Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand, 
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson. 
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again, 
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult, 
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child. 
And amazing things can happen. And you may see, 

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her; 
she begins to grow. 

~Mary Oliver

6 years Mom has been gone…..for all of us who wander in between….

inquiry for today~ who remembers whom?

I imagine that one of the great store houses of blessing is the invisible neighborhood where the dead dwell. Our friends among the dead now live where time and space are transfigured. They behold us now in ways they never could have when they lived beside us on earth. Because they live near the source of destiny, their blessings for us are accurate and penetrating, offering a divine illumination not available according to the calculations of the given visible world. Perhaps one of the surprises of death will be a retrospective view of the lives we lived here and to see how our friends among the dead clothed us in weave after weave of blessing.

~John O’Donohue