The year has passed away
Today is a whole year without Joe amongst us. It’s been both long and short. There are mostly good days now. I can again work, laugh, think, and even create a little. Weaving and spinning are my contemplative and comforting joys. I love my friends and family more fiercely than ever. I am back to being able to count my plentiful blessings. But the missing of Joe is a daily labor, and there are some days my heart is pressed down with the effort of accepting my life without him in it.
A good friend sent the following poem a month ago, and I happened upon it just now. I took the liberty of changing it slightly to suit my particularity, but if you go to my friend’s website, you can read it in the original.
Kaddish
Look around us, search above us, below, behind.
We stand in a great web of being joined together.
Let us praise, let us love the life we are lent
passing through us in the body of everything that is,
and our own bodies, let us say amen.
Time flows through us like water.
The past and the dead speak through us.
We breathe out our children’s children, blessing.
Blessed is the earth from which we grow,
Blessed the life we are lent,
blessed the ones who teach us,
blessed the ones we teach,
blessed is the word that cannot say the glory
that shines through us and remains to shine
flowing past distant suns on the way to forever.
Let us say amen.
Blessed is light, blessed is darkness,
but blessed above all else
is peace
which bears the fruits of knowledge
on strong branches
Let us say amen.
Peace that bears joy into the world,
peace that enables love.
Everywhere, blessed and holy is peace.
Let us say amen.
~Marge Piercy, from ‘The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme’.
I have chosen to end this first most difficult Kaddish year by assembling an exhibit of Joe’s photographs at the library. On January 20th, from 5-6 pm, one day after the anniversary of his death, one day into our second year, we will gather with friends and family at the library to look at his work together, and celebrate his great heart and discerning eye. I will post the photographs on LG for those of you who can’t make it to Tamworth.