Letters. Emails. Phone calls. Words fly from mid-Tennessee to New England these past few weeks in a flurry of condolences, wrapped in a shawl of sadness embroidered with memories of too many yesterdays.

It seems that such losses occur in clusters, in groups or two or three or four, sometimes more, before the waiting game begins again. It comes with a certain age, though now that I am breaching the "age" the age of these lost friends seems to be younger and younger. Or is that simply my view from this new pinnacle of 60?

I found myself writing more letters, sitting at my mother's drop leaf desk (recently refinished, all traces of fire finally finally finally removed) from the wood. I pull stamps from one drawer, envelopes from a cubby, address labels from a small interior shelf. Though I've tried to use technology (Hi-Speed net running at less than the speed of dial-up most days), I find myself reverting to hand-written missives, seeking the comfort of sending something I've touched into the hands of another.

In the past few weeks, contemplation has been the order of the day: once I get my body moving in these days of interrupted sleep, oddly-timed naps and nagging pain at inopportune times (all the time in truth), I find myself doing a few chores almost in reverse before settling into pieces of silence. I sit alone with my thoughts. It is part of my process of change, that is to say, dealing with change. And loss. And grief.

I haven't felt much like writing for public consumption these past few days.

Curled up on the couch, I pull back the curtain, looking for "specks" of expected snow, hoping for a dusting that will make the world brighter for a bit. February and March are otherwise so brown and gray here in these days just before daffodils and magnolias.

I sift through random photos unearthed in the process of filled the desk, of assigning places within. Each photo holds a story, and I make a plan to identify them all, a process enabling memory, not just for myself but for those who follow. I remember sitting pen in hand with my mother, when her mind still had some clarity, making notations on dozens of photos.

With each memory that passes through my hands, I work consciously not mulling over sorrow but focusing on the joys that each lost soul of these past weeks, brought into my life. I, and all of us who knew them, are the better for it. We've held them all for a very long time, gladly.