[Dialogue] Celebrating Life, Celebrating Abe

[aiseayew]

Dear Jan,

I got home early this morning from Chicago having spent the last four days
with Mary Lou Peterson planning her end-of-life celebration which is not far
off.  I slept a bit and opened my e-mail to the avalanch of messages.  I
don't know what I can add other than that my candle is lit.  Since I work
nights, I often feel like there is a special guardian role to be played by
the one sending night energy, praying that my colleagues arrive well rested
with the dawn.

I finally closed my e-mail and took off for a family pot-luck in town.  When
my dad came over to talk with me I told him I needed a hug and all about Abe
and work we had done together and about our incredible connectedness through
the e-mail that was largely his doing and certainly his sustaining gift to
us.  I told Dad about taking his name off the list of list managers and all
the places people had responded from.  Tears rolled down his cheeks as they
rolled down mine.

He hugged me again and said he had never imagined a global internet wake,
but it sounded like that is what we had done.  He had never imagined that in
such dispersion people could be so connected and claimed it as a new gift of
our times.  I certainly felt gifted, again, that Abe stories and Abe and Jan
stories and our connectedness could spark his imagination far beyond where
mine had gone.

Thanks be to God, once more, for our gatekeeper, Abe.
Blessings, Jan, on the journey ahead.

Awa ng Dios,
Margaret Aiseayew