Friday, November 15, 2024

Constants







Happy one year anniversary!
Lumpectomy done. check.
As you can see I was loved and supported by my lovely family.
Cindy came to the hospital and was there for me and Patrick.

The above picture is from the day after my surgery.  You can see I was feeling just fine.
For me surgery is no big deal. 

Wound care (bad care)
Chemo side effects.
ER visits.
Big deal.


I did have great results from my surgery so for that I am very grateful.
(Clear margins and no cancer in lymph nodes)

But most of all I think of all my loved ones.
My constants.
And I feel so very thankful and blessed.

Love you. Mean it.
Donna Elsie



*******


Still Here
been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
But I don't care!
I'm still here! 
~Langston Hughes






 



Monday, November 11, 2024

hair growth after chemo. month eight

 





I once ran a brush through my hair and I couldn't believe it!




This is what my hair looked like. And while I love Prue and think she looks great...
she is 84 after all.
I'm not ready to look 20 years older than I am.






Chemo curls are VERY common.
They go every which way.

I bought a product called Love ur Curls.
This helps my hair not be so bouffant.

Just making a record here.
I imagine next month to be about the same.
We shall see.

My son Patrick said,

"How often do you get to grow a totally new hair style?"

My son, who is not an encourager in general, really encouraged me.


So there you have month eight, chemo grow out.

A few more days and I will celebrate the lumpectomy anniversary.
What a year.  What a year.


Encourage one another,
Donna








Friday, November 01, 2024

November comes

 November

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.

The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds have flown.

And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain 
Loveiness--

The beauty of 
The bone.  Tall God
Must see our souls
This way, and nod.

Give thanks: we do,
Each in his place
Around the table
During grace.


 by John Updike


I find this poem to be so beautiful and surprisingly profound for a children's poem.

Don't You?






















***

Indian Summer came and went. 
The gusty winds finally blew the leaves from the trees.  

The Spring training, that had begun so long ago had ended, and summer ball had taken its place,
and a fall, and Shohei Ohtani had won a World Series.




Congrats Dodgers
Congrats Shohei.
Thanks for a wonderful season!


Encourage one another,
Donna

HT:Harper Lee





Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Mommy loves you, Ginny.


Our dear girl.
10-31-2011
10-20-2024


She really had a gentle spirit.
Except when people stopped by...then she lost her mind, she was so happy!!!




What great smiles!




The holding hands is just too sweet!



Ginny especially loved her big sisters.



She especially loved begging for food. She never snatched it.
But was there for the long stare down.






We should have walked her more.





My favorite place in all of Chicago is the dog park.



Her most pretty pose.




She had a wonky eye but it was not noticable when she got older.



Welcome home.




Ginny was breed with love by a bird hunting family.





When we named Ginny, Ginny my sister Janice was delighted because she loved the Harry Potter books.
(Mary also! )
My sister Janice had the most beautiful and perfect line...every stick will be a wand....
and I can't remember all of it and I have spent over and hour trying to find it. I'm afraid the quote is in the long deleted comments.  Too bad.
Do you remember what you said Janice.  It was poetic and delightful.






 


Final photo of our honey.  We had a comfort room.  Candles and Hershey Kisses.  Ginny got to eat kisses and cheese and Chocolate cake before she went to sleep.  She could not eat easily but managed. Ginny was confused and did not recognize us.  It was so hard.  The staff at the emergency Vet was incredible.  Kind and gentle and sweet and reassuring. 

We cried and cried. And I cry even now.

We sure were lucky to have such a good girl come live with us.  She gave us lots of love and comfort and joy.

Mommy loves you Ginny.




Thursday, October 17, 2024

Chicago Tribune Fall Tradition



This cartoon is about the only thing I remember from my childhood newspaper reading!

(Except, of course, the sports section, Chicago Blackhawks articles.)

But, truly, I watched for this cartoon each fall and loved to study the landscape change from haystacks to teepees....smoke to the Indians.

It just fascinated me.  

It's older than I realized, 1907, and it is not run in the paper any more.

You can read all about it if you're interested in the link below.


 











Reminiscing,
Donna









Monday, October 14, 2024

Holy Ground










"No matter where life takes you... the place where you stand at any moment is holy ground.  Love hard and love wide and love long, and you will find the goodness in it."


~Susan Vreeland





Love of place.
Love of other.
Love of God.
Holy Ground.








When I thought of love....
I thought of this picture.
It took me over an hour to find it...but it was fun to see hundreds of other pictures that spoke
love.

love hard, love wide, love long.
amen

Donna Elsie




“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

~Noel Langley, Wizard of Oz Screenplay



Saturday, October 05, 2024

Add to the Beauty: Farrow and Ball


 

I found this to be just so lovely I had to share it with you.

It's simple, beautiful and so peaceful.

soothing

that's the word.




I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Add to the beauty,

Donna

Thursday, October 03, 2024

There is a place









I wanted to get this lovely quote up on the blog.
I think of my parents at the end of September and when I think of them I think of Sue....
and then I think of all those who have gone on before me.



Just this weekend I was watching a kdrama called "Love Next Door."  The female lead is being proposed to and she is hesitating because she has had cancer and doesn't really know for sure what the future holds.  Her boyfriend, who she has know her whole life, tells her he wants to be with her 'one hundred years, ten years, or even just one day.'  
"our time is finite"

We really never know.


Your pain is not meaningless
Do not lose heart.
Be eternity focused.

This helps.

And that Tolkien quote...
full of hope.


Encourage one another,
Donna







 

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Summer Sun was on their wings...

