I work from my living room these days.  It’s a long, narrow room with wooden floors and three good-sized windows.  The next-door cat has been sitting on one of the ledges, peeking in.  Sometimes I catch them watching me do yoga, and it’s pretty funny.  They’ll sit up on their hind legs as I move from one pose to the next.

The past few days have been dreary, and this morning the sun is shining through again.  It’s February in Houston, and the temps are supposed to reach 76 degrees.  One never knows about February…it’s an unpredictable month, sometimes biting cold, sometimes exquisite as it is today.

I have been reading my mother-in-law’s journals and inputting selected entries into Word.  It’s a tedious, slow process, but I am absorbed in the stories, essays, and thoughts.  I am always tired afterward, because each time I read her reflections, I realize how much I miss her.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, aggregating the writings for others, but whenever I feel some doubt, I run across a passage that tells me it’s okay.  I almost feel as though she is speaking to me beyond the grave, guiding me to the things she still wants shared.

It is a privilege, an honor, and yet deeply painful to do this.  She was a woman in full, strong, vulnerable, talented, uncertain, filled with joy and loss.