Monday, February 17, 2014

A few weeks ago I started folding origami hearts for Valentine's Day with no real purpose in mind, figuring that once I folded enough a plan for what to do with them would show up. In a way I suppose this was a devotional act--I was making them to transform some moment for one person somehow--but mostly I was just folding. If we try a little most of our motions are devotional anyway. It's one of the best parts of getting to be people.

My friend passed away this weekend, and I am feeling a familiar jumble of things. It is sad that she is gone at the same time that it is a relief that she is free of so much pain. It is sad that she has left behind a family and would have been sadder if she hadn't. She died a month before her party, and this is perhaps the thing that is sticking with me the most--how often she asked everyone to dance with her, how completely she defied her disease and all that it tried to take from her. I've been thinking about a lunch, just before we knew for sure that she was sick, sitting on some steps in the sun.  She was on a cleanse, eating nothing with flavor, but all she wanted to talk about was things that would make us laugh.

She's been on my mind a lot the last few months and I though about her now and again while I was making all of those hearts. It was a gesture she would have approved of, going forward with more love than plan. It is just one more way of thinking that we had in common.