A dark red sun rises in a lavender sky, colored by smoke from fires more than a thousand miles away. The same unknown creature makes its intermittent pulsating squawks from deep in the woods until the light comes. The itinerant geese, who have restless nights, have been stirring for some time. The sun light has begun to penetrate the woods in pink shafts. I can see the shadows of creatures moving through the backlit brush. Maybe deer. Maybe coyote. Maybe turkey. A big hawk perches on a precarious branch. All the world reveals itself in morning as it has for millennia, and will for millennia more.

But Margaret is not here.

I got a call yesterday morning, and when I saw the name I guessed what the news would be. She would have been 90 on October 6th. She was my godmother and friend; a survivor of the Nazi bombings; an inveterate dog lover. She called me “lovey”. No one else will do that now.

It seems strange that so deep a change should go unnoticed in the universe. It strikes me anew each time someone I care about dies. It feels to me as if it were a burial at sea, when the one you love dips beneath the waves of time and disappears forever. 

Farewell Margaret Rose. You were beloved.