New Year's reflections

I am reading a book entitled Blue Peninsula by Madge McKeithen. She has a son with a mysterious,nameless disease that is causing both his physical and mental deterioration. It is a book formed around poetry--about how poetry speaks to us and for us and about us, the closest expression of what we feel. Many diverse poems have lifted and held her....I might as well admit that among my first reactions to the book was jealousy. I'm always a little jealous when I meet a mind that's bigger than my own, when I have to stretch a little to follow where I'm led. A second reaction was to start copying down some of the poems that this author has found so that I could read them again when the book is back on the library shelf. But I think not. I think I'll buy this book and keep it....All my sons and my daughter, too, seem strong and healthy and are building lives that I'm proud to see. My husband and I are living the life that I longed for back when we were in the thick of things. Here in this beautiful North Country there is time--time to be quiet, to smell the roses, to be together. But when you leave the thick of things, you leave purpose behind too. Busyness disguised the fact that large chunks of life had broken off and are floating away like an ice shelf from Ellsmere Island. Christmas letters are now fearful to open. Houses full of memories have been sold and traded for easier apartments. Illnesses have developed. Spouses have died. Suddenly it seems much is in the past and there's only a little future. "How long?", is a haunting shadow. A coward dies a thousand deaths. That's me.