Welcoming In The New Year

[HAP]

Dear friends,

The new year is just hours away. I hope the year ahead will be a time of healing and hope for all of us.

I will welcome the new year at home again this year. At midnight, I will raise a toast to Jane and to the year ahead. I will weep for what is lost and try to be hopeful that this year will have some peace in it for each of us in our losses--and for the world we live in that is too often anything but peaceful.

I wish each of you good health--both physical and mental--and some moments of joy in 2014.

Be well.

Peace,

Harry

[kayc]

Yes, Harry, those moments of joy are what I live for. I don't hope for big ecstatic joy like I had with George, just little moments that I've learned to content myself with.

[MartyT]

Lovely, Harry ~ Thank you ~ and the very same to you from all of us, dear friend ♥

[enna]

Happy New Year, everyone. Wishing you good health, happiness, lots of sleep, chocolate and any other pleasure that might be on your list this year. Do something fun.

[feralfae]

Dear Harry,

Thank you for the good wishes. It has been a day of tears here, as I remember so many happy New Year parties in this room. I am going to be at home solo, and I will open a bottle of champagne, and toast Doug, and thank him for his love, and turn and toast my little town, as I watch fireworks in the valley, and then I will turn and toast everyone here. By then, I will probably have had enough champagne. Peace and all wishes for a wonderful New Year as we step across this time threshold and enter into a new year of Days. Congratulations on all your accomplishments this year, Harry.

Dear Anne,

Thank you for the beautiful images, both so perfect for different reasons. I plan champagne and chocolate. And a fun movie, as well as some journaling. I wish you all good things, and entirely too much fun (in a good way! no overdoing it!) and enough chocolate, good wine, good food, and gentle healing to carry you through 2014 with grace and happiness. You have a lot to celebrate, including your return to better health. Enjoy.

Dear Kay,

I wish you joy and peace, and good rest, and healing. I wish you more days of feeling good and celebrating your creativity. I wish you and Arlie good walks, and happy peaceful visits in your cozy, warm home. I hope all good things for you this coming year, dear one.

Dear Marty,

I wish for you a wonderful year of fudge, playful days, enough sharing and healing to keep your heart balanced, and days of peaceful thought and reading. Thank you for your presence here, and for holding on to this Fire for us all. Thank you and all best wishes for the coming year to be filled with wishes coming true for you.

If I don't get back here before the year turns, I send loving good wishes to everyone . . . Jan, Chris, HRH QMary, Bill's Mary, Shannon's Mary (is she is around, probably off playing with her darling grandsons), Nats, Deborah, Arlene, and I am missing someone, I know.

I am going to go take another nap now.

*<twinkles>*

fae

[Wifflesnook]

I'm in bed, having said good night to Rainie with a sleeping Rosie-Mae in her arms. I had two glasses of wine and Rainie had two Baileys (an English drink?) and after we had hugged each other we separated, me to see to Kelbi who wS sick earlier (too many tomatoes said Ellie wisely) and Rainie to bed. I noticed a small glass of wine left in my bottle so I have just brought it to bed and raised a glass to Pete whose ashes sit on my dressing table (but that is not him of course). I truly believe that somehow he is with me, and it's bolstered by the way I am coping with the unimaginable pain of his loss. I see this in all of you.

I wish you all a New Year in which you can manage to carry on as your beloved ones would wish.

As Harry said, peace, good health both physical and mental, and some moments of joy (you always say it best, Harry). Jan

[feralfae]

Happy New Year, dear Jan!

I believe Pete is with you, Doug is with me, Jim is with Anne, and Bill is with Mary, and George is with Kay. And also for everyone else. Where else would they be tonight?

*<twinkles>*

fae

[mfh]

2013 comes to an end here in Wisconsin with bitter cold temperatures well below zero....and how blessed I am to be sitting in front of my fire as Bentley pushes his toy around trying to get the food that is inside to fall out. It keeps him occupied for a long time.

Harry, your message is just lovely. Thank you. I am wishing all of us here a new year that brings with it peace, healing, health, gratitude, the ability/willingness to honor our grief and ourselves by allowing tears to flow, laughter to exist, and self care to be at the top of our lists.

Jan, I have a bottle of Bailey's in my cupboard...

I won't name everyone here because I do not want to forget someone. I do believe deeply that those we have lost are with us. I live with that truth. As John O'Donohue says in his Anam Cara, "where else would they be?"

Sleep peacefully everyone and waken to a year of blessings, health, and healing.

Peace to all of us....and my deep gratitude for each and every person in this circle.

