Salt Lake Christmas Tour…….. Week’s Peek

This week I’ve been sad for a good friend and I suspect that many of our Salt Lake Christmas Tour family are sad too. Our dear friend Bill from Tampa informed us that his daughter had unexpectedly passed on. Many of our tour family members have lost loved ones over the past year; each one is so very, very hard.

What to say at a such a time? Only to say that “I’m thinking of you and my thoughts, hugs and prayers are with you.” When I send a card, I always include this little story:

I am standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon, and someone at my side says, “She is gone.” Gone where? The loss of sight is in me, not in her. Just at the moment when someone says, “She is gone,” there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!” And that is dying.

It is far easier to learn of ancestors’ death. We did not know them and usually we’re delighted and excited to learn their death date and place of burial. I suppose that that is the natural order of things.

This “peek” is not to draw attention to our friend Bill’s loss but to point out that remembering every single day the loved ones and dear friends around us should be on our daily To-Do list. And do remember when you finally find out where Aunt AnnaMaria was buried, to pause and mourn just a little bit before doing the genealogy happy dance. Her passing tore a big hole in her family just like when it happens today.

Donna, aka Mother Hen, until next peek.

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