Tribute to Sandy.....

....my friend.  I wrote a bit over a week ago that a dear friend was facing life threatening surgery.  In the end she was just too fragile for the surgery anyhow and she died this past Tuesday night while I was up in Bellingham.  Sandy was a gentle peaceful mom of four deeply dedicated to her children always.  She had a quirkly and vibrant sense of humor and joy in life.  She was actively progressive in her later years.  Also in later years she earned an MSW in counseling and worked as a therapist helping many.  I will miss this gentle friend.

Her daughter called me last Sunday and told me her mom was dying and would I call her before she did .  It was so difficult because I had to call by cell phone and only hope she heard me...but the hospice nurse said she smiled and did hear me.  After I hung up I remembered her love of Mary Oliver poems ....I called back and read one on death to her.  It was one of the hardest moments in my life to say goodbye---especially via a cell phone...rather the absurdity of tech modern life. 
One small memorial was today and a larger one will be later.  Below is the poem I read to her by Mary Oliver.  

When Death Comes – A Poem by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver ~

ps...I took a photo of an earlier photo from 2011 that I used on a March 4, 2011 blip...downloaded and reprinted from that and then posted.