These are such difficult words to type. Not far from home, a neighbor and a friend has lost his battle with cancer. He was a food and wine lover; he had a new home and a beautiful bride. And a whole slew of crazy wonderful pusses. But after two years of daily battle he said goodbye and left us. He was only 55.I got to know Bill Kennedy from Slow Food and his blog, Piled high in Tejas, and we lived close by each other in Lake Highlands. Whenever I would go to his house to visit, I had to drive by the nursing home where my wife lived the last 35 days of her life. I know pain and I know loss. We feel so much for his wife Janine and his and her family. There are no words anyone can say to assuage the pain and the loss.
From the Hymn of Empedocles
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And while we dream on this
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Not much, I know, you prize
What pleasures may be had,
Who look on life with eyes
Estranged, like mine, and sad:
And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;
Who 's loth to leave this life
Which to him little yields:
His hard-task'd sunburnt wife,
His often-labour'd fields;
The boors with whom he talk'd, the country spots he knew.
But thou, because thou hear'st
Men scoff at Heaven and Fate;
Because the gods thou fear'st
Fail to make blest thy state,
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.
I say, Fear not! life still
Leaves human effort scope.
But, since life teems with ill,
Nurse no extravagant hope.
Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then despair.
Matthew Arnold