This afternoon, I am listening to My Dear Companion: Selections from the Trio Collection, by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt (2016, Rhino Entertainment Company).  Beautiful, healing music.

Since last summer, dear family and friends have been called Home.

Their names are Irma, Marta, Win, Burt, and Avis.

For Earth Day, I remembered my cousin Paul, and the Paul Brandt School Forest in southwestern Wisconsin.  How brave my Aunt Irma was, when he died suddenly.  She grieved, she lived, and was almost 100 when she died.

Each person has a legacy.  Every person has a story, this I know.

I have been wanting to remember – to say their names in a post – and this music helps and restores.  The songs are familiar.  They will always be new.

So grateful for beauty in all its forms.  Restores, heals, inspires.  New work to create.

Ellen Grace Olinger