I did not get to visit her...I was near there, and the computer jobs went late into the night. I hope she forgives me - and that the people I spoke with passed on my love to her, as I asked.
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Received: Wednesday, December 27, 2000, 7:46 AM
2008, December 27
Dear Family and Friends,
It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Barbara peacefully died at 0220 this morning. I was with her at the end holding her hand, and have just helped staff members wash her: she asked me to do this a number of years ago and I found that doing so gave me great comfort. We have shared with you her amazing journey during the last six and a half years and in many ways we had come to expect yet another miraculous recovery, but it was not to be and she has finally found rest. We shall start to make funeral arrangements today and I shall let you all know them when they are finalized. One again I have to thank you all for your support throughout Barbara’s journey and particularly for the amazing number of visits to see Barbara and for all your messages of support that we have received during the last month. There is much that I could and will say but now is not the time. Barbara has left a significant number of poems that she has written over the last 20 years and I should like to share two that are poignantly apt for this time although she wrote them in January 1995. They are the second and third poems of a longer piece entitled “Triptych for Myself”
With all my love,
Peter
SPIRAL
So cool, so calm is the geological,
Biological analysis
Of life and death.
So, I’m a mere blip in the scheme of things!
There’s nothing in the future for me?
The world is as unaffected by me
As it was before my first infant yell?
Can you not see the stinging tears
The wrenching fear of the death times?
If you had ever learned to love,
You’d know what you could lose.
Your glib logic negates my thinning skin.
I see the signs of change
As clear as puberty ever was.
Yes, you have it all wrapped up,
Tidy, swept, arranged,
But my will, my desire is to
Rage against the dying of the light.
I knock all your logic
In the scatter of my anger.
Can you not hear Lear rail
Against the contentious storm,
The pelting rain
Of assured destiny?
NEXUS
Did you forget how love feels?
A dawning, a disbelief
That this is for you;
You surface and dive again
Into trembling anticipation.
Can you not remember how
You walked alone and
Learned the shape and sound
Of every tree?
How you loved the tallest two,
How you whispered secrets
And felt their wisdom?
That was for always,
Love is for always;
The line of smiles is no empty metaphor.
It is how the trees might remember you
After you are gone.
Be still
Take comfort
And rage no more
Barbara Sherrington
July 29, 1947 – December 27, 2008
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Originally Posted by Catty1
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