To My Beautiful Sister

Patty's struggles to fight this horrible disease are done, yet she fights on in allowing medical science to learn from her life and death.

My beautiful sister is gone from this world but remains forever in our hearts. Words cannot touch either our grief, right now, or Patty's serene and peaceful beauty.

Words sometimes come too fast and furiously to get them all down but, as they are thoughts of Patty, they are uniquely wonderful as well as painful; erudite while fraught with emotion and pain, but too many to make it intact to this blog right now.

Patty's children struggle with the death of their mother and Patty's sisters and family, drunkenly stumbling through all of this in their collective grief, try to keep it together for her bereft son and daughter, incredible images in so many ways of their Mom yet still unique and wonderful individuals in their own right. I love them so much; they are more precious than they will ever fully realize.

To those who have prayed for us, or even just sent a brief, kind thought in our direction, thank you.

To those going through this same type of struggle themselves, please know our hearts are fighting beside you though our minds must, necessarily, be elsewhere.

Our world feels smaller, more empty than before, yet incredibly full of the burgeoning life and heartbeat of this planet. I think this is as Patty would have had it.

Our greatest treasures are this life and those we have to love and who love us. All other attainments or possessions are, and should always remain, secondary to that.

Through our tears and heartache, we reach out to all others in our common humanity. Be at peace.

Izzlebug


Yet once again,
I am poured out.
An empty vessel
Cast aside upon
An endless beach of
Grief and pain.
Sand and ashes
Ebb; flowing with every tide
Until, in Time,
I stand,
Able to be filled again.