Love

A friend's husband died two days ago. He was in his nineties, certainly old enough to die, but our pregnant daughter cried and cried. She'll have her baby in the next weeks, and she was close to him, having rented his upstairs apartment until recently, seeing him through the course of their lives.



I remember when I was a girl in high school, and my friend introduced me to the concept that with every death, there is a birth. I'm reminded of that now, as we await the coming and going of those we love, this natural flow.



In preparation for their baby, our daughter and her husband have remodeled the house my husband and I lived in when we were their age. We've kept it these twenty-three years as a rental, and it had fallen in disrepair. They've brought it back with color and their care for place. This is where their baby, our grandson will play and rest and teach our own daughter and son-in-law something of love.



Our bereaved friend loved, as she ushered her husband of forty-six years to the other side, washing his body and laying flowers, gently, to say her goodbye. Love is, as I alternately find joy and forgiveness for my own life, lived with some growing wisdom as I acknowledge our human frailty and nobility. I witness love as I sit on my daughter's porch, once my own, watching her burgeoning form, tears falling from her eyes in awe of this coming child and the taking of her place as 'mother'.



I can see through this dim glass that this is our only need--task--requirement, commission--it is only love.