It's been a pretty easy day. I attended a breakfast for volunteers at St. Mary Student Parish. After that, a nice long workout at the gym, then I decided to just lie around the house and do some writing. Words are starting to come back to me.
A former student at NMU who is now a counselor in the U. P. wrote and told me that she had seen Gwen's name in the NMU Alumni Magazine. My copy came in the mail today, and there, listed under Deaths was the name Gwen Bayerl, 1962. Seeing her name there, one of several other people who died, somehow diminished the fact of her death. I want her to be remembered as the strong, assertive, caring, loving person that she was, not just a name in a magazine. I know, that's not the way it's done. She dropped out of NMU at the end of her sophomore year, so I was initially puzzled that she was listed as a 1962 graduate. Then I remembered that she had been awarded an Associate's Degree in Business.
Today at the breakfast I talked with a friend who reminded me to cherish the special, loving relationship that Gwen and I had over the years. As he put it it, sometimes the spouse left behind says, "I'm glad the bitch is gone." Of course that happens, but it makes me heartsick to acknowledge it, and I really don't need to be reminded to cherish the love that Gwen and I were given. In a letter to me way back in 1963 Gwen sent me this; she copied it from something she was reading:
No matter how often
I level the weed,
It returns after rain,
As if there is need
To remind men who sever
Life’s delicate string
That destruction is never
A permanent thing.
It's kind of beautiful now; how prescient that was. What a wonderful reminder from her so long ago that she is still with us ,"destruction is never a permanent thing." Indeed it's not.
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