'I've never had a lot of money so I give what I have, groupings of words hoping to touch & to heal. Please receive in love.
Just like
poison ivy the antidote always blooms in
a plant right next to it.
whenever negative is near God provides
a positive relief. We just have to see it
and make use of it.
Both her and my grandmothers penmanship was beautiful. Distinctive.
She credited it to all the push pulls she had to do in school.
Crazy to learn schools are no longer teaching cursive. Signs from another time.
The thing about her being a writer, is that
she always wrote.
It was everywhere.
The above passage was on the inside cover of a 97 cent Walmart special Jumbo Word Puzzle Book circa 1996. Who knows when she wrote it. Going thru her things in the days just after she had passed, I let her words be a reminder. I shared the bracketed portion above at her remembrance held in Otsiningo Park. Perfect.
"Whenever negative is near, GOD provides a positive relief. We just have to see it and make use of it."
She's funny. Even in her painful days & ways, she found the light.
The day we gave remarks-in front of my brother, dad, her brother, and a few friends, I promised to get her published. I didn't know what that meant, looked like or even how to start. Truth is, in the earliest months following her passing, everything was just too raw to even open up her pages. Too hard to hear her voice thru her words. She was/is/always will be so present/honest/palpable. It was all so overwhelming & saddening to even consider diving in. But stirring within all the fear I had inside of me, there was also a rumble to the core shaking ever louder than it all. I don't know what brazen arrogance encouraged me to blurt out,
"We will get her published"
And here I am.
Integrity sits pretty high on my set of core values. Showing up how & when I say i will is important. Follow thru. So now, it begins.
What is in a legacy? What defines the value of ones life? My Mother left behind a myriad of gifts. Her expressions, her time, her life, have made me who I am. She lives on thru her words. My gift to her, is to catalogue her work, and continue the conversation.
With her death, everything changed for me-Everything.
I couldn't imagine going back to the way things were,
because to me that meant I was ok with it all somehow.
With her absence I have been driven awake.
I feel it all, in a way, I always had.
But with this new reality
I refuse to slip back to the numb-ness of monotony and unease.
The way I see it, that would be disrespectful.
How unique this wild one shined.
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