LETTERS FROM HOME: GIVING THANKS FOR THE POWER AND WISDOM OF LOVE

Nov. 28, 1996

Dear Adams family,

One day last week, a sack was on my desk when I arrived at work. Inside was a book and a card from a woman I don't know. Among other things, the card said she'd thought of DC and me when she'd finished reading the book.

The book is about two people who'd fallen in love as teen-agers, lost touch for many years and then are reunited just before the woman is to be married. It's a good book, touching, insistent in its belief in the power and wisdom of love.

It reminded me that every time I thought about DC in the years between high school and the night we met again, I ended up hoping she wasn't married. I wish I could say she had the same hope. When we met again, she primarily hoped I wasn't a stalker.

The book arrived at a time when I'd almost forgotten the power of those days when hopes became reality. For me it was like witnessing a miracle, and I learned that miracles happen if you let them. And they continue to happen until you dam the stream. The love stream.

I think of these words by Eva Pierrakos: "When you find the other soul and meet it, you fulfill your destiny. When you find another soul, you also find another particle of God, and if you reveal your own soul, you reveal a particle of God and give something divine to another person."

When you reveal yourself to another, you reveal yourself to God. Love flows.

Sometimes the hardest thing to reveal about ourselves is the love we feel, the goodness that knows no bounds.

A good friend of my parents died a few days ago. She was a musician, and she and her husband had organized a choral group here back in the 1950s. My mom belonged and counts singing with them at the World's Fair in Seattle as one of the best times of her life.

Her friend Susie was sick a long time, and toward the end lived under a cloud of painkillers. The choir had long since disbanded, but my mother called everyone she could think of. And one night a few days before her death, Susie heard familiar voices below her window. Seventeen people had come to sing for her. They sang Christmas songs and said goodbye with "Silent Night."

Her daughter was with her then. She said Susie roused and heard the songs, and told her to thank her friends.

The story reminds DC of the scene in "Cinema Paradiso" where the young people who have aged return for the funeral of the old projectionist who had lit up their lives with movies.

This is why we're here, DC says, to give support and acknowledgement. A generation of Cape Girardeans who sheltered our upbringing is beginning to pass from the scene. If they aren't dying, at least they're fading gracefully.

It will happen to us all, and it's important for the rest of us to pay attention. To take nothing for granted.

So this is a thank-you to you, my friends, who I know still remember me in your Thanksgiving prayer, who I know keep a place in your hearts for me as I do you. This is a thank-you for Susie and all the songs she played to lift our souls in our silent nights. This is a thank-you for strangers who leave friendly reminders.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.