June 9

Two years ago, at the end of May, I traveled out to Goshen and spent a few days with Mitch and Heidi in the immediate aftermath of her placement on hospice care.  It was a visit of both deep pain and also deep love.  In a private blog that I was keeping, I wrote the following:

       So what is the top thing to do when time is running short?  Turns out, it is to finally get the Christmas              cards out!  So we clipped, folded, packed, wrote, addressed, stamped, all the while munching on                  snackies and humming along to CDs.

       Sometimes it feels weird that we are having this much fun considering the circumstances.  Other times it          feels like the most natural thing in the world.

I thought of this memory as I reflected on Twilla's remembrance, posted yesterday.  I love the living that Heidi was having in these days... days that were extremely hard but also so intensely precious.  

I responded to this visit in a haiku, written May 21, 2012:

finality taste

evening so ordinary

but never again?

~ Maria