By Nancy Mellon
I've been avidly reading Louise Penny books- her Inspector Gamache Series. They are beautifully written with rich character voices that struggle with the big questions in life.
Yesterday I came upon this and thought about my life and how that way of holding on to the good things could help me: “What do you love Isabelle?” He asked this of an inspector that had been badly wounded, and was listing all the parts of her body and the lacks in her brain's ability to think that she now hated.
She whispered “Some days I can't remember their names...My own children” And I immediately remembered the time my mom in her Parkinson's journey came to be writing her children's and grand children's names on the door to her bedroom and on anything around to try to remember them.
“And what do you love Isabelle?” Gamache closed his eyes and quoted from a poem by Rupert Brooke a soldier in the first world war. “White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines;
and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust of friendly bread.”
Gamache goes on; “It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made a mental list and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.”
“What he was suggesting wasn't a magic cure for a bullet to the brain. A huge amount of work, of pain, physical and emotional, lay ahead. But it might as well be done in the sunlight.”
Blessings on us all,
Nancy and the Snark
Footnotes From Corrine
This is a good question to ask and a way to remind us of the simple, nay even the mundane, things we are grateful for.
I love the the smell of fresh linens off the washing line.
Originally published on Nancy’s Blog, Snarky Parky & Me.