I’ve been working in the garden a lot this week.
Long story short: enter
WTF | LAWN GNOME LOVE
[wpinsertshortcodead id=”oesof660c59d4ee96a”]
I snap open the umbrella and remember the last time I visited Veronica. She served me brownies in pink wrapping paper, fancy cheese, and sliced fruit she was too sick to eat. I remember the time I said, “I don’t think you love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself.” Veronica was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “I think love is overrated. My parents loved me. And it didn’t do any good.”
— Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this.
— Stephen King, Lisey’s Story
We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up. For each pang of grief, depression, doubt or despair there is an inverse toward renewal coming to you in time. Each tragedy is an announcement that some good will indeed come in time. Be patient with yourself.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Do not stand
At my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand
Winds that blow,
I am the diamond
Glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle
Autumn’s rain.
When you awaken
In the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet bird in
Circled flight.
I am the soft stars
That shine at night.
Do not stand
At my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
— Hopi Prayer, Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep