In Loving and Grateful Remembrance

Today is my Mother's Birthday. She departed this earth twenty six years ago. My epitaph for her is from the great poet, Pablo Neruda: "It was beautiful to live when you lived." This morning I came across this quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." What a deceptively simple phrase, so pregnant with meaning.   And, what a superb metaphor for why we suffer.  The answer is not to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," although I love Dylan Thomas' poem. One's dark night of the soul is like a refining fire if we can find the faith and fortitude to come through it.  We find ourselves "enlarged by love."   I found this to be so when I came through the other end of mine.   On this, the anniversary of my Mother's birth, beside her quiet joy I remember her pain and many sorrows.  I remember how she bore them with grace and unshakeable faith.   She is one now with those incandescent stars. Namaste.