Sunday, August 24, 2014

Had I but known...

Louise Doering Stevens took a weight off my shoulders, going through Mom's book shelves & bureau drawers after the Gramster's reunion with her O Best Beloved.  She came out of the bedroom, with that special wry Louise smile, holding a pile of books. The journals I'd given Mom, each written in for a page or so, then abandoned.

Except for the Country Desk Calender for 1988.  Guess I'd assumed she'd treated it like the rest of the journals I'd given over the years, because I never gave her a second, or third, or ... What I didn't know was that she wrote in THAT journal faithfully, all through that one year.  The year BEFORE John.  

Never knew, not until after she was gone.  How wonderful, reading all her entries, even the most mundane made special because it's in her writing, about her life.  Bermuda, Australia, home, then back down to Australia.  

Oh, what we miss because of what we just don't know.  The desk diary format prompts were as natural to her as the other journals were apparently fatally artificial.  One of my great treasures!

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