Loose Leaf Notes

My close friend for the past 3+ decades passed away this morning. I’m told it was a peaceful passing. Alwyn was 95. We had a 95th birthday for her at her Warm Hearth apartment this past November. Friends gathered, songs were sung (listen HERE), cake was eaten.

The last time I saw her was for a Christmas Tea this past December, just me and her. She recited the poem above for me to videotape. It was one of her choosing from her poetry chapbook Remembering Their Names – A Gathering Time, which I reviewed in THIS post on her 94th birthday party. At one point during our time together she announced “Now I love dogs!” Anyone who knows her as a cat person will appreciate the humor in that.

A year before that in December 2021 she had fell and broke part of her hip during Covid lockdowns. I visited her at the Warm Hearth hospital after a surgery, through a window and by a phone. She said, “I’ll tell you a funny story. You can put it on Loose Leaf…”

“I’m 94, you know.”  Of course, I know that. “I was so proud of being 94,” she continued. “You know I wrote a book about cats?” I knew that too. “I saw a cat when I was out walking, and I bent down to pat it to show that I could at 94. And I fell!” She said I should title it Pride Goeth Before the Fall. 

Also last year, after the hip ordeal, she was back at home. I visited and brought her a story that I had written for our local newspaper about a Floyd woman about to turn 100. “Are you going to write a story for me when I turn 100?” she asked. “I’ll write one as big as a billboard!” I answered. Later, I posted a blog post titled Young at Heart with a picture of her reading the news story and a link list of all the stories I had written about her over the years with titles like A Word from Alwyn: TO FLY THE EARTH FLAG,  Never Love a Feral Cat (a review of her book), The Secrets Have Come True, Thomas Berry: The Great Story, Images in Color and Blue Mountain School: Memories Shared and Memories Made. She made copies and sent them out to friends. See HERE. 

I received a call yesterday that she was likely on her way out and had planned to see her briefly today, as many of her dear friends probably were. I likely would have whispered in her ear some lines from a poem I recently wrote called The Final Leaving: Become a disembodied name that slips the mind / Fall out of character / Start at the end/ and take a number / Walk through walls / or walk on water / Become the air/ for others to breathe / A memory that floats / like a fragrance. But it was her poetry Joe and I read this morning to the light of a candle flame in honor of her.

Here is one of the poems (a recent one) from her chapbook that we read this morning:  The Longing – Take me to the Ocean / get me to the Sea / lay my weakened body /where sand and shells must be / Let my fading hearing /awaken to the sounds / of pounding waves and bird call / where water meets the skies. / There, O there, there only / my longing can be met. / Where vastness overwhelms the small / and drowns the fear of death.

Peace activist, environmentalist, animal lover, artist, Waldorf kindergarten teacher, fellow-writer/poet and lover of mystery and depth psychology, Alwyn was primarily my girlfriend.

_____________Poets and Storytellers United