Gamby

Gamby, We love and miss you greatly. You raised a most wonderful son and he loved you so very dearly. Sophie said she will always think about you and will always love you. Myself - I think about how you have always accepted me into your, and your son's life, as an immediate part of the family. I will never forget that. I love you.
We love you. We always will.

Some of your favorite poems:

NICK AND THE CANDLESTICK


I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs—

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

—Sylvia Plath

The Moon And The Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

-Sylvia Plath

ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE POEMS

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

Oh the ways...

Photo: A Time to Mourn by Sarah Osborne




Oh the Ways by Me

Dave Matthews just came out with a song called "Funny The Way It Is". I really like the song and words. Until the last few days have those words become particularly relevant.
Mourning doesn't involve simply a death.
It involves the loss of so many more things.
We mourn, we get angry, we learn to cope, then we live again.
Mourning becomes a circle of life within the circle of life.

What do we mourn?
We mourn the loss of a loved one - human or animal.
We mourn the loss of love.
The loss of health.
The loss of youth.
The loss of lust.
The loss of...

You miscarry a baby you have wanted for a very long time,
you long for one that has not yet been given life,
you lose the love you that was there but really wasn't,
you are not offered the life you thought you should have.
You lose a pet that has been with you for 16 years,
You lose a idol that has become part of your entire life - unaware.
You break a vase that has been in your family for years,
you "kill" a plant that was part of your mothers.


Along with the mourning, we also get angry. We cry, we curse,
we fill our souls with all of the why's that come along.
We fill our hearts with an ache that seems as if it will never depart.
An ache that completely sucks your life out of you.
Sleep can be significant therapy.
Care for yourself becomes unnecessary.
Patience becomes slim if not obsolete.
Your eyes ache from the pain that flows from your heart and then becomes a lack of tears.
Your stomach turns at a simple thought.
Why?
Why?
Why?

I can only believe that we are given hardships to make us stronger.
Although we may feel like life must be at an end, we begin to realize that
we are actually at a beginning.
A beginning of something new, something stronger, something easier,
something more important than that loss made itself into.
I have to keep that light into view no matter how dim.
I have to know that things will always work out.
They always do.
I have to know that the ones who matter are there
and the ones who don't care don't matter.

I have to believe that I have people around me that love me.
I have to believe that love is real and trust it.
I have to remember that one mistake and many abuses does not equal
an inability to trust myself or trust others.
I have to remember that God made me exactly the way He wants me to be - not to be what someone else thinks I should be.
But who I am - simply.
I have to believe that I am able to love and be loved in return.
That should never change.
Mourning turns to a new way of thinking.
-Or not.
You have to be the decider.
You have to determine if you can accept loss and move forward -
Forward onto to something new.
Something new.
Something.

Nothing is death.
Something is life.

I will always choose life.
I will make sure that those who depend on me will choose life as well.
Even if that will cost me everything.
That is what love and life is...
Everything.

Sshhhhhhh...

“So if we love someone, we should train in being able to listen.
By listening with calm and understanding,
we can ease the suffering of another person.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh

I have always been the one pegged to hear other peoples thoughts, fears, and troubles. It isn't something that I ask for...it just is that way.

I attribute that inclination to my ability to listen.
I listen because I am truly interested in and care about what is being said.

Granted, I may give my opinion afterward, sometimes too quickly and without being asked but my intention is not to judge but help ease suffering.
I sincerely do want to hear how people think and feel.
Not only do I connect to them in an intimate way but I also absorb other feelings and directions to use as my own. I am unsure if that makes me more accessible or less.

I listen to everything I can.

Think about nature and all of her glorious voices singing all around us.
A cricket chirping, thunder rolling, rain falling, sounds that lead us to such repose. Such repose that could not be replicated any other way. I remember sitting on Mamaw's porch watching the storms coming over the mountain.
Feeling the electricity, hearing the thunder, and seeing such powerful displays of God's orchestra.
It was part of my life that my family wanted me to experience and
I did.
There is nothing that will ever replace that and I shall pass it on to my family.

My trouble with conviviality is that I too have my own thoughts and opinions and I feel separated from others as a result. I construe that to a lack of self -confidence which I work hard to control as I do not want to pass that mannerism to my daughter. Even as a listener and a go-to person, I do tend to feel as if I do not fit in with any person or group completely. There are a few people - I could count on one hand - that I am truly comfortable with. Does that make me a true listener or does that make me a cast-away?
Use me when you need me?
Or is that only my perception?

As for my daughter...if there were ever a person to listen to, it would certainly be her. Not only do kids say the darnedest things, but they also speak with truth, innocence, and imagination. How could you not listen?
Sophie told us a few weeks ago that when she was still in Heaven, God told her she would have a Mommy and Daddy named Chris and Rachelle. She said, at first, she did not want to go, but God said it would be OK. Thus we have our insanely beautiful and immensely brilliant (we all think that huh?) daughter.
She was sent to us to save us.
And we needed to be saved.
Saved us she has.

Listening to your heart is an intrinsically important part of life.
If I had not listened to mine,
I would not have what is now outstandingly important to me.

When I was young, I used to wish on stars and I believed in fairy tales.
Those things do come true if listen close enough to make them recognizable.
Listening is the cornerstone of life.

You learn, you love, you want, you need,
you should always
LISTEN.

I doubt your path will ever venture in the wrong direction when lead by what your ears tell your heart and your mind.
Follow that path.
LISTEN...