 











Something Told the Wild Geese
by
Rachel Field

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."

Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."

All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.



*******


I don't tire of my favorite poems.
They just get better and better, don't they?

Have a lovely fall day!

Love you, Mean it.
Donna










Sunday, September 22, 2024

Hey, Boo.





What can I say?

I was Scout. 



I've loved the movie To Kill A Mockingbird my entire life.
I would have watched it in this very chair, in the dark, cool basement in Elmhurst.
I never thought that little girl was me. Not once.
But this little tomboy Donna with her grown out pixie and rolled up shorts and cut off sleeves
is Scout.

I feel connected to this movie in many lovely and unique ways.







Our father took pictures and had them made into slides.
I absolutely loved the evenings we would sit on the floor and our dad would click thru pictures
 on the slide projector.  

Nancy saved the slides for years.  She passed on 'our slides' to each of us a long while ago.
Gosh.  I would love to see ALL of the slides.
I find reminiscing to be my favorite topic of conversation lately.



"Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that 
fixes a precise moment in time."
~Henri Cartier-Bresson


Encourage one another,
Donna














 

Monday, September 16, 2024

Feeling Good, Lewis





I wanted to add these videos for my friends who do not have Instagram or Facebook.
I made them to document my hair journey, as you will see.

I am at peace about my hair already. 
I don't hate it.
I find it amusing and kind of fun.
I thought I would hate it until it was blond and long.
But no.
I'm okay.







I will continue to document this new journey.

It's not so bad.

Encourage one another.
LYMI

Donna





 

Sunday, September 15, 2024

It ain't that tragic.




As you know, no matter what happens in my life, a movie reference is right there...waiting to come out.

When I was diagnosed on Sept 15th 2023 I immediately thought of this scene from Terms of Endearment.





I didn't realize until about an hour ago that today was the 15th.
I yelled to Patrick, who is in the other room, 
'hey, it's the anniversary today'
He said.
'I know.'

Funny, he didn't mention it.

He said it wasn't an anniversary to celebrate.
I get that.



Dedication: To my husband, an unexpected nice guy.




"Who would have expected you to be a nice guy?"
A prized line aimed at one of my husband's favorite actors.

Thank you, Honey.
I love you.

Dear.
DG











After all. Purpose.








 


Tuesday, September 10, 2024

After All









I'd like to share this video from Princess Catherine.
I'm sure most of you have seen it elsewhere, but I wanted to keep it in a safe place and document it on my blog.





Remarkably,  I have come to a very similar realization that Catherine did, even tho we arrived there in almost completely different circumstances.  She being young with a young family. 
Me being isolated and pretty old.




I started feeling lost as to what my life was all about as I could not go anywhere or do anything and I was weak and feeling useless.  


I remembered a book I read (in the 90's), recommended by Elisabeth Elliot, called Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss.
In this book you follow Katie, as she writes in her journal, from her school days to her final days when she is bedridden.  

The following is the final entry to her journal.



"I have no wish to choose. But I have come to the last page of my Journal, and living or dying, shall write in this volume no more. It closes upon a life of much childishness and great sinfulness, whose record makes me blush with shame but I no longer need to relieve my heart with seeking sympathy in its unconscious pages nor do I believe it well to go on analyzing it as I have done. I have had large experience of both joy and sorrow; I have the nakedness and the emptiness and I have seen the beauty and sweetness of life. What I say now, let me say to Jesus. What time and strength I used to spend in writing here, let me spend in praying for all men, for all sufferers who are out of the way, for all whom I love. And their name is Legion for I love everybody.

Yes I love everybody! That crowning joy has come to me at last. Christ is in my soul; He is mine; I am as conscious of it as that my husband and children are mine; and His Spirit flows from mine in the calm peace of a river whose banks are green with grass and glad with flowers. If I die it will be to leave a wearied and worn body, and a sinful soul to go joyfully to be with Christ, to weary and to sin no more. If I live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So living or dying I shall be the Lord's.

But I wish, oh how earnestly, that whether I go or stay, I could inspire some lives with the joy that is now mine. For many years I have been rich in faith; rich in an unfaltering confidence that I was beloved of my God and Saviour. But something was wanting I was ever groping for a mysterious grace the want of which made me often sorrowful in the very midst of my most sacred joy, imperfect when I most longed for perfection. It was that personal love to Christ of which my precious mother so often spoke to me which she often urged me to seek upon my knees. If I had known then, as I know now what this priceless treasure could be to a sinful human soul, I would have sold all that I had to buy the field wherein it lay hidden. But not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of Gods word by the loss of earthly joys, sickness destroying the flavor of them all, did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ and to know that I love Him-this is all!

And when I entered upon the sacred yet oft-times homely duties of married life, if this love had been mine, how would that life have been transfigured! The petty faults of my husband under which I chafed would not have moved me; I should have welcomed Martha and her father to my home and made them happy there; I should have had no conflicts with my servants, shown no petulance to my children. For it would not have been I who spoke and acted but Christ who lived in me.

Alas! I have had less than seven years in which to atone for a sinful, wasted past and to live a new and a Christ-like life. If I am to have yet more, thanks be to Him who has given me the victory, that Life will be Love. Not the love that rests in the contemplation and adoration of its object; but the love that gladdens, sweetens, solaces other lives."

    O gifts of gifts!



Remembering Katie's conclusion 
helped men realize what I could do next....

And that would be loving God and loving others.



***

The following list came across my screen at the perfect time.









This.







And these are the things I contemplate as I come out of the woods...
pondering my purpose
after all.


Love you!
Donna