475: remembering

It's been six years now, since Yvonne Fraley passed away. I wrote about it here, three years ago, and I know now that my perspective has shifted. Yvonne was a second mother to my sister and myself as we grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and here I am, beginning my own journey to motherhood. I hope my own children will know love as much as I did when I was with her. I sometimes find the same two letters she wrote me, cry quietly at how she pinned the word "proud" on me, how she signed them "Your Second Mama."

Today also marks four months without Callen in the world.

I don't know what it is about good people going too soon, but here these two are, their stories wrapped in one another, the one of the second mother whose passing made me stronger facing the everyday, the one of the former student who led me to forgiveness. It's strange how loss leads to living in one's honor, how loss triggers what we should have done already: love more fully, live lives we can be pleased with, shed all that drags us down. Perhaps it's something about the fullness of the hearts of these people who have gone before us, a need to embrace everyone hello.