Rosie

Sad news today, our Sr. Roseann Rice passed into eternal life Saturday morning. She was only 72 and had lived with Alzheimer's for 10 years--The Long Slow Goodbye--as the acclaimed TV special named it a few years ago. She was a lovely, sweet gal---and did indeed love roses, too. Memory service Wednesday evening followed by the funeral liturgy on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

One of Mary Oliver's takes on death:

Heavy

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it--
books, bricks, grief--
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also, troubled--
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?


Horseshoe Pond--where the houseboats "live" in winter. See the skaters and hockey players?