Mary

[enna]

I just listened to PBS featuring Yo Yo Ma with the NY Philharmonic Orchestra – live from Lincoln Center – what a treat on New Year’s Eve!

I could not have enjoyed this night at the Philharmonic more. Yo Yo Ma was awe-inspiring playing his cello to the works of Piazzola’s and Golijov’s “La serie del Angel” and “Azul” – wonderful. The program ended with Ravel’s “Bolero.” My Jim would have been glued to the television for this performance.

I really should have gotten dressed up for this but I’m in AZ with the temperatures in the low 70s here in the valley and a night at home does not require black tie.

Mary, I know that this would have been bittersweet for you because of you and your Bill's love for Yo Yo Ma. The orchestra played several other pieces tonight.

I know our loved ones are with us. Blessings to all for the New Year.

Anne

[mfh]

Yes, Anne, I am taping it right now....and will watch it this weekend perhaps. Bill and I loved Yo Yo Ma and like your Jim, Bill would have been glued to it also. The beauty of TV is watching a full orchestra dressed in tuxedos...while I am in pj's....flannel here as the temp is currently a warm 6 above...a heat wave. I am so very glad you enjoyed this and I know I will also.

Peace and Happy New Year, Mary

[mfh]

[feralfae]

Beautiful words from Rumi, thank you Mary.

And I have ordered Anam Cara, if only to read my words and thought from another mind. I sounds as though it will be a good book for the stack.

I missed the Yo-Yo Ma performance, but I know I can order these now through the internet. Life is becoming luxurious for those who prefer PJs to velvet some of the time. Nice.

Happy New Year everyone. Here above the valley, I am watching all the fireworks -- and listening to them! -- so I know it will be one o'clock or so before I get to sleep. But it is pretty to watch the "fire flowers" blooming above the lake this dark night. Not much lake reflection, however, as it is frozen and covered with snow.

Happy New Year.

fae

[mfh]

dear fae,

The chapter on death in Anam Cara is the last chapter. John O'Donohue died in 2008 in his sleep....he was pretty young. He as dozens of videoes, some books, and a following that does not seem to quit. Here is his website which family and friends maintain. He was a Catholic priest for many years and left several years before he died. http://www.johnodonohue.com/

His poem: Swanlight is just so lovely: http://www.johnodonohue.com/words/swanlight

One of my many favorites:

On The Death Of The Beloved — John O’Donohue

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

[kayc]

I don't care to toast in the New Year, because the one I want to toast is not here. Yet it always is a time of reflection, as we look over the year behind us and hopefully towards the one ahead. I wish all of you a good New Year!

[Queeniemary]

I am a little late. But I do want to wish all of my dear family here, a really good 2014. We all deserve it, and should have it. I had a wonderful time at my cousin Sharon's for NYE. She is a widow also, and her friend Don a widower. She had about 30 or so people mainly from her church at her house, and we had a great time, playing cards, eating, and having some wine, and other things. It was a fun night. Tom seemed to have a good time, and enjoyed meeting new people. Had a hard time making people understand we are friends, nothing more. Don kept introducing Tom as my significant other, and we had to keep correcting him. Once we would tell our connection (friends as couples before losing spouses, now friends that support each other) then they would understand. We talked about it on the way home from Sharons (a three hour trip), neither of us minded being lumped as a couple, but we know we are not. We care for each other as very good, perhaps almost best friends, but there is no "spark", just friendship. We are in the planning stage of a trip this spring to AZ to visit my best friend Kathryn near Tucson. Tom has met her, and likes her a lot. He has never visited some places like Sedona, Jerome, etc., and we may try to do some touring.

It was good to be with friends, family and people who understood for NYE, if I could not be with Mike, then that was the next best thing. Four years since he left is coming up on January 13. Sometimes seems like yesterday......don't think this feeling will ever go away.

Mary (Queeniemary) in Arkansas

[MartyT]

I'm so glad this time with your cousin turned out so well for you, Mary, as I know you had some hesitation about going in the first place. I'm glad, too, that you have such a good friend as Tom in your life. We wish you a healthy and happy new year as well. As you say, we certainly do deserve it! ♥

[mfh]

Mary, I am so glad you have such a good friend in Tom. I celebrate that with you.

Just this morning the gal that helps me clean (and who knew and loved Bill) commented that it was coming up on 4 years and that it probably felt like an eternity. I told her yes it does and it also feels like yesterday sometimes. I agree...I think that feeling might be there many years from now.

Peace to your heart and I am so glad you had such good people around you this NYE.

Mary

[kayc]

Me too, it seems your life is so well balanced!