.
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “ There! She’s gone!”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight—that is all.
She is just as large in mast and bull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to hear her load of living freight to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me. and not in her.
And just at that moment when someone at my side says: ” There! She’s gone!” there are other eyes that are watching for her coming; and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “ There she comes!”
And that is—” dying.”
The Northwestern Christian Advocate, July 13, 1904, credits the poem to  Rev. Luther F. Beecher
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