Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Found out an old friend passed away. A good woman. A kind soul.

We worked together years ago.

She was a veteran who’d seen it all.

I was brand new and more than a little over my head.

She was patient and kind and funny with the dry, intelligent wit of someone well read.

1/

We only worked together for about a year but stayed friends long after.

When last I saw her three years ago, she had just been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s.

Not long after, her family moved her closer to them.

She lost her ability to speak and write.

2/

It was a brutally unfair decline.

Gone in mere months was the person whose posts I always looked for...

Gone were the occasional posts of Anne Sexton poems with my name tagged in.

She had a knack for finding the rare uplift in Sexton’s otherwise heavy lines.

3/

I’m so bummed to know she’s gone yet relieved to know she has been freed of what had become a prison within her own body.

Miss ya, Michele.

Maybe one last bit of Sexton before you go...

4/

“Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.” - Anne Sexton

Hope you’re shining down. I already miss your light.

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