The wisdom of the cousins

I tease my cousins a lot about being older than I—I am the youngest of about a dozen-but it is precisely because they are older that they bring such richness to my life.

My cousin Rosemary, after reading my last post, sent this e-mail to me about caring for her mom, an elegant, raven-haired lady who always seemed to me to have a magical quality that she passed to her children. I wanted to share Rosemary's note to me because it’s full of the kind of wisdom we need more of.

“You have a child who won’t get well, but who will love you -- as no one else ever will -- for loving her,” Rosemary wrote.

“In my final days with my mother, I realized that she had always been the endearing, willful, complex, difficult child she was then, but I hadn’t ever seen it before because I needed her to be powerful. When she needed me to be powerful, I fell in love with her as never before -- and now, as time passes, I’m so grateful that I had the chance to know and love her as a child.

“Though it was all so scary and sad, she was enchanting – as she always had been, but I hadn’t fully realized it. Of course, in a way it made losing her even more painful, but it was an important lesson in through a glass darkly.

“Life is what it is and you’re making the best of it now – even if you can’t know it because it’s so hard.”

Thank you, my cousin, my friend.