Country Mouse Monday: endings, beginnings, sweetness

One week ago today, my youngest sister passed away after years of cancer and illness. She was a brilliant person who changed dramatically in the final years of her life, away from the person we knew into some other creature with a different family and a desire not to know us.

To say the last four years have been painful is an understatement.

And so her death, finally, was a relief in many ways -- relief that she no longer suffers, relief that her 6-year-old daughter no longer witnesses her wasting away, relief that my family at last grieves in earnest instead of wracking our brains for how to fix the broken.

For me, the Country Mouse, naturally on that day a week ago, I found solace in the dirt.

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making choices because we can

pensive, on a juice cleanseIt's another day in our long, long death-watch.

The news this morning was the same as yesterday, that we're counting in hours now. My baby sister has hours left, at most a day.

But since Carla has defied all of the medical wisdom to date, has stubbornly and repeatedly illuminated at every turn the limits of our understanding of the miracle and mystery of the human body, who knows? We could be at this a long, long time.

But really, I doubt it. 

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