Making Love to Life

As I sit in the warm afternoon light after having just raked the yard...not for the sake of clearing leaves but just for the sake of raking...I am thankful and I am in love. This is my favorite season, my favorite time to be a part of the world. The coolish weather and sensory appeal of fall have never ceased to bring me out of my "reclusive extrovert" shell. New personality type I discovered...more later. Today I am making the most of a Saturday that was supposed to be spent in the Ochocos camping. Instead we decided to stay local and start our "fall cleaning" and yard love a bit early. It has been a magical day. Slept in, snuggled with three love bugs, had coffee and fried egg sandwiches with Siracha, journaled and laundered, raked and laundered some more. Read to my youngest and sang songs with the oldest. And now, now they have gone...aah the sheer beauty of QUIET. I am sitting in our backyard, thankful for smells. Oh the smells of fall...a few faint whiffs of summer from the fresh cut tomato vine in the compost, crushed lavender on my hands from pruning and the woody, warm freshness from new shavings that line the coop. The sights and sounds are pretty wonderful too...asters in full bloom and bees! buzzing in and out, here and there. Chickens clucking, the rustling in the aspen trees and the gentle click, click of my own hunting and pecking. Being here, being present, immersing oneself in the moments...I must assume that this is what she meant when she said, "Make love to life." The woman that I am speaking of, I've never met. I did have the privilege of seeing her speak once though and she inspired me then, even from afar, even if only for 30 minutes. She wrote stories about and took photographs of women...she told their "Body Stories"... When I heard about her project at the Muse Conference last spring I was intrigued and inspired. Having PLENTY of my own body stories to tell and desperately hoping for someone to share them with...someone who understood them and would care for them, I tried to reach out to her just a month after that day that she had been on the panel at the conference. I looked her up and to my utter sadness her blog shared all of her beautiful work, but also her brave announcement that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Out of respect and not wanting to bother her, I never made contact, but fiercely wished her support and healing as she embarked on the journey that was before her. Over the summer months there were a few days that I thought about her...Sarah is her name...but again I did not connect. I did not know her, I did not want to bother her. On September 15th, a feed on my Facebook page from a friend of a friend shared the news of her great fight, her beautiful spirit and of her passing. I wept. Not because I knew and loved her, but because she was loved and would now be forever missed all because of some awful cancer that invaded her body.  The next day I read another post titled "Make Love To Life" http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/08/a-manifesto-for-living-a-life-worth-writing-about-sarah-mcmurray/ that she had written. From some beautiful place in the heavens she inspired me again. Sarah...I did not know you but I wish I could have had that honor. Your work and words have deeply inspired me as a woman, a writer, a budding photographer and...a person. Thank you. May your family find peace as they remember you.