Frieda’s eyes convey as much emotion and love as any dog I’ve known, they reveal her great heart and strong spirit and fierce loyalty. Frieda would lay down her life for Maria, in a flash. I can see it. Yet she seems to always be reaching out for love, to be the dog she might have been had she not been so abandoned. And the dog she is becoming, her good and loving nature spreading like a blossom and showing itself more and more each day.

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Today is an important day for me. A day of meditation. Of renewal and nourishment. The first day of my life in which I am centering on my self. When I began publishing on this blog, I lived almost completely in a cloud of fear, confusion, anger and loneliness. I was disconnected from my life, my family. I did not know where I was in life. I have given control of my life over to others, many of whom were angry and exploitive people. I was terrified of the simple details of life.

I did not understand love or what it was. I have come a ways since then,and today I will celebrate that. In particular, I will be quiet and learn to be peaceful. I will go to Quaker Meeting today. And journal here several times. And hopefully take some photographs, which is to me, healing. I am devoting this day to memories of my Mother, a brilliant, driven, tormented and unhappy person who lived her life in  frustration, fear and anger. At the end of her life, in her last few years I was unable to bring myself to see her, and I was not able to say goodbye to  her before she died on a bathroom floor, alone.

I did not say goodbye. I did not attend her funeral. I just could not. I regret that deeply. I know she loved me and I loved her. She loved me dearly,  gave me the gift of story-telling and the confidence to tell  my stories, even as she was so angry and self-destructive to herself, her family and her children. I almost did not survive her. She had wondrous gifts, some of which she passed on to me.

I have forgiven her, and now, I want to work on forgiving me. And I acknowledge my great love of her. Soon I will go to her grave – which I have never seen –  and say a proper goodbye. And hopefully, weep for the sad ghosts of time and memory.  And talk to her through time. And ring them bells for the few who are left behind to judge the many who are gone. That is what today is about for me.