I have been postponing writing this and this delay has become a big brick in my gut.
I don't think it is the postponing, actually, I think it is the reality of this event. The fact I have lost another friend to cancer.
We had lost touch as so often happens in adulthood. Lives intersect and separate and reconnect and fizzle and reignite on a regular basis. The love stays even while the regular contact goes.
It was almost nineteen years ago I named my daughter, Katherine, after her. My Kathie is Kath"ie" because my friend was "Kathie" and I found the spelling to be adorably perfect and just slightly unique enough to set my Katherine apart from the Katies and Kathys and Kathis that I knew. My friend, Kathie, had embraced motherhood with a zealousness rarely seen. She took that passion, went to Yale and became a Certified Nurse Midwife. In those days when my daughter was born, she was a friend who came with me to appointments because I lived in constant fear of second stillbirth.
When I went on bedrest, she talked me through it. I remember watching her face as she listened to my Kathie's heart tones via the doppler on my belly.
I found this quote yesterday. I knew she would love it:
"There is power that comes to women when they give birth. They don't ask for it, it simply invades them." Sheryl Feldman
My Katherine is now in her first year at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Like the woman she is named after, she is studying Biology.
I have been trying to find old photos without any luck. There is one specific photo I remember, taken when we were at a sales meeting when we both worked for a publishing company. It is somewhere, probably propped up in an album in my garage.
In the Pre-Digital Camera days I was much less fastidious in my photo taking.
She died on April 30, 2004. I revisited my ezine from that day to see what was happening for me the day she died.
I realize I was brand new in my theater adventure. I was rehearsing for "Songs for a New World" and my coaching career was in a great place. I was very happy. I wrote a string of haiku. It was a Friday.
The day Katherine died, my day looked like this:
= = = =
Before you follow any "I don't get poetry" thoughts,
stay here and look at these words as simply a snapshot
or glimpse into a moment of one woman's life.
Remember to have a GLORIOUS weekend, one as
remarkable as I know you to be.
Grateful energy
Stepping over boundaries
Hooray! Now I live!
Bright voices faces
Collaborate rhyme whispers
Gentle awakening
Go Go Cycle Roars
Trash Truck Rumbling Vibration
Samuel yells applause
This, This, This is it!
The Creator wrapped it and
Handed it to me
Emma wails loudly
Snuggle nose to smooth belly
Shared love opens hearts
Simple white package
Crinkled, cracker, ripple blot
Its perfect, Mom!
Bird salutes us
Parched dust beside rich green grass
Sandy pauses
Leave behind excess
So much more across the hill
Smiles flood the faces
===
The last lines are exceptionally poignant.
"So much more across the hill
Smiles flood the faces."
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