… You died and so did my words.
from “A Trilogy of Loss and Love for Annie” in my forthcoming collection, Skyborne Insight, Homemade Love (2026)
Now, I grasp at memories of you in all the familiar places.
Talk to you as I had, rooms utterly quiet without you.
Imagine you on the cushion that still rests on the floor beside me,
where, overcome with sadness, I lay down and cry.
I grasp at words, jotting them down to hold onto forms
that might come, all the while knowing you never will.
This was the case after our Annie dog passed suddenly in June, 2023. It was months before words came and I could pen this poem for her. For us.
So it has been now. Shortly after my last post, wherein I gave a glimpse into my trekking tour of Bhutan, still in the throes of jet lag compounded by our annual “fall back” time change, I traveled east across two Canadian time zones to be with my family as my ninety year old mother lay dying in palliative care.
She died on Thursday, November 13, 2025, minutes before my father and I arrived to resume our morning vigil. Not unusual, their compassionate GP had offered days before, hoping to give my father permission to go home to rest, saying that 90-95% of palliative patients choose to die alone.
Since January 2025, my mother had suffered from chronic diarrhea resulting in plummeting electrolyte levels and several emergency hospitalizations. Waxing and waning, actually having begun days before their 70th anniversary in January 2024, each crisis more depleting for her and my father. Then, when my words were more accessible, and writing in real time, I had posted:
“I’ve had plenty of time to think…about family patterns and dynamics, history and story, roles and rules. I smile to myself thinking that undergraduate degree in family studies and social work graduate degree specializing in individuals, families, and groups have served me well. Distance, too, has long been double-edged, giving me space, clarity, and perspective, all helpful in navigating liminal terrains such as this, an eldering landscape.“
Poetry emerged quite quickly, this excerpt a reworking of the above:
… Today, keeping vigil for my mother, weighing if the 70th wedding anniversary celebration
from “Epiphany” in my forthcoming collection,
for which we’d booked our flights would instead become her funeral,
I’ve had plenty of time to think. To see my family’s patterns and dynamics.
Know the stories and our secrets, the roles and rules, our shames and triumphs …
Skyborne Insight, Homemade Love (2026)
But now, apart from a few emails to friends, and my mother’s obituary, despite a tidy pile of submission calls sitting on my desk, I haven’t written a word. I’ve wondered, with an extra wave of grief, would I ever feel moved to write another poem? My dear editor in a recent email unequivocally assures me, yes.
Such a remarkable, unexpected gift to have been in Bhutan mere weeks before my mother’s passing. Or perhaps it was a case of pure synchronicity – the overarching and underlying “right place, right time” moment that had marked so many of my moments there. As a country held deeply in Buddhism, it takes seriously living well to die well, with ceremonies, prayer flags, and stupas ever evident reminders of death and the soul’s journey to its next life. Profound for me in having been so freshly steeped in this way of being and how it served us as my mother lay for five days on the threshold of living and dying. Now, according to that tradition, her soul journeys in the Bardo for 49 days searching for a new, next life.
January 1, 2026. May she and we who grieve know peace.
In the post that I wrote nearly two years ago, I opened with a quote from theologian Frederick Buechner which bears repeating here, on the eve of Solstice, as a reminder, a blessing, a prayer.
“One life on this earth
is all we get, whether it is enough
or not enough, and the obvious conclusion
would seem to be, that at the very least
we are fools if we do not live it
as fully, and bravely, and beautifully
as we can.”
In the past few days, I recalled my poem to Annie and that I’ve been here before in this place of no words. I remembered that grief’s way is to have its unique way with each of us. I heeded the wise words gifted to me days before I flew in to be with my family – “no urgency” – its message symbolized by the small red stone carved with a turtle, a long-ago gift from my father when he once visited, which together with prayer flags and lama-blessed Bhutanese bracelets I fetched from my altar to gift my family.
And somehow, taken together, I was moved to rise from a warm bed and in the cold dark of this December morn descend into my studio and write. Not a poem, but words to renew my commitment to live my life as fully, and bravely, and beautifully as I can.
No urgency.
Trusting the synchronicity of right place, right time moments.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And may the blessings of this season be yours.
A Wabi Sabi Life 