I spoke to my friend on Christmas day. We spoke of reconnecting, her editing my book, and a socially-distanced get together when I was back in town. Yesterday, I found out that she had passed. Within a week of her Covid diagnosis, she was gone.
Patricia was a brilliant woman. One of those people that was a true writer and warrior in the best sense of the word. One of those smiles that knew the sweetness of experience. I learned so much from her and yet, I probably never told her how much I valued her as a friend, as a woman, and as a human being. Before I share the beautiful poem she wrote in her final moments, I want to share this…
Share What’s In Your Heart
Covid has universally put us face to face with our own mortality in a way that has never been seen on a global scale. I hope that everyone reading this lives a healthy, beautiful, long life, but even if you do, you never know who will go before you.
This is the second friend I lost in 2020 completely unexpectedly.
I ask myself, “What were my last words to my friend?”
They weren’t unkind or harsh or impolite, but they were the transactional words of a Facebook message. Her last words to me were beautiful, of how happy she was to hear from me, and how much she looked forward to seeing me.
Me, Patricia, and Heather
Be Wise With Your Words
I’ve been told there is a phrase in the Bible about speaking life or death on something or someone. Are you using your words to encourage, love, support, forgive, or honor? Or are your words intentionally or unintentionally filled with negativity, regret, discouragement, anger, or hate?
Keep in mind the words you say to yourself as well.
The Truth is We Don’t Know
We don’t know how much time we or the ones in our lives have. There are no guarantees, and I don’t say that to scare anyone or to be doom and gloom at the beginning of the new year. I say it because it is true.
What will you choose to do with your one bold and beautiful life?
Who will you choose to help? What will you choose to give? What good will you be, do, and see? It’s your choice. It always has been, so choose to live as Patricia and my other friend, Rae, have done. Choose to smile. Choose to speak life in any given moment.
Let every last word you speak to yourself and to another be kind and from the heart, and I promise, you will lead a life worth living, just as Patricia did.
Patricia’s Poem
Notes on a Stay in a Hospital Quarantine Cell
December 27, 2020
I swallow my pride and it tastes like honey and salt.
The air has embraced my private body and has approved, and it quietly rejoices in its revelations and the liberation of its childlike spills and neediness. How I reach to love it suddenly, this stranger I’ve kept in a fifties New Jersey suitcase, only removing it for one afternoon on a nude fire island beach.
Now it is truly liberated in a small windowless quarantine room in North Carolina.
The machines behind me beep, shining little christmas trees, watching my pulses, systems, and disturbances like grandmothers, occasionally clucking, unfashionably faithful through the night. I am pinned head to toe to a proud family of counters, weighers, and witnesses. This little womb and its divine protocols.
Shame is peeled from the human body when the body is wet with sweet tears and shocking love. It has suckers like snails and they make marks. The shameless body houses the soul proudly instead of shrouding it.
My mother tells me I began to walk on my first birthday. Today I took steps alone from the commode to the bed, to the applause of my caregiver. Eighty years has incensed up in a laughing swirl of smudge smoke. A laughing swirl of smudge smoke and ageless birthday courage.
Echoing a hated preachment, I see that my life is just where it belongs, that mistakes are potholes filled in with diamonds.
If this dream goes away in the glare and blare of rough reality I will lovingly remember it the way I recall my dying mother squeezing my hand that is now identical to hers. My tenderness spills over in tears of recognition and reconciliation.
Message from a Quarantine Room.
Little womb of a room.
© Patricia G. Horan
such a touching story, Patricia wrote a beautiful poem. 2020 was indeed a sorrowful one, too many have passed like you mentioned, friends included, way too young to go. May they all be blessed, we will surely remember them and keep their memories in our hearts.
Thanks so much, Luca! And yes, such a beautiful poem and lesson (many lessons) that her life taught all of us that knew her and even those of who didn’t. Sending you big hugs!
Hi Jackie,
I don’t know if you remember me. But, I used to have a blog in 2012. I deleted it. But, I was still living in Houston and you were working in China. I learnt about Currie Rose in your blog. Do you have any news about her?
Hi Ana! Great to hear from you and yes, I remember the post about her. She was living such a brave life! I haven’t spoken with her in many years, but I hope she is well!