Category: - A Cottage by the Sea

Should I go to visiting hours? YES, please go!

5/9/2022

If you’ve every find yourself debating whether to attend visiting hour or not, please, please go. Someone has died; the family has chosen to have public visiting hours—referred to a wake back in the day. Should I go? I don’t know the person who died very well; I don’t know the family at all. Should I go? Yes, go! The grieving family, in offering visiting hours, wants you to come. When we invite people to a party, we want them to say yes. What if no one came? Please, please go.
This morning I went to visiting for our neighbor who died at age 41, leaving a wife and two year old. I didn’t know them well. The sadness was palpable, but so was the gratitude that neighbors showed up. Please, please go.

Sad but not gloomy

2/15/2022

1985

You know me, I am not the prophet of gloom or sadness, but I am feeling sad this morning, sad but not gloomy.

Chet, my wonderful principal during my joyful teaching days, died yesterday, appropriately on Valentines Day. All of the Haynes School alumnae teachers knew that his life was coming to an end. On our monthly zoom meetings, which he named The Quilt, he had shared the host of medical issues that he was dealing with. Individually we were able to be in touch with him via email. Right up to the end Chet was cognizant, grateful, optimistic, and joyful. His wife, three children and grandchildren were with him when he died.

Three very good friends of mine have died in the year of 2022. For sure, that is fodder for gloom and sadness. But what appears is lives well-lived. So I say, "Let Evening Come."

Death asks us to remember

2/9/2022

Again, I behind with my posts. I want to keep up with this, believe me. I want to keep up with it because I want to keep up with solitude, for myself, and for you who also love silence, solitude, and simplicity.
Much has been happening. Church work, which I have chosen and love, but which has absorbed a good deal of my writing time; I can do just so much ‘on the screen’ on a given day. Then, two very close friends have died, early in January my best college friend, and just the other day another good friend.
Death asks us to stop and be, stop and consider, stop and pray, stop and remember. When we remember the good, the meaning, and the love that a friend has shown, we have a good chance to remember to live it out in our own lives. I can only do this in silence, solitude, and simplicity, and that is what I am been doing.

Let Evening Come

1/9/2022

My best college friend died in her sleep yesterday morning at her brother’s home. She was ill for just couple of months; was hospice for one of those months. A good death, as we might say. I will miss her but am grateful for our friendship of unconditional love.

Love,
Bobbi

Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

Birth and death, parts of the journey

10/17/2019

Today I feel deeply comfortable and at peace in my silence, solitude, and simplicity. But why? I am saddened by the death of Elijah Cummings, and that a dear friend of fifty years in spending his last days at the hospice residence where I used to be the spiritual care counselor. Certainly not a time of joy, but definitely a time of gratitude for friendships and lives well lived.
Maybe, just maybe, we feel deeply comforted and peaceful when we unite with individuals who, having made a positive difference during their earthly years, are now putting an Amen to their lives. At times like this I am reminded that before death there was birth. Maybe, just maybe, my comfort also comes from the news of the joyful birth of a friend’s granddaughter. Birth and death are givens in the human journey; embracing and celebrating both, not as separate events, but as parts of something much bigger than we can explain, is what seems to brings profound comfort and peace.

Marching away grief and fear~

11/15/2016

After solving computer problems at the Apple Store (the geniuses were fabulous in all the ways I need—expertise, patience and friendliness), I took a walk to visit my ninety-five year old friend, Ruth. I needed the exercise and companionship to make sense of my grief and fear: grief at the passing of Gwen Ifill; fear for transgender friends who are scared for their lives, immigrant families afraid that they will be separated from their core loved ones, and women afraid they will lose intimate control of their bodies.
Again and again, I am reminded that I have NO idea what it is like to be marginalized, and that I am called to stand in solidarity for basic human dignity. I am seriously considering attending the Women’s March on Washington January 21st. I’ll see how it develops.

Always seeking meaning~

10/31/2016

     I’m still working on the article, and plan to send it our after I tweak the title to my satisfaction.
    Today, however, I’ve been think about friends I see only occasionally. We get together once in a while, maybe just a couple of times a year, exchange a few emails, and that is enough--unless something comes up, and then communication picks up. Because we are not involved in the details of each other’s lives, our conversations are free of judgments about what one of us should do. Instead, we get right to the point of life--what we are doing to find meaning in our lives.
    The other day a friend acknowledged that his ninety-year-old mother-in-law on hospice is still searching for meaning. In accompanying her, the family is also finding personal and collective meaning. Death, one of our biggest teachers, shows us that meaning making is communal.
    Hmm, here’s a post script: for those of us who love silence, solitude and simplicity, that longing can only be satisfied in community.

Missing a long-time friend~

10/12/2015

Here’s my blurt for today. I’m feeling a pall, which is something I usually don’t experience. It’s a beautiful day. I am very grateful for family and friends, my health and my life. I’m going to see my two sisters and brother next weekend, something that doesn’t happen often since my brother lives in Portland, Oregon. Then I’m off to Italy by myself for two glorious weeks of solitude. So much to be grateful for, and I am.
I’m usually a half full kind of person, but sadness looms when we lose a long-time very good friend. I’m just being with it and being grateful for the friendship and good times.

Remembering Mom~

10/3/2015

Four years ago my mom took her final breath, died, passed away. There are myriad ways of saying it. Died feels final and clinical; final breathe softens it. For me, however, passing away feels more like what my mom did, but I want to add ‘to a better place’, whatever that means? I don’t know, no one knows, but many of us believe that something beyond this earthly exist, and that it is good. Christianity declares it, and those of other faiths, as well as agnostics and atheists, have a sense that death is not final. For many believing that death is a big black hole is too frightening. For everyone, there are the memories.

Remembering Mom~

10/3/2014

I continue to find it challenging to write for this blog while working on my book about my mom—an overload of writing. But somehow it comes together. Like today, the third anniversary of Mom’s death. Writing about our life together, and particularly about the last two years of her life, has been healing and informative. The memory of Mom’s journey toward increasing solitude comforts me during those times when I am alone. I am reminded that in my busy world I need the balance of solitude.