"There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart. Ghandi"

     I have always planned on being cremated someday, as natural burials aren't yet an option in this country.  I would like my atoms to live on as part of nature, as part of a tree....watching the seasons change, with birds nesting in my hair....something like this:

Be the change you want to see in the world

     My brother mentioned that he and his wife plan to have their ashes commingled someday.  I love that idea and think I will ask the kids to commingle Dean's and my ashes someday.  This seems so much better.

Be the change you want to see in the world

     After one of our first dates Dean and I went to the Pub, a little basement snack bar between his college dorm and mine.  We held hands and talked for hours.  I will always remember this.  The following words and poem by the author Alexander McCall Smith remind me.

And finally, here is a poem about taking the hand of another. I wrote it some years ago, but it often comes back to me at unexpected moments. It is best read aloud, and if you are with somebody whose hand you can take while you read it, all the better. If you have nobody, then think back and remember somebody whose hand you would wish to hold, and imagine that that person is with you: an old friend, a lover of a long time ago, somebody for whom you would have done anything, the love of your life:

Take my hand and tell to me,
All that you would wish to be,
Show the landscapes of your heart,
Map the journey love may start.
Hard against the shifting sand,
Lie the signposts of that land,
In which the contours of the dream,
Make nightly visions holy seem;
Dream that once upon your knee
You entertain a lion to tea.
Quantum physics says to us
We shall dissolve in atomic fuss;
Remember me when all is still?
Of course I will, of course I will.

AMcS  (Alexander McCall Smith writing about hands)


Happy Anniversary, Dean.