Death..............by Julianna Rowe

Death.  Is it the end or the new beginning?  I hope its like the story of the Dragonflies: Dragonfly nymphs live in the water while they grow and develop into dragonflies. This portion of the dragonfly life cycle can take up to four years to complete.  And when they have developed to a certain life phase they leave their water family and friends to fly away to another world. Their water family WONDERs where they went.   Just like we WONDER where our people go when they pass on in death. 

Today my friend died. That is her on the right. 

I feel bad for myself because she added some very special things to my life.  She taught me to keep giving love even though I had been hurt so badly.  She taught me to be gracefully still and watch for good to come forth.  She was gentle yet strong, carried herself with compassion, courage, and ease.  Everyone that met her loved her even though she told me she didn't understand why.  That her mother had taught her at an young age that she was unlovable.  Yet before she passed on she was shown by many in this life how much she was loved. 

She always thought of the other person first.  She had values yet strayed from them on occasion and we would laugh and discuss those times trying to make good from them.   She was honest. She was tenacious like I used to be. She taught me to get out of my self made cardboard box and live. To be brave. That it wasn't a coffin all nailed shut, rather a box I could step out of.  Yet she ended up the one in the coffin, not me.  She had integrity. She was intelligent and could shut down any discussion using her beliefs and her wise words. 

She loved her grandson to the moon.  Wanted to live just one more month to see him get his black belt.  She singlehandedly had gotten him that far.  She wanted to live for him.  He is only twelve.  

We grew up as neighbors me being six years her senior.  Our mothers were much alike as were our fathers.  She told me she always looked up to me.  The teenager with a horse who gave her a ride one day.  Said she never forgot it.  She gave me back way more than I ever gave her. in my mind anyway.  She never preached to me, rather she showed me by how she lived.  She was a flannel shirt and blue jeans lady but one of the most beautiful women inside and out I had ever known and I needed her and she is gone.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Its been a very long year in my life and she came into it in the middle of what most would say a learning time. I have to believe that or I might die of the pain it caused my soul and spirit.  I learned she was enduring the same pain and grief I was.  One day after she told me she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer I sent her this message. The one about Thelma and Louise.  We laughed like she was never going to die.  We prayed for her to live two more years but life only gave her two months.  

She was in love for the first time in her life.  They were making plans to be together but that never came to life. He may not have been my choice for her but he was her choice and I respected that.   We would talk about him for hours.  

There were other men that loved her just from seeing her photo and talking politics with her or any other subject.  She could hold the floor yet was tender like a man likes a woman to be.  She was not weak, no, I said tender.  Loving and caring and giving of herself.  Always giving. She rarely cried.   I cried all the time this past year.  She taught me not to cry anymore....To get out of the house and join the world again.  To work on retrieving the old me.  The happy lady who was giving and caring.  Yet she didn't belittle me for loving someone for many years that didn't love me like I felt  I should be. 

She told me she loved me.  And she did. And I loved her as the friend she had become in our later years.  We shared so many similar life issues.  

I didn't think she was finished with life.  But someone higher up said she was. 

I selfishly cry even though I believe she flies free.