Ten years after you’ve gone, you still show up in my life in so many small ways. Your photo is right at home on my little altar, and many mornings, it’s the first thing I see.

And I’m down in Louisiana again, retracing your steps. I guess you know I’ve fallen in love with this place, even though I couldn’t wait to leave decades ago. I’m pretty sure you understand what a lovely and surprising joy it is to return home, and to fall into the open and welcoming arms of our family.

I’m getting to know them better – and to appreciate the many ways they still thrive. Together, they’re still going through all the tedious and wrenching challenges of a life with a big dose of humor, and still doing good work in the community. They enjoy each other. A few cousins still remember you. At family gatherings before the Virus, when we could still all get together, your name came up in the old stories about those who came before us.

And I’m still making my way through your boxes, though that goes in spurts. I’m not sure who, in the future, will care about all the old letters and photos. But I want to hurry to do that work. I’m not terribly far away from my own drifting-down years – and I want to share those photos with anyone who remembers you before they, too, just let go. I keep thinking about your down-to-earth perspective on bodies and aging. “Things wear out, after all!” Eventually, inevitably, we will all just wear out. Before that happens to me, I want to do what I can to preserve and share this legacy.

These days, some new things are happening in my life, even without you. I’m just wrapping up another book – this time, a kind of “homage” to our home-ground state, and to the lovely and healing graces of Nature that it offers. Louisiana Herb Journal will come out sometime this year. And I’m aging, as you did over such a long period of time. I’d love to talk with you about this curious and interesting and frustrating trek. I’m sure you’d have a lot to share.

And I still love life – still enjoy my daughters and friends. My grandson Peter, whose photo I used to send you once in a while, is a quirky 12 year old. He’s inches taller than I am, and still growing. My little pooch Bodi is 13 now, but still happy and feisty. And my sister is still baking yummy treats at the restaurant.

But the world is not such an easy place these days. It’s a complex time, for sure – a strange world you’ve left us with. We’re certainly getting used to loss, especially with the Virus, and with our increasing fragility. Lately, we are all grieving the uncertainty, the planet’s instability, the inequity we’ve normalized, the fears, and wars, the imbalances, the tattered hopes and expectations.

Some things are shifting in a good direction, though. Even if you wouldn’t quite understand all the issues, you’d agree that love is the most important thing – that no one should be excluded, or privileged, because of something so ambiguous as skin color or political leanings or wealth. I know you’d want everyone – every child, every adult, every creature, to be held gently in the embrace of life. So we’re taking some halting steps in that direction. We don’t know how to work out all the details yet. But I think we’ll handle it, if we’re willing to keep showing up, and if we have faith.

I’m not sure what your situation is right now, or where you are – but if you’re still keeping an eye on this gorgeous and trembling world, maybe you can intercede in getting prayers to the right “department.” We’d all appreciate the help. Of course, I know you’re still caring and loving us all – and that’s a healing in itself.

I still love you, in the quietest and gentlest of ways. I’m still not sure if I can ever really say Goodbye. So for now, I’ve decided to say Thank You instead.

Thank you for welcoming me into the world. Thank you for love and for dedication. Thank you for what you modeled in your own approach to life. Thanks for your willingness to learn, even when you knew so much – and for your willingness to teach even your most unruly students (including me!). Thank you for forgiving my inabilities and rigidities and the small fractures of my heart. You knew the truth about relationships – we all trample over those we love. But when we stick it out, something rare and tenacious and sweet grows from our efforts.

Thank you for being a doorway into our legacy of family bonds and care. Thank you for your high standards and modest expectations – for your joy and passion, and angst and foibles. Thank you for your reverence and compassion – your intelligence and wit – your devotion and dignity. Thank you for your passionate life, and for your graceful death. Thank you for letting me into your small private world, and for letting me share mine. I love you – and that’s a forever thing, even though you’re gone.

As routine as it has become to live without you, I still love this little Love Room we made – am still humbled and grateful and surprised at how much sweetness there has been in knowing – and celebrating – and even grieving – you. Though I don’t think about you as often these days, it’s such a gift to know that if I stop, and wait, and am quiet for a while, you might show up. Or at the very least, that the little doorway we’ve made between the worlds of being here now, and of what went before, will stay open a bit, and we can say hello. I’m so happy about that.

I guess I’m not sure I will ever want to lay you down. But that’s okay. Maybe I don’t need to. I’ll continue to imagine you, all filmy and ethereal, standing right behind me, showering me with sweet care, and hoping the best for us all. That’s such a rare and blessed thing.

I know you join me in praying for the world –
May all be well.
May the whole world, and all its inhabitants, be well.

And wherever you are, may you know how much you are loved. That will never end, no matter what happens to the Love Room over time. That, too, is a rare and blessed thing.