Maggie Ott, wife of my good friend Joe Ott, has passed away after a long illness.
It's not like me to let others speak in my place, but there is a passage that repeatedly has come to mind when I've thought about Maggie, and so I'll let Henry David Thoreau speak my mind about her.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. (Walden)
Maggie
But in the end, words are of no purpose.
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