Posted by Tim Clausen on March 25, 2002 at 11:43:22:

thank you for your beautiful and remarkable writings Jenette. I lost my mother in November and can't even fathom what you must be experiencing regarding your daughter. Wanted to share with you and yours this poem someone shared with me and which I've found helpful:

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life.
What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight!
When in the morning I looked upon the light
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,
that the inscrutible without name and form
had taken me in its arms in the form of my mother.
Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away,
in the very next moment to find in the left one it's consolation.

by Rabindranath Tagore, from "Gitanjali", a collection of his poems.

Best to you,

Tim Clausen
Milwaukee, WI