Muji,

I am so sorry you are experiencing your loss all over again right now.

What a jewel of a friendship you shared!

Hope you can find a way to self soothe,comfort yourself right now.

Keeping you in my thoughts.

I’m so glad you had that sort of friendship muji and sad it had to end.

Muji memory of your friend will be there always. I am glad that you had what I have been learning a good friend. Good friends are rare. As you grief please know that all of us at DS stands my you in support. Hang in there

Huge hug Muji.... I am so sorry that you're feeling the loss and pain of losing your dear friend

She sounds like an amazing friend and I'm glad that you had this special relationship.... Another hug and a blessing... xo

Gentle support while you process.

Grief makes for many FF days.

Thanks, y'all, the grif's just beginning, I;m afraid, but telling y'all and telling a local friend offline at lunch gives me hope for getting through the week. Grief just makes everything else worse, you know? I told friends here in private messages about the frustrating day I had going to the hospital, finding out they'd messed up my insurance switching my last name and my middle name, later how when I went by the pharmacy to refill 2 meds, they were out of one of them.

None of which is tragic, but it just bugged me big time because I already felt bad, Just bad. I don't usually feel that way.

Thanks for caring.

Gentlest of gentlest hugs Mujica <3

Hugs Muji. I was just thinking about the passing of my friends. Everywhere I look is a memory of them. I try to think of the good times we had. The anniversary of my moms death is the 18th and one of my best friends helped me through it. She was a family friend for 40 years and the anniversary of her death last year along with two others is coming soon. COVID touched so many of us. I’m sorry for your loss. Let’s support each other ok?

Yeah, these death day anniversaries are real milestones, like birthdays are. Thanks for your support because if not for the pandemic I'd drive the 3 hours to the cemetery where my friend is buried and have a headstone chat. Instead, I put my 1st year anniversary grief of Deb's death this week into my speech via Zoom for church on March 21st when I'm the guest speaker--and appropriately so, I think. I requested a song be played for her during the service, one in her honor that she liked a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMuTXcf3-6A
Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life) version Mercedes Sosa & Joan Baez in English
English translation by John King, Jr.
From Wikipedia about the author:
“Violeta Parra was a Chilean composer, singer-songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist.[2] She pioneered the Nueva Canción Chilena (The Chilean New Song), a renewal and a reinvention of Chilean folk music that would extend its sphere of influence outside Chile. Parra is acknowledged as "the Mother of Latin American folk".
Her birthdate (4 October) was chosen "Chilean Musicians' Day". In 2011, Andrés Wood directed a biopic about her, titled Violeta Went to Heaven (Spanish: Violeta se fue a los cielos). [The song has] (a)lso (been) performed by: Elis Regina, Elīna Garanča, Florent Pagny, Joan Baez and (with) (t)ranslations (into) Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Azerbaijani, Croatian, Czech, Dutch and even, Esperanto as well as 20 more languages.
Parra composed "Gracias a la Vida" in La Paz in 1966. In 1971 the song was popularized throughout Latin America by Mercedes Sosa, and later in Brazil by Elis Regina and in the US by Joan Baez. It remains one of the most covered Latin American songs in history. Other covers of the folk anthem include the Italian guitar-vocal solo of Adriana Mezzadri… at the 2005 Viña del Mar International Song Festival[in Chile] It has been treated by classically trained musicians such as in the fully orchestrated rendition by conservatory-trained Alberto Cortez. The song was re-recorded by several Latin artists and Canadian Michael Bublé to gather funds for the Chilean people affected by the earthquake in Chile, February 2010.
Parra's lyrics are ambiguous at first: the song may be read as a romantic celebration of life and individual experience. But the circumstances surrounding the song suggest that Parra also intended the song as a sort of...note [anticipating her death the next year at the age of 49,] thanking life for all it has given her. It may be read as ironic, pointing out ...the contradictory nature of the human condition.”
For me, just as Silvio Rodgriguez’s song you heard transcends the divide between Communism and Capitalism’s embargo in the Cold War and love of nature and anger at injustice in our hearts, so Thanks to Life bridges language, and race as you see the Native American from the South American Andes sing it so harmoniously with the North American folk singer Joan Baez here. Listen and watch them join together in the kind of gratitude that rises above all differences like the Universalism of the UUA.

Thanks To Life (Gracias A La Vida)
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It has given me two eyes, and when I open them I clearly distinguish black from white And in the high sky, its starry depths, And from the crowds, the man that I love
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It has given me hearing, which in all its breadth Day and night records crickets and canaries, Hammers, turbines, barking, dark clouds, And the tender voice of my beloved one
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It has given me sound and the alphabet And with it the words to think and speak Mother, friend, brother, and the light that brightens The path of the soul of my loved one
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It has kept my tired feet walking With them I walked through cities and puddles, Beaches and deserts, mountains and plains And your house, your street and your courtyard
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It gave me my heart, which shakes its frame When I look at the fruit of the human brain When I look at good ones so far from bad ones When I look at the bottom of your light-color eyes
Thanks to life, which has given me so much It has given me laughter and it has given me tears Thus I distinguish between joy and pain, They are all elements of my song and of your song, which is all one and the same Thanks to life, which has given me so much

At the suggestion of a DS PTSD member I've kept a gratitude journal for 4 years now, so it seemed apropo.

Muji

Muji, great song. My Mom loved Country music and there was a song she wanted me to play for her, but she passed before I was done learning it. I haven’t played much since. The song that really resonates with how I feel right now is Jerry Garcia’s song “Sisters and Brothers”

I wanna say to my sisters and my brothers
Keep the faith
When the storm flies and the wind blows
Go on at a steady pace
When the battle is fought, and the victory's won
We can all shout together, we have overcome
We'll talk to the Father and the Son
When we make it to the promised land
If we walk together, little children
We don't ever have to worry
Through this world of trouble
We gotta love one another
Let us take our fellow man by the hand
Try to help him to understand
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land
Our bible reads
Thou shall not be afraid
Of the terror by night
Nor the arrow that flies by day
Nor for the pestilence
That waiteth in the darkness
Nor for the destruction
That waiteth in the noon-day hour
If we walk together, little children
We don't ever have to worry
Through this world of trouble
We gotta love one another
Let us take our fellow man by the hand
Try to help him to understand
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land
This world is not our home
We're only passing through
Our trail is all made up
Way beyond the blue
Let us do the very best that we can
While we're travelin' through this land
We can all be together, shakin' a hand
When we make it to the promised land
If we walk together, little children
We don't ever have to worry
Through this world of trouble
We gotta love one another
Let us take our fellow man by the hand
Try to help him to understand
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land
When we make it to the promised land
Make it to the promised land
(Sisters)
Make it to the promised land
(Little children)
Make it to the promised land
Make it to the promised land
(Children)
Make it to the promised land
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land
Walk together, little children
We won't ever have to worry
Through this world of trouble
We gotta love one another
Let us take our fellow man by the hand
Try to help him to understand
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land
We can all be together, forever and ever
When we make it to the promised land