It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m missing Carol. A second cousin by marriage on my husband’s side, she held us close with her genuine and sincere embrace of people and life.  She is in my heart today because every Valentine’s Day, in lieu of the Christmas letter, she wrote a message to all the friends and family who had touched her life and her husbands across the span of their seventy-plus years. Carol’s letters, and her ability to enhance the English language, were a creation of beauty. She wrote the way she conversed.  She wrote the way she lived. With every word, written or spoken, the recipient felt her love and compassion.  With every word, written or spoken, the receiver felt valued. She took a letter, typed or hand printed, beyond mere words on paper. The song she created was simple and humble.  She choreographed a conversation that went into the heart and spread through the soul. It was in that sense of connection our created value on this earth was confirmed. As my son said, “When she talked to me I knew she knew who I was.”

February 2011 was the last Valentine letter from Carol because she died one month later in a manner that was the antithesis of how she lived.  Valentine’s Day now becomes a reminder to me to live some fraction of what Carol portrayed to us.  I am reminded that everyone is valuable – especially the children.  Family ties, both the good and the ugly, are links to who we are and the lessons within us.  Each person has a valuable story and in that story is a life to be celebrated.  Hardships and struggles are opportunities to learn and to adjust.  Every breath is a call to celebrate.

When my heart feels heavy with personal struggles, tight with worry, or empty with uncertainty, I will pull life breath into my heart and call upon my memory of Carol to sit beside me and fill me with her peace. Today I send my love to family, friends, and acquaintances who miss her words of love and the nourishment they brought.

Jill