Seeing Clearly: August 2011

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Join Mom's memorial page on facebook.

Share your stories, and post pictures!

Monday, August 8, 2011

Our darling mother passed away yesterday morning, at around 10:30am. Both of her children were at her side.

There will be a service at Dimnent Memorial Chapel on Sunday, August 14th, at 2pm. Further details to come.

Love to all,
Annie and Jon

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Annie Post: Mom is Back Home

Good very early morning to you all. Thanks so much for all your kindness over the past few days. Mom received so many flowers while in the hospital that we ran out of places to put them. Thankfully, we're back home and they're decorating every room of the house. We also have more food in our fridge than we could ever possibly eat - but that is also a wonderful blessing, as none of us have any interest in thinking about grocery shopping at present.

Hospice had come in and decked out one of our bedrooms with all the equipment and gear to keep her as comfortable as possible, and Kathy Thornhill and Carolyn Gundrum kindly found some appropriately hippie (peace signs!) sheets to throw on her bed.

Because she is very weak, we would prefer to limit visits to the house. If you'd like to see her, please call in advance, and we'll let you know if that will be possible. You are more than welcome to relay messages to her through me or Jon. If you feel the need to "do something!" as so many of you have so kindly expressed, we often need errand-runners for supplies and/or prescriptions, and Jon and I will graciously welcome any gifts of beer. Or wine. Seriously. It's needed, trust me. We might also need a place for out-of-town visitors to crash, if you have an extra room nearby.

Deborah Mack (my dad's sister), my grandpa, and our cousin Ashley will be coming into town tomorrow, and we eagerly await their arrival.

Thanks once more for your concern. It's no wonder that my mom has touched so many lives that we're now overwhelmed with your generosity. Please continue to keep her in your prayers and thoughts.

With love,
Annie

Monday, August 1, 2011

From Jon

Hi everyone,

I'm posting on mom's behalf with an update. The cancer in her liver has made her extremely dehydrated and as a result she's spending a few days at the hospital while they rehydrate her. They're also treating her for an ammonia build-up resulting from her liver's reduced capacity to filter it. The ammonia has made her a little confused, but that should clear in the next day or two.

For anyone who wants to send a card or flowers, she's at Holland Hospital in Room 411, Bed 1.

Please send all the thoughts, prayers, and positive energy you can her way.

Thanks,
Jon

ps - Mom needs a lot of rest while she's recovering, so if you have any questions send either Annie (ahagar at gmail dot com) or me (jonhagar at gmail dot com) an email and we'll do our best to fill you in with the latest.

The Journey

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.

a poem from TRAVELING MERCIES by Annie Lamott

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--w.s. merwin

from Kabir, Indian mystic poet

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!...

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten--

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Night Letter to theReader by Billy Collins

Night Letter to the Reader

I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,

a bird leaving the nest,

a snail taking a holiday from its shell,

but only to stand on the lawn,

an ordinary insomniac

amid the growth systems of garden and woods.

If I were younger, I might be thinking

about something I heard at a party,

about an unusual car,

or the press of Saturday night,

but as it is, I am simply conscious,

an animal in pajamas,

sensing only the pale humidity

of the night and the slight zephyrs

that stir the tops of the trees.

The dog has followed me out

and stands a little ahead,

her nose lifted as if she were inhaling

the tall white flowers,

visible tonight in the darkened garden,

and there was something else I wanted to tell you,

something about the warm orange light

in the windows of the house,

but now I am wondering if you were even listening

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

but this is what I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare's

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

This poem does what all good art does-it makes my heart fill as I recognize myself in it, and I say, "yes! that is exactly it!" and I realize once again that I need to tell you so many things. I feel inspired. Alive.

There are not enough hours.

a note from Kevin Griffin, author and spritual leader from Shambhala