Just a few days before 7 years since you died.

Miss you.

Sept 2014 Loved seeing your uncle Mark visit your memorial, but made me miss being there to.

Happy birthday 2014

Hi there beautiful girl.  I remember when you would say,"I wish I was pretty"...you just didn't think you were. I always thought you were beautiful.  But when I would say that, you would say, you have to say that....you're my mom....

You are right.  I was your mom, but really...I did think you were beautiful, and smart...and quite a girl.  You were strong-willed, independent and a clear and fierce thinker.  I liked that about you-you knew your mind.  You loved people, you  believed in things-and you weren't afraid to say what you thought.  I just always wanted you to allow people to have their own say, their own opinions...and that was something you worked on and did well with it!

You would have been 36 tomorrow.

I often think about what you would be doing...and then I just have to slow that train...not too good to go down that road too far.

I have learned to wrap my arms around what life you had...and the years you lived.  To embrace the fullness of that and remember as well as I can what you did and lived in those years.

I am encouraged to live more and as full as I can while I am still here.  Even today-a woman who knows your story, sought me out, to tell me the impact you had on her life...even without meeting you.  With tears in her eyes, she felt it impacted her in deep ways--all of it.  She affirmed to me how this all has changed me.  I have been changed.  I am deeply blessed to have had you.

All that said, deep in my heart, I sure miss you.  Rick misses you--he loves the stories he hears about you-he grieves you so...misses not really knowing you...just through the stories...and one short brief encounter before we left on the trip...

I can't wait till he gets to really meet you in heaven...and to see you two hug and know one another. You would just love him...he is the best.  You would have loved all this...that makes me so sad, to think of us missing this....but another road to not travel too far down...

So, sweet, sweet girl...I say "Happy birthday...I was just about to go into labor 36 years ago right now...I loved telling you that story over and over...all about how you were born...you just loved listening...and I loved telling...and you would never let me leave out even the smallest detail.

You were like that.  hahahahahhahaha....what a joy you were.


love you girl.  Miss you....

finding a place to walk

in life, i don't always know where i am, where to walk, where to move forward.

much has changed in my life.

a life role i had is mom.

i am not a mom anymore.

it just is what it is.

i was for almost 29 years.   good years, loved them.

i live in a new land now.  

i am not always sure where that land it and who i am in the land.

i somehow realized it today...like never before.

I was Sarah's mom.  Sarah is gone.  Gone with her is that role, that great place i loved so well.

no matter what, that is over.

seems like it has taken me a long time to realize that in the deepest place.

so, now...

how to live, how to walk...

where I am invited.  where it builds from relationship.

whew....

Time goes slow when you wait for someone to leave

We have been vigiling for 11 days now at Hospice House. We talk to others who have been here longer. Amazing how tiring it is. Sitting, waiting, watching for signs...wondering.
My sweet brother looks so tired... I've have run out of things to say, everyone has run out of things to say.
What a time, a time of itchiness....restlessness.
Laurie is quiet now, she is still. Hadn't eaten a thing for weeks. Has no kidneys so nothing out. How in the world does she keep on?
They veil feels thin, I have a sense of wonder. By midday we are all more testy with one another. Everyone is near and trying to walk together.

So, God, help us. Help us walk this very well, a witness to each other and to others.

Visioning

I have never been witness to such extravagant visioning. My sister in law, Laurie, is seeing things that being the biggest smile to her face. She sleeps most if the time and then, all is a sudden wakes abruptly, and throws her hand up in the air and looks wide-eyed and smiles and looks all around...WOW!!!!!!

What does she see, what wonders are before her...I just watch, knowing it is so sacred of a time. My heart aches to go, yet also to stay...

New land is in site

We meet with the people for Hospice House transition this morning at 9.  We are now waiting for a bed...means someone has to die that is in one of there beds, so you, Laurie, can be transported to that bed for your remaining days here.

Funny, if it can be funny...that there would be a vacancy sign lit telling these special end of life travelers...We have a bed for you.

Saw a large group at icu Wii just lost their young daughter,/friend to a drug overdose walk out her last moments these last days..seeing them help her give 6 parts of her body as an organ donor to others before leaving earth.

This journey if my own loss of Sarah has changed me so much as I walk slowly along...my senses are heightened...listening, watching with my soul's eyes....

My sister Marty said she keeps hearing in her heart, Sarah telling her..."I''ll take it from here".  So Sarah, are you near too...ah...someday, I will know too.

So today we will begin the turn...the turn to home for you Laurie...Bless these tender moments.

Walking near the borderlands

So, it is another time in my life to be so near the border of heaven, handing off my sister in law alongside her husband and daughter and our family, to the beginning of the next land.
Sacred ground. Walking around in the ICU and watching the faces of all the families....seeing the flurry of activity and yet....seeing the unseen...soft shapes of angels all around. Can hear the footsteps....

Such a tender and real time again.  I feel in my heart I live with a consciousness of heaven so very close all the time.  It is like the voices and noises of this heaven is so very near, and at times like now, so so near.

I watch this place of wrestling and restlessness in you Laurie--and feel you are seeing and knowing this transitional place and see your eyes not seeing just here any more.  Your body is failing right before our eyes. It is worn.  It is done with this fight.  10 years ago when I was starting this blog, I was watching my mom begin this transition.  Watching her begin to lay down her failing body and life here.  Now we watch you.

Our voices no longer seem to have any sound that reaches you...

I remember seeing my sweet Sarah's body after she had already laid it down was such a deep soul teaching to me, it was empty, hollow...no longer needed.  Like a discarded glove....crumpled, left.  Knowing in my soul there was more and you had gone on to that.  

Now I am watching again, a ringside seat...watching you breathe difficult and painful breaths.  Watching you struggle so at something I am sitting her and doing without even thinking.  Breathe in, breathe out.  over and over...no thought. Yet, now your breaths are numbered, they are becoming less...you are beginning to run out.  Run out of heartbeats, all the things keeping your broken body going. 

What a journey you have had all these years...so sick, so many different times, so many different diseases.  Now, your remaining donated kidney gone, dialysis machines trying to keep up with the junk in you needing to get out.   Infections all over, relentless...can't get one thing in place before more is destroying.

My dear brother, your sweet and precious husband...your warrior and helper...watching a fight he can't affect anymore...helpless, faithful, looking into the moments ahead when you will not be present...and how will he ever do it, what and how and all those questions we hate...that will be when they will be...their daughter, Bethany....help her to release her mom she has watched in such a hard life for so long...bring comfort to her...help her....

God, I know you are so very near...can feel your holy spirit in this midst.  I can sense the holiness of this transition. this birthing...this wrestling off of old for new.  please be near this dear sister of mine.  hold and help her...bring your light into this and comfort and meet her.  Help her wrestle out of this old and go to this place I long to see.  To be with you, to live in this land of no pain, no sorrow, no tears...near you.  seeing the fullness of what my heart longs so to see and know.  This world gets sore and long....

I hope in you, my Father.  This part is hard.  All other things going on all around seem to have the volume turned off or muffled as we walk in this most sacred land.  Hold us all, help us all.  

This is the picture I found of Laurie, such a sweet one--so full of her true joy--the joy that kept my brother laughing and so in love with her...thank you Father for all their years--even the hard ones-as they love one another well...with a deep love that has been witnessed by all who have cared for her and both of them all these past years.  What an example of laying your life down for one another.  Such tender love, truly a blessing.  

It is late.  I haven't written late when I can't sleep for some time.  I am so tired, yet sensing the most sacred things happening...what a journey.

Just missing you.

Took a walk with Rick and Harry yesterday, crisp and windy out.  Rick took these pictures of your boat, the boat that was your dad's first...and remembered the day you decided it was time to steal it back...details to be left out here--after he died and it was left in these same woods...only it was in such disrepair...

You decided to steal it and enlisted the help of Christopher, his dad and me...and we did it...and the story got bigger as you found out you didn't have the title and had to make it honest by going to Beverly and admitting this whole deal.  We ended up buying that boat and then began the journey of moving it here and there till you and Chris would be able to begin to fix it up.

Well, you didn't live to do that...and the boat began another journey with Chris moving it again and again...till he decided to give it to Dillon...the dear son of the man your dad bought it from ( our dear neighbors who had bought our house from us when we split up)...and found out that story now tells us...Dillon was probably conceived on this boat...and then Dillon's dad died at 50, so then this boat now became his..and he started to fix it up-even sailed it a couple years ago...but life is now busy for him...and because he lives next door...it is now back in the same place we "stole" it from...

So, I look at it all the time and just ponder...is there something in this whole scenerio to gleen...hmmmm

Just makes me laugh a bit...a silly boat...loved by different ones..but no real deep truth finds me...

and I don't want to fix it or sail it...too big, too much money...

but, it brings me deep tenderness still, remembering you at 20, when your dad died and wanting this boat cuz it brought you close to your dear dad.  And he and you are both gone...and the boat remains...

And I ponder.  So much in the past to bring dear memories for all of this, of you, even of your dad.

life goes on.  No big revelations here.  No lesson to really glean from it.  Just trying to be present. Rick listens so well to these stories and somehow becomes closer to you--and loves you as a dad...

Wish I could have seen you get it fixed up and sailed it with you.  You had so many dreams that just stopped immediately.  Somedays, that just makes me plain sad.

I miss you Sarah.  I miss your fullness, your vest for life.  I live with a hope in the heaven and let that hope spill into today...

A kiss from Italy came to me this morning from Isabella...a woman who was walking in Manarola and was taking a photo of the sunset in Manarola from the place where Sarah's plaque is located and she turned and saw the plaque, Sarah's picture we left there over a year ago when we visited...and then googled Sarah/Ohio/Manarola and found her story...and my email....

As I woke this morning...here were her kind words and a virtual hug...from this land, my second home...

I am so touched, so blessed...a kiss from heaven today. 

I miss you sweet girl...

Don't often have words anymore to write here.  Just a deep quietness in my heart, holding you and each memory so very close as I continue to walk on in this life.  I wish somehow I could come sit here and listen to the water today..and be near where you took your last breath. 
But I live in this land, by this water you loved all your life.  I am a blessed mom...I live where you lived and loved too.  I will come to this land again...somehow I know...
Heaven seems near right now to me...I sense the veil thin, I feel your touch....I know.

Love you sweet girl.