"... a small town holds each other up, and lays a good one down"

The memorial service for the father of a friend brought me back to my summer home for a few days. Our town is the agricultural heart of the island and it was the Agricultural Hall that was the heart of the town yesterday. We gathered there in front of the hearth as one by one, children, grandchildren, colleagues and friends gave testimony to a life well lived.

I am sitting here this morning in a living room awash in sunshine. I spy my resting garden out the window. The ground is hard. All is still.

When I awoke on Thursday morning, and heard the radio announcer say, “Today is Thursday, February 8, 2007” I realized that had she lived, my mother would be celebrating her 90th birthday. One of the ways I pass my time in the winter is crawling out on the unfinished twigs of the family tree. I had been working for a few days on one of my mother’s great grandparents because of an email I had received. I was in the middle of that task when the phone rang. It was my mother’s brother, calling from across the country to remind me of my mother’s birthday. I hadn’t heard from him in over a year and it had been on my mind to check in on him. We caught up on family news and reminisced about mother. It was just the right way to honor her memory.

Here’s to lives well lived … and to stopping and remembering along the way.