Today is July 15, 2003.

Honestly, I really didn't expect to live into July. Living and dying and waiting to die and wanting to live and wanting to die are all such funny things. We humans are such funny things that we? Animals, I think must be much smarter. They don't worry about dying, they just live. When you have so much pain for a number of weeks as I have, you really want to die. (But I do believe I haven't had nearly as much pain as a lot of people who have cancer or AIDS or other very painful illnesses.)

Now for about five days I've been doing fairly well -- I feel pretty good, my appetite came back, I've been working hard on the Turtle Journal, on organizing all my music, and helping Ginny and Sue get phone trees ready and plans for what to do when and after I die. I do live fully, sometimes I don't think so when I am frustrated with what I cannot do, but I really I have been living in fully even when it's painful to do so.

What has been really difficult for me is to be quiet enough and let myself go to the place of feeling and flying inside toward Heaven, toward the angels -- to let the angels help me. I often ask for help -- every day I've asked my angels for help, but to really be in the quiet place and witness, be in that place and let whatever feelings come up for me... Sometimes I have been able to get there a little bit more easily with Ginny -- she has been meditating and I think getting to that place more deeply just lately.

I've been visiting and saying goodbye to people, and it feels kind of strange – first, of course, it's been very emotionally draining -- I wouldn't say only difficult, because it's been very rewarding to look at people straight in the eye and tell them what I feel, and hear from them, cry with them -- it's been very beautiful. It's been tiring. I wish I could take it in more easily -- like an angel. I think life as an angel, though not easy, must be easier than being human. I imagine, in fact I believe that angels work very hard to serve humanity, to serve God -- but I don't think that they are so attached to these Damn Emotions -- that's what makes us human. And to let go and allow the flow of emotions really to go through us and not get stuck in us -- well that's just part of the journey. And how each one of us does that, makes us who we are as individuals.

I don't really feel like I have that much to say which is more profound than anyone else. I just feel that I can talk about myself and what I'm going through and really it is what anybody might go through when they are really facing dying and death. Ginny and I have been blessed -- and I especially have been very blessed, to have Ginny who works endlessly on my behalf. There is so much that I cannot or would not deal with that Ginny does.

We are merging our love together at the same time we are saying goodbye, we are separating, parting. There's a bigger love that will be there with both of us, that will carry us through this. I cannot describe it, all I can say is that we have felt it -- sometimes it has been very hard to trust, other times it's just there and we can't escape it, we are enveloped by it and we enter in. And I ask the angels again and again to help me to enter in -- as Rumi says: "I close my mouth here and I open there..." with so much love and ahh, and relief.

I'm getting tired now. I've been working on this for almost an hour and a half straight. The refrigerator is being replaced, the vacuum is going, and Debussy is playing in the other room, the fan is blowing on me, it's not that hot today -- it's actually very pleasant. And I await my dear friend Lisa's visit -- another goodbye to do. And we may have a concert -- poetry reading while she's here at Sue and David's new house. Now there's a long hard-working, hard-trusting in Faith process that Sue and David have been through. Congratulations! It's Done. And they are moved in and can start to enjoy their life again in their own home.

At night when I go to bed I pray. Usually I pray for the angels to make it easier for me, to make my passing easier. I'm usually so tired that I fall asleep before I finish praying. I would like to float off on a cloud in a blue sky, then when I'm ready I will soar like an eagle -- like that eagle so long ago and in the beginning of our great & deep friendship, that John and I saw canoeing, coasting down the Wolf river in northern Wisconsin. If any of you see a hawk or crow or an eagle or bluebird or maybe a robin or red-bird. That just may be me taking off to Heaven. And if it is not me yet then maybe it's a reminder or a visit to you, to ask your help for a prayer, for praying for me, for praying for you, for praying for us all -- that life and death and the passing in between may be easier for us all. Glory be. Amen.