Day 3, Saints Claire and Francis

It's quiet here. Really, really quiet. Since I got home at 5:30. Fever, Tylenol, sleeping on the couch. I remember my friend Charlie whose wife survived cancer saying "let him sleep".  So I do.
The planned dinner instead becomes left overs, I feed the dogs. I look for beauty in our gardens. I pray to the saints there.

And I miss his energy. I worry. I am lonely. I am a bit frightened for the future. But I let him sleep.
Six months in, I do not panic. I do not call Cathy, my BFF, his sister, the retired oncology nurse, as I have every other time. I think I have his. I check his forehead multiple times. I remember that he is doing really well. This is all part of the journey.

In the early morning I dreamt of my sister-in-law Claire. In many ways she was my big sister. She was so full of life that life couldn't contain her. So much laughter, so many fun times, so many deep times. Jim and I visited her just a year or so shy of her death from cancer. How do you define love? Perhaps because those you love are always in your heart.

In my dream she was as bright as life. I was walking through a setting much like Harry Potter's Diagon Alley. Shops and mazes and unknowingness. And there was Claire! She had a second hand shop full of all sorts of wondrous second hand treasures. We laughed, we hugged, we danced. So happy to see each other. And she presented me wth a pair of tap dancing shoes the color of her red-copper hair pre-cancer with satin ribbons and stacked heels (heals?). And I danced, I danced. In waking I could not doubt the reality. It was as if I was visiting with Claire in heaven and she was SOOOO happy.

This afternoon, I bought a St. Francis that I had seen in my mind's eye and then discovered in an antique shop on my way back to work. The patron of the sick, the forgotten, of nature, of rebellion...of healing.

Tonight I thank in my heart all those in my life. I tried to call a few but it is late. I can not sleep. But there is the beauty of the gardens and of the saints.