We lost Julie’s Mom to cancer last week. Another long and ongoing battle that ended in ‘22. She was 81 and an avid outdoors person. She could identify/name almost any plant or animal or tree growing in Missouri and tell you if it belonged there or not. Her back stoop overlooked the Cuivre River and was always a favorite place for coffee and conversation. And birds. She was a lifetime St Louis Cardinals fan and in fact was buried in a Musial jersey and with her Cardinals blanket. My son and I had a group text with her and we watched almost every game together in different towns the last two seasons.
I didn’t post this to write her obit, but to post a poem from a poet she’d been reading recently, Wendell Berry. It was read aloud at her funeral. I thought it was pretty spot on and thought y’all might like it.
BKB

The Peace of WildThings

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendell Berry