Here is an extract from an email I received. It is published with permission.
I read with much interest and appreciation your recent diary entries, "Contemplations 1 - 4". I have watched two people close to me die - a good friend who died young from Cystic Fibrosis and my Mother, who died 12 and a half years ago, from various lung diseases. She died at home in her own bed with her family around her. I sat with her as her world closed in until taking the next breath was all and everything, until finally even that was given up. On that afternoon in early May, some hours before she died, she was extremely weak but she found the enough energy to haul herself out of bed and pull herself upright at the window sill and look out over the blossom trees that bordered the fields behind the house and call out Â’I want to see the spring againÂ…I donÂ’t want this to be the last springÂ’. These were more or less her last words. She died relatively peacefully about eight hours later. Almost a year to the day after her death I found myself in Canada sitting in a beautiful park close to Niagara Falls (my one and only Canadian visit). I was alone and sitting on a park bench doing nothing really except contemplating two large splendid cherry trees in full blossom.
Without thinking I just knew I was looking at those trees with their radiant white blossom through my MotherÂ’s eyes (at least there seemed to be no me in the seeing) - she loved cherry blossom. It lasted the fleetest of moments.
So she did see another spring; and I feel she always will see and be part of each and ever spring.
Thanks Tim.
And I am delighted to see a new blog, with the first posting published just moments ago. From The Edge of Europe A diary of Life in Kosova. It comes hot off the press and definatley faster than it took to post a handful of cards at the local post office.
