I would be celebrating my brother Johnny’s 71st Birthday on August 9th this year but he died of Covid five years ago. I still cannot believe he is no longer with us.

I often try to connect with him since he has passed. The Celtic tradition speaks of the “thin places,” places where the spirits of the dead move between heaven and earth. I believe our memories, our dreams, and our quiet reflective times are such places and we can discover these places. On Johnny’s birthday I will remember the Celtic Saying: “ Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter.”

I think I am genetically wired to appreciate the thin places found on my very recent trip to Ireland. My Irish grandmother believed and appreciated the mysteries of Ireland’s thin places as told by my father. Johnny believed in them too. The thin pIace I recently found in Ireland last month was the rugged beauty of the Cliffs of Moher. It was a divine and sacred landscape with breathtaking scenery. I felt Johnny’s presence and wished him an early Happy Birthday.

Personal Reflection on Gibran’s Poem: “On Friendship”

Reading Kahlil Gibran’s poem, “On Friendship,” immediately recalled my late husband, Mike,
catapulting memories of our love to the front viewing screen of my mind
Not only as my husband, but as my life’s
most valued
most important
truest
friend

Gibran’s words rose beyond poetic beauty—they spoke to a kind of friendship that is foundational, spiritual, and deeply human. And that’s exactly what I’d had with Mike. We were the best of Best Friends.

And this type of friendship, this amity, could reach beyond marriage to encompass the broader world we live in
couldn’t it?
shouldn’t it?

Society might have been so much more kind to us in the aftermath of our beloveds’
death by pandemic
if friendship still sat on the heart-thrones of more of our fellow Americans even
during COVID19’s unprecedented escalation of a growing climate of division.
Yes, “Climate Change” is real!

Gibran wrote, “When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withhold the ‘ay.’”
Sadly, however, so many then (and since) unfriend even those with whom they’ve
shared longstanding bonds,
simply because of party alignment or whether one leans “left” and the other more “right” …
or
was the societal rift, the blaming of victims for their own demise,
simply the removal
of a disguise
that had been hiding an indifference all along-
Indifference to others’ pain; hearts formed of calcifying stone.

When Gibran wrote, “Your friend is your needs answered,” I so deeply felt that truth in the quiet, everyday ways Mike and I cared for each other. As my best friend, he was the “field” into which I chose to “sow with love and reap with thanksgiving,” He was the one who grounded me and could inject peace into life’s most stressful moments.

Losing Mike to a pandemic, to a Delta Wave,
broke my heart and
ripped up the remaining draft chapters of our… of my, future story
throwing that unfinished collaborative work into a Creative’s trash-bin
where discarded dreams and prose land
only adding to the pile of rustling paper balls, crinkled orbs of
wadded-up hopes.

Gibran even more clearly said, “…let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.“
The deeper the spirit, the stronger the bonds of love.
The deeper the spirit of each one of us, the more caring we become,
more kindness shared – both shown and felt.
How, then, can Americans drowning in this social media maelstrom of instant “unfriending” and negative comments regain Gibran’s divine purpose?
Social media connections lack depth.
Follows and Likes are just vapor, data bytes,
empty and temporary.
Gibran reminds his readers that genuine friendships require active participation and openness.

Gibran also wrote, “Seek him always with hours to live.” That line made me pause, especially here, on this “other side” of Mike’s unexpected pandemic death.
Mike was THE PERSON I’d seek to share my best hours with –
not just the tired leftover minutes at the end of the day.
Mike is the friend I long to share ALL my hours with.

How will our neighbors choose to love, to be friends,
to expend the effort to remain friends
despite all their self-worship, opposing viewpoints and opinions, and tall soapboxes?

With friendship, unlike marriages, there are no vows made before witnesses, no exchange of rings, no photo album to commemorate their commitment event. What keeps friends together?
In the “dew of little things,” as Gibran phrased it, Mike and I had found that our small, shared moments –our morning coffee, our inside jokes, the way we checked in with each other — were priceless!
They were quiet proof of a friendship deep and a love designed for eternity
built on the sweet foundation of true connection –
honest, generous, and fully rooted in mutual care.
Mike was that special friend for me – the one person who knew my heart and spirit.

I’m endlessly grateful for our time together,
though he’s been gone now for four long, yet fast, years.

COVID-LOSS TRAUMA survivors we, my friends and I, have become
three four, five years …still plodding our way over rocks and potholes on this difficult terrain
picking up steam every now and then perhaps,
at least compared to our tentative inching forward, the hesitant moments
when first we stepped (were thrust, actually)
just beyond this journey’s trailhead signpost –

WIDOWS/WIDOWERS
COVID Loss Trail
Distance: Unknown
No returns allowed: One-Way Path Ahead

May this awful world that heaped its divisive drama, hate, fear –
so unnecessary, so misplaced, so hurtful and cruel
onto hearts bereaved, in deepest pain
And still struggling we are, so many of us.

I MISS MY HUSBAND with my entire being.
And I mourn the nicer America of my youth
where human beings knew how to be kind.

In the deep spirit of friendship that this world needs, and
To relieve any weight of leftover bitterness from my heart
against the strangers who’ve hurt me, us
who blamed us for our beloved’s death,
who blamed me

I choose to pray …

May they repent
May they seek to be better, to find again (or for the first time?) the spirit of friendship, of kindness
… to ask for
Forgiveness
… to want to
Change
… to find their own path to
Healing

As we Survivors connect with each other
and Heal each other’s shared grief through
this Amazing Blessing
of our True and Genuine
Bond of Friendship.

Johnny and I had the most wonderful grandmother who always lived with us since the day we were born. She immigrated by herself to America at 18 years old after World War 1. We both took German classes in High School for 4 years. It was a lot of fun and hard work when we practiced together speaking and writing German with her.

Before Johnny died, we often spoke about getting dual citizenship with Germany as our Mother had both German and American citizenship. We found out that when we were born our mother could not pass her German citizenship down to us because she married our father, who was American. This disappointed both of us. Recently I discovered that Germany has changed their rules so that I can become a dual citizen. Johnny would have been ecstatic. Auf wiedersehen bis spater Johnny — Until we meet again.

Rest in Peace Johnny.

Today, I am thinking about my dad, and my brother Dave, and my Uncle BJ. I did not lose them all to COVID, just my dad. However, this July 4th is particularly painful for me because all three were proud Vets. On this day, it was their tradition to go fishing and grill out. Sometimes they’d include us, but often it was just the three of them.

“This,” (what is going on in this country) would have made them sick to their stomachs.

Here it is again. June 28th. This year would be thirty-eight years since the day we met. I’ll celebrate again like I have every year since you took your place in the stars five years ago.

I’ll pick up a tall, iced cappuccino to honor our anniversary tradition and I’ll head down to the riverside park where you first smiled and said hello and changed our lives.

The last four years, as I watched the condensation bead and roll down the side of the cup, I felt tears of sadness being separated from you.

This year feels different though. When I see the droplets coursing down the cup, I’ll know you are seated next to me remembering the life and good times we shared for thirty-three years, content to know we are moving forward together: me here and you at my side in spirit.

Happy Anniversary.