Death

On Wednesday a friend in another city died after a long effort with cancer, but we couldn't find out any information until Saturday. Go, Annie, Go!!

On Sunday, an online friend committed suicide and left us a note on his private blog. May he find peace and acceptance.

Tomorrow is my mother's 91st birthday; I hope she's enjoying it in heaven; she didn't enjoy a lot in her lifetime.

I've been re-membering the people in my life who have died during this Lent. I don't want their memories to die for me. Some are pleasant; some are not. But, none deserve to be forgotten.

The bootlegger's son who taught me to shoot a bow; he died in a car accident shortly after we graduated from high school.

Kaffee, who prompted me to try for a loan for divinity school and helped me through the process - encouraging me all the way - from breast cancer a year later.

Alison, who was my pal in divinity school - the cigarettes eventually got her through metastasized cancer.

Tim, my next door neighbor in divinity school, who died of AIDS and left his walking cane by my door.

Chelsea, the organist at my wedding, who also died of AIDS and was ashamed to tell.

Bill, my godson, who was older than me, but called me "Mom" because I sponsored him for confirmation, a Vietnam vet who died of illnesses contracted there.

Debbie, a church friend, who let me walk her "helping dog" after the church service and became a special friend.

Bill, who put me on the road to good sobriety, good counseling, good medical help, and offered me his vulnerability in seeing his dark side - of prostate cancer.

David, my brother, who died needlessly in an accident on a oil line repair barge in the Gulf when I was 16 years and two weeks old.

Marty, my nephew, deaf after a baby illness, who committed suicide at age 34.

Sue, my sister-in-law, who tormented me through young adulthood and became my sister in the process - in an operation to repair a stomach ulcer.

Martha, a patient in the Alzheimer's Unit in Wallingford, CT, where I did my CPE - she forgot how to eat and I sat with her for two weeks.

Dixie, an elementary school buddy, whose mental illness finally caused her to end her life.

Aunt Clyde, who loved me and was ashamed to tell me that she had sclerosis of the liver because she didn't want me to think she drank - she did when she was young but not for many years.

My first husband's niece who died at birth because both her parents had used many drugs and she was born with a partial head.

The child who was buried in a pasture in a shoebox, wrapped in a new baby blanket that my Mom bought for the family.

Untimely deaths. Yet, one by one, I remember all that I can and hold them to the light, knowing that they live.