Reflections on a life

I drove home last night in a pensive mood, taking time to photograph the water that caught my eye.


Reflections in a small eddy of a stream, 


the stream itself as it sparkled in the setting sun. 


The ripples of water on the lake and the sun streaming through the pines. 



This morning I woke to rain pattering, then pouring on my steel roof. Lighting cracked the mist and there was my brother's dog, leaning against my patio glass door. Jade hates thunder.  She wanders down the hill occasionally to check on me but she never comes into the house. Today she came in and after circling restlessly, finally flopped at my feet.  Glad for unexpected company on a rainy day, I read poetry to both of us and waited for the rain to stop and the electricity to return.

After the brief storm, I had electricity. Jade returned up the hill to her doghouse. I made my tea and toast and checked my emails.

"It's over. Leslie passed...."


I didn't know Leslie well but she is, I guess she was, a friend of a friend.  She fought a valiant fight against all odds and after the cancer was driven from her body, she succumbed to a lurking parasite deep in her brain. In the end, her weakened immune system could not defend her against the toxoplasmosis she was exposed years ago.  She leaves behind a loving husband and son, and a host of friends and friends of friends who have prayed with her, for her in this final season.

ripples in the lake formed by a passing boat.

 Leslie's friends connected to support her
 and continue to ripple into each other's lives.

  Leslie's suffering affected us all.

Can there be beauty in that? 

I was able to go to Virginia and stay near National Institute of Health when Leslie needed a companion after her bone marrow transplant. That's how we met- in her hospital room.  She was funny but very firm about what food she could eat. She was grateful for my company but spent hours on an internet live feed watching eaglets hatch in Indiana.  She was a real person and still a saint.  I was blessed to know her and I wear the hat and scarf she knit for me with gratitude.
Our time together closed my own grief circle and released me from my fear and dread of hospitals. My husband spent his last months at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, directly across the street from Leslie's room.  Our time together was healing- for both of us.



But her body, like Bill's, did not endure the brokenness of earth.  And none of ours will survive it either.  We come from dust,  we return to dust.  No one gets out of here alive.





Except we do.  Just like the mist obscures my vision today and the hills are hidden behind a veil of white, our vision of what is after this life is obscured.  The veil between what we know and what is coming is a fog.  But I know the hills are there- in the light they stand strong.  And we know by faith that behind the veil of death, life awaits.   So, rejoice in Life, Leslie!  Gaze on Jesus.  Say hello to Bill and my dad.  I trust you've already hugged yours.  

 We'll all be there soon enough.

What will the ripples of our life look like?