Turn Turn Turn

On this brilliant and breezy late winter day, the promise of renewal and new beginnings is all around: tender green shoots bursting skyward from the ground, seasonal bird songs that signal the coming spring, the delicate white snowdrop flowers I spied in the woods the other day, and much much more.

As goes the cycle of the seasons, and life in general, we all know that endings must come also.

Today's post is in remembrance of three lovely women recently deceased.  One death followed a long life, and two were lives cut short by illness.

My Aunt Lindabel was the maiden auntie, unencumbered by a husband and children, but great fun for us nieces and nephews.  In her prime, Lindy was petite, stylish, a bit racy (she smoked! she wore pants instead of skirts! she wore bright red lipstick!), funny, and adventurous.  She swam across Lake Washington here in Seattle well before there were organized events for that sort of thing. I'll always remember riding the backroads of Snohomish County in Lindy's vintage red Volkswagen Beetle convertible with the top down on summer days, laughing and singing.

Lindy was a great gardener and a member of the Begonia Club. She called them the "Begoniacs."

Jean was a kind, very smart, and nurturing soul with a sly sense of humor, a former colleague whom I met while working on a project at Yosemite National Park.  We struck up a cross-state friendship (she in San Francisco, me in Seattle), referred work to each other and collaborated on more projects, and shared a love of cats and dangley earrings. I teased her about being a "low talker," but whatever she had to say was well worth hearing. Jean also loved roses, gardening, dancing, Michael Jackson's music, her friends and family, and especially her husband Matt.


The temple bell stops ringing, but the song keeps coming out of the flowers.  -Basho 

Jean was passionate about roses and edited a scholarly rose journal.

The youngest of these three women was Mary, a gifted healer and physical therapist who stretched and moved beyond the conventional confines of her profession and broke new ground by combining Eastern and Western practices.  She was a  raven-haired beauty, a determined, brilliant, caring, adventurous, fun, and multi-talented woman who I and many others trusted implicitly with our injured and broken bodies. Mary leaves behind a legion of grieving friends, clients, fellow artists, fellow pracitioners, a big  family, her husband Steve, and her black lab Jacque II.

For Mary

a bird cries out
wind sweeps through a tree
I hold still and listen
for I realize
every blade of grass
in the field
every leaf in the forest
lays down its life
in its season
as earnestly as it began.

-Sarah Hart

Mary loved the Methow Valley and spent much time there.

Mt. Rainier was among the peaks that Mary climbed.

 And here is a link to a solo performance of Turn! Turn! Turn! by Roger McGuinn.

And now I'm headed outside to breathe in this beautiful sunny day.