Thanks to all of you for your ongoing support. It is refreshing. There was a period of my life when bad things happened and no one was there.

Thanks for the recommendation of the book Dotsie.
I found it at the library. I pick it up on Friday. And I plan to buy a copy.

Now for an update relative to my sister.

The day after I made the tape for Anita, I mailed the package and then went to our small public phone utility to find out what was available locally relative to receiving phone calls while I'm online - for the emergency call from my sister's family that is surely coming. I learned of my options - all poor for full-time writers/artists who have yet to make a living at it. The only viable option was $50 a month for DSL. This is more than our strict budget allows.

While I was talking to Rhonda, the receptionist at the phone company, about Anita, I felt the heaviness oppressing me, like it has been since learning of the prognosis. I had known it was coming, but as you all know and some of you have said, when it actually arrives is something else again. I talked to her about my sister, and she asked about my brother - which I have mentioned in a reply to another posting under the murdered category and the book I'd written about that.

Three fourths of my way through the conversation a local colorful guy, Jose, former rocket scientist and amateur philosopher came in. He and I have had many extensive conversations about life, the meaning of it, reality, etc. He looked at me and told me there was something different about me, that my aura had change. I felt the change. It felt dark, heavy, intense. I told him that my sister is dying - that's what he saw. He said that usually I have a lot of confidence and it all effervesces from me and that that had changed.

On the way home I got to thinking about his comments, and all the losses I've experienced. I began analyzing what I was feeling. I realized that some of what I was feeling was my own grief, but some of it was the grief of my family members. I felt some of what my brother-in-law, Dan, is feeling because of the death of my boy friend of pancreatic cancer in 1988. I felt some of what my sister's kids are feeling because of losing my dad in 1983 when I was 34. Empathy is a biggy for me, but it can be debilitating. The words that kept coming to me were - this is not my heartache. Yes, I have my own impending loss, but.... I began to think what I've learned from my losses - I've considered this upteen times over the years. But here I was again. I began to think that some of what we perceive as bad things will always happen on this level of existence - here on Earth. I made a conscious decision not to be leveled by them every time -easy to say, harder to put into practice. There has to be a better way of dealing with "bad things" personally, and I'm not talking about faith here. This is not a crisis of faith. I'm talking about finding a way to dissolve the heaviness oppressing me.

So like I do sometimes when I'm alone, I talked aloud to God. A lot of my thoughts are really ongoing conversations with God. So I said to God that I choose not to let this kind of thing oppress me anymore. I asked for help with this, of course, and I began to say I am light. It's not just that I wanted God's light to surround me, but rather that I am that light. I thought of the little song we sang in Sunday school - "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." I didn't feel the heaviness lift right away. It's a discipline thing for me - I'm practiced at depressing myself. But the heaviness did ease. There's a mantra that goes with this kind of thing, one that came to me some years ago: I am the light. I am the heart of God. I am the soul of the One. So I said it again and repeatedly.

This was last Friday. On Monday, two days ago, I went down to my mom's and picked her up. She no longer has a driver's license. I took her up to see my sister. It's two hours south to Mom's, three hours north to my sisters, then it's an hour south to my house. Before I left Phil, my husband, said, "Remember you are there to love. You are not there to solve their problems, just to give love." I always want to fix things for everyone, so I have to keep his words in mind.

We arrived at Anita and Dan's. She is obviously so ill - she now has the look of one who is dying. It was the first time I had seen it on her. Apparently she had hardly been off the couch during the day, since she got out of the hospital a week earlier, the last time I saw her. A number of her family members were there. They'd come to visit Mom and me, but mostly I think it was Mom - a grandma thing. I visited with them, in my sister's presence and away from her. It was a good visit.

Yesterday I got an email from my sister's daughter - we haven't emailed before. She said that the visit did her mother a lot of good, that after we were gone her mother got off the couch and began playing computer games with her four-year-old great grandson. My niece said she hoped I came back real soon, that it was the first time there had been life in the house for a week. I told her that my husband, Phil and I, will be back next week the day after her parents' appointment with hospice.

Today, Dan let us know that the doctor gave Anita stronger medication for pain yesterday, and she slept through the night for the first time in a long time.

There are a number of reasons that over the years I have not been around my sister's family much - only occasional family things. But I do love them. During that time I've been healing myself, growing, becoming. My current growth step is to become light full-time.

This brings to mind something one of my spiritual mother's said to me once. Her son was terminally ill when he was a toddler. The doctors had given up. She had heard of a healer. Even though she didn't believe in this kind of thing at the time, she took her son to the healer. She said, "I never saw the man. All I saw was the light." Her son was healed.

I seek to be the light - a light. We all are really, even if we aren't aware of it. We are all part of the heart-light of God.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."