>    What a welcome bit of info about Bill...that's really wonderful to 
now
  >that he doesn't have to go for another check-up for another year.
I was delighted to hear it.
  >   It's a beautiful spring morning here.....I got up at 0500 to let the 
og
  >out, and then went back to bed.......I just laid and listened to the Doves 
a
  >the other birds outside the window .  Figured I had
  >better get up and get some stuff done.
This is proving to be a sad week for me.  I attended a memorial service
yesterday for an older friend of mine.  He would have turned 80 in
September.  He died of cancer of the liver, but it was all very sudden.
He had bad stomach pains on Saturday, the 3rd.  He went to the hospital
on the 4th, was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer on the 7th, and
was dead on the 9th.  He was a Quaker, so everybody who wanted to could
speak at the memorial service. It was a "popcorn" meeting, with one
person bouncing up after another, telling both funny and tender stories
about him.  Even my son, Rob, spoke.  He and Rob got along really well
together. The church was packed. Every seat was taken. Folks were
standing in the aisles and leaning against the back of the church. He
was a really good musician, and close friends with some of the top
musicians this century has produced (folks like Bernstein, for example).
But he was also friends with all sorts of very common folks, too.  He
wrote delightful, and often incredibly funny, poetry; and he played a
mean game of Scrabble.  Mario and I went to say good-bye to him the
night before he died.  His daughter and his older brother were holding
his hand when he died.  She talked about the experience.  She said she
was holding his hand, and then, suddenly, something came out of him; and
was right there in her face.  And then he took off.  He didn't vanish.
He didn't rise to the sky.  He just took off through the wall, and away,
like he knew exactly where he was going.  She said it was so sudden that
it was actually a physical shock to her.  She said to her uncle, "He's
gone!"  And then she looked at his body.  It was still breathing.  It
breathed for a minute or two more.  And then it was over.
Another older friend also died.  His funeral will be Thursday.  It will
be a smaller funeral.  This was more a man known to his family and
a small circle of friends, not to people around the globe.
Many deaths is the price I pay, however, for liking the company of the
old.  And the price is worth it.  As the grand nephew of the Quaker I
just described said about him, "Because he was so old, he could teach
me things about love I would, otherwise, have had to wait for years to
learn.  He taught me that love is not affection.  It is not fondness.
Affection and fondness are important things in human relationships, but
love is something different.  Love is a willingness to suffer alongside
those who are in pain; and to rejoice with those who are happy, no
matter how little or how much affection exists between you."
                         Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ 50% of my forefathers were female.
--- Opus-CBCS 1.7x via O_QWKer 1.7 
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