Tilly, you are everywhere beauty lives. Walking our path, I touched you today in rays of sunshine between two maples. Every intricate strand of you lives inside my every breath ~ you were my everything, center of the universe, the golden thread that wove my world together … and I was all yours for seven whole years and two days ~ and now you are so much bigger …

This morning, I saw you soaring across your own heavenly sunrise glistening every grain of sand like stars and whole ocean sky where you soared so elegant and free ~ just like you. I feel you soaring my precious angel ~ and I am so thankful you are free. Thank you for helping me feel you so present, so right here ~ that you offer me strength and courage because you know on my strength alone, I would not remain here without you. This world is not my place, and you gave to me a place in this world where Love lives ~ where safe lives. With you, Tilly, I found home ~ connected and alive and safe and loved … getting to love you is the greatest gift of my life …

Now you are the red rose from Myra’s garden that only heaven could smell like ~ and the yellow one in a tight tight bud that spread each petal in but a few short hours like wings of angels in every direction, just like you. Now you are light through the stained glass lamp Grame got special for you because it reminded us both of your beautiful, beautiful spirit. Now you are Christ’s light and immaculate heart illumined by night and burning without end …

p.s. I got white sheer curtains with simple elegant flowing embroidered flowers to hang where your sheer purple ones once hung ~ how they framed you just perfectly in your favorite window bed I made just for you. How you loved to lay on your cozy bed and rest your head on the ledge ~ you, my watchful witness so tranquil and alert, taking it all in. Now, simple white elegance frames your window and centered on the ledge where your chin would rest is a special gardenia I pick fresh each day and place in a simple little round Mason jar surrounded by your red and yellow rose petals … by the way, I know it is you that lets me know which gardenia is calling for her turn to be picked …

I celebrate you in sunshine cross christening exquisite Autumn beauty ~ I feel you in the carved wise stone woman that graces your ashes and copper angel that spreads her wings in my palm and I feel the tender sure weight of grace touch me. I feel you in the night when the ache is more than I know how to bear ~ the hollow excruciating ache of your physical no longer here beside me ~ the ache that I know will undoubtedly annihilate what is left of me without you, before I reach the next breath. I only have one prayer these days … “Tilly, please help me feel you” … and I am touched ~ held ~ even carried sometimes for hours as though in a light-filled silkened cloud where I am blanketed with peace and lulled quiet to sleep a little while ~ and how sometimes I wake and still feel you holding me in a cloud made of heaven glistening sun drenched after a hard rain ~ tender soft yet strong steady and sure at the same time  …just like you.

I see you in red tail hawk, how she swoops down each time I pass our special spot and we just hang out eye to eye and say all that really needs to be said. I hung your first bouquet of roses sage pansies and rosemary out by your favorite patio spot with the little Indian girl and her hawk friend. I go and lay on our ol’ spot on the Baptist lawn and watch into sky and know I see you and Kelsee soaring endless fields, swimming rivers of light.

…And sometimes I think about how no one saw underneath your grace ~ your other worldly resilient courageous grace. No one saw how clearly you defined God by what you endured ~ not only endured but found more life and joy and remained steadfast by my side for 2 years 5 months and 4 more days. God knew how much I needed you ~ that is why. And every day each moment of breath I never lost touch of what a pure Gift of God that you survived and got to live by my side for more time.

No one saw how you were running by my left side on our favorite sunrise trail run by the river and how that pit bull and boxer attacked you before we even saw it coming. The pit bull instantly locking around your throat and violently shaking to kill. Shook you like a rag doll on and on and on while I beat and kicked and fought the fight of my life to pry its lethal jaws open … to no avail. Shook until you were in so much shock you appeared limp, lifeless, dead … the pit bull finally released.

… Yes, only by God’s almighty power and our whole tribe of Angels did you survive.

I got you to Loomis Basin and nursed you back to the very best health I could. No one saw the warm Thieves compresses every hour around the clock ~ no one saw the injections and daily pills needed to replace your adrenals destroyed from the extent of trauma and shock ~ no one saw the broken vertebra ~ no one saw the traumatic injury to your brain ~ no one saw the three times a day medicating horrific cluster seizures that eventually got so bad and uncontrollable it came time to help you go home to heaven.

… No one saw underneath your exquisite grace that held the pain and failing body ~ no one saw the sheer miraculous nature of you that I got to witness each precious moment of every single day …

You, Tilly

You, my greatest teacher

You, my most precious Angel

You define Love, resilience and God’s infinite grace

Thank you

I love you

I miss you

For now, you are everywhere beauty lives.