by Josette Davison

The night has death within its hold

Not a creature creeps

Nor a baby weeps

As on the edge of day we wait

Each mind suspended fear

“No! No! No!”

The voice sliced through her head –

A scream from a woman

Hearing her husband was dead.

She couldn’t go to the woman or help her

Because she was trying to absorb her own news

Her husband also lay dead – and he was the driver.

Tommy, that vital, fun-loving man, lived no more.

She took the news stoically,

Hiding her tears as a secret.

She was alone.

Friends gathered to support her –

Clean the house, cook food, call the children, help make arrangements.

Nobody could really help. It was so final.

Her husband was dead. Twenty-six years of marriage lay cold and still.

She was alone.

No – that wasn’t true.

She still had her children, a son and a daughter.

They arrived home and did their best to support her.

Their need for an anchor gave her life a new balance.

She got on with living. She cried, mostly alone.

She grieved. Her mind roared with anger, diving to the depths of despair.

Tommy was so young and he had so much to live for.

But she cared for her elderly mother, gaining purpose in life.

She taught, continuing to mold young minds.

The laughter came back. Tommy was still part of her life.

He lived through her thoughts and in family stories and pictures.

Grace was strong and not really alone.  Life was different, but it could be good.

She survived.

Autumn is a melancholy season

Or so the poets say.

I don’t agree.

It’s not a sad and somber time.

Fall is a gush of vivid color – red, yellow, orange and gold

Along with the differing hues of the evergreens that make their home

In my mountains – the pine, spruce, hemlock and rhododendron.

No, autumn isn’t the season of dying and death.

It’s a time when the trees and earth sink into sleep, their long winter’s nap.

That sleep strengthens the world; the seasons change and the earth awakes.

Rebirth surges with the vibrant new life, the fresh tenderness, of spring.

Autumn isn’t melancholy; it’s part of the dance of life.

– Jenny Munro

If you’ve been told you have two to four weeks to live, what would do you do?

My cousin told her daughter she wanted a lemon pie

so her whole family could eat together one more time.

What would you do?

I’d write all those letters I’ve put off.

I’d call my family and tell them I love them.

I’d sit outside, or watch the glories of spring through a window.

I’d listen to the birds chirp and the leaves rustle.

I’d bring back all the good memories and hold them close.

I’d banish every bad memory I have.

And I hope I’d think of the adventure I am heading toward.

No one knows what death is like. Soon I’d know.

– Jenny Munro

(Written shortly after my cousin was given a time limit for her life)

by: Jenny Munro

Red and yellow, green and blue, pink and white – the balloons float up to Heaven

Through rain and sunshine, clouds and wind.

They begin their journeys in Florida and Rhode Island, South Carolina and Massachusetts, even Washington, D.C. But they all end in Heaven with Mark.

Those bits of rubber, air and color each honor the youngster, showing him he had family he’d never met – sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, even his mother (whom of course he knew) and a stepfather.

A person’s life and worth is not measured in years but in love.

Mark is rich in that.

– Jenny Munro