quote:

Originally posted by Maeve:
My mother in law. sigh. She'd been ill and bed-ridden for over a year now - dementia, alzheimer's, I don't think they ever really termed it. So part of me feels relieved and then part of me feels guilty for feeling relieved.

Hubby has gone down to be with his Dad.

you've been through a lot with this.

*major major hugs*

don't feel guilty for the relief - your mother in law is now out of pain.

No need for guilt, Maeve. Death a stage of life, the final one, and sometimes a welcome one.

As for Ms. L'Engle . . . time for a story.

When I was seven years old, I was strange. I am now, I know, but then I was acutely aware of my strangeness and it hurt to be around other kids my age because they didn't make much sense to me.

The one person who did, who always did, was our elderly neighbour, Mrs. Ireland who lived on a 4-acre lot in the middle of our city of 100,000, along with her husband and centuries of history. And books. Lots of books that I devoured hungrily. She gave my father The Hobbit to read to me when I was six and by the end of that book we were sounding out the strange names together.

Another book she lent me directly was A Wrinkle in Time. For the first time, really, I started to understand a bit about me. I'm not anything like Charles Wallace really, being nowhere near as intelligent and no special person of destiny, but in him I found another person frustrated by the inability of his own intelligence to find out what he ought to be. I learned so much through that book and the rest of the books I can't even begin to explain.

I'll miss her. A lot. At some point, I'll be reading one of her books, for myself or to one of my boys and it'll hit me that I will never see her again until I, too, have shuffled off to the great unknown, and I'll cry a bit about it, but I have her novels. And, through the journals I have and books of essays and such, I'll have a bit of her with me for always as well, and that's some comfort.

Somewhere in there, Maeve, I hope there's something that eases the news of your mother-in-law's passing, and relieves you of the guilt for wishing her a gentle journey. If not, then I hope you find it soon.

Hugs to the children here ... i never heard about Ms L'engle, maybe now i should find her books...

and hugs to Maeve... french ones.

Péné

one of the nurses at my dad's practice, Maggie, has been murdered by her boyfriend. We wondered when we heard someone her age had been killed on the road she lives on, but they only found out for sure yesterday. Fucked up. Apparantly he did 16 years for murder before.

That's awful.
*hugs*

I'm ok, I've only met her once, but everyone's pretty shocked, even though the boyfriend was known to be a bastard.

Oh, glad you're not too upset. It's still weird when things like this happen. Do you think they should n't have let him out of jail?

dunno the circumstances, but it makes you wonder.

Alex.

Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop. She really put her money where her mouth was - she gave a great deal of her vast wealth away to campaigning groups and charities.

quote:

Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop. She really put her money where her mouth was - she gave a great deal of her vast wealth away to campaigning groups and charities.

I'm surprisingly shocked by this.

Shocked me too, though I did read she had Hepatitis C a while back. Didn't think she'd die so soon though.

And it freaked me out a little as I read an article a few days back, in the Independent, about obituary writers. And how, they often write obituaries for people in advance. As soon as they hear someone (famous) is ill, elderly or vulnerable or something. That was relating to Pavarotti, who's obituary had been written a few years ago. And, as I read an the article in the Independent the other day, about her death, it struck me that it was very likely that it had been written a while ago, plucked from it's folder and updated a little.

Weird..

I liked Anita though, she was always my Richard Branson inspiration!

for both Ms. L'Engle and Alex the Parrot.

The funniest thing about Alex was that he was never afraid to complain when he got bored. I wonder whether he thought the experimenters were sub-parrot intelligences.

- Cho

My uncle Eric. It was not entirely unexpected, as he had been ill and frail for a long time, but coming hard on the heels of my other uncle's death, it has hit my mum hard. She's spent more than 70 years being one of eight siblings, and within a month is now one of six.

*hugs for Hive & her mother*

Losing one of her brothers was very hard for my mother, too. She was very glad she still managed to spend a lot of time with him during his last year, though.

*hugs Hive* I'm sorry, Hive, and just because it's expected does not make it any easier.

*more hugs*

If anyone can spare some prayers for my past landlord's family - it was the nicest apartment I ever lived in, and I rented it from two sisters and a brother. They had to sell the house and go into a nursing home, then they died, first the sisters and just this week the brother. So sad, they were nice people.

*hugs for Hive*

*hugs for Weeble*

No hugs for me, send the hugs to Hive and her mother! **hugses**

Just send some prayers their kids' way.

I completely missed the Madeleine L'Engle bit! oh.


Dweller - your story touched me, it really did. I had to discover books all by myself. Gran bought me a few, but a whole house full of books? That would've been nirvana for me.

So I didn't discover The Hobbit or A Wrinkle in Time until I was in 5th grade -ish. I felt a bit of the same connection to Charles Wallace as you did, but far more of a connection to Meg.

I wish now I could convince Devlin that those books would be more fun to read than Harry Potter


Hugs for Hive and Silverfoot and Domi and everyone! I just like giving hugs.

*hugs for Hive*