Threads

My friend, Dawn Smith, died early Friday morning, at home with her husband, Chris, and her sons, Shay and Matt.  When I visited for the last time, several weeks ago, she lay in a bed in the living room, beside a window overlooking the old apple trees in the garden.  The light fell gently in the room.  The sounds of her family carried clearly from the kitchen and the bedrooms upstairs.

A year or more had passed since I'd last visited the farm that I call, "Fair Prospect."  I hadn't made a conscious decision to stay away; nor had I forgotten my friends.  I followed the slow weaving of life at the farm from afar, as documented online by Chris in his wonderful photographs:  the travels, the visits from family, the changing seasons in the garden.  Rightly or wrongly, I could not envision my own thread adding to the pattern and the richness of that life as it once had.

We are entwined with people in different ways:  some for life, some just for a time and place.  With some, we run together for awhile, separate, and come together again.  We share our different colors and textures.  We complement and contrast.  The picture that we make continues after we have parted.

There is a time for every purpose, and a time for every friendship.  I regret that Dawn and I will not have that time again. But I am deeply grateful for the time that she had with Chris, Shay, Matt -- a longer time than anyone expected.  She drew them together, blended their lives, and now leaves them as a family.  I believe that every life is a work of art.  Dawn wove a vibrant tapestry in that rambling house up the maple lane, across the lawn full of light and dogs, in the back pasture amid the horses and llamas, along the paths in the wood.  Dawn made good art, and her thread continues.