Festival of Love & Light

Tonight, our St. Clare Hospital hosted its annual Festival of Love & Light.  It is a time when the community gathers to honor and remember loved ones and to light Love Light evergreen trees in the St. Clare Healing Garden.  This year, the event was even more meaningful to me because of the grief  I feel from the loss three months ago of my beloved mother.  The minister who delivered the message during the event's program asked the large audience to contemplate how the actions of our loved ones have inspired action in us and how what we do now may inspire action in others someday.  I thought about my caring, loving, gentle mom, who even in her dying process, still found myriad ways every day to reach out to others and to show her caring for them.  Until practically the day she died, she shared her healing spirit, gentle touch and kind words with those around her.  Her actions, her very being, inspire me to try to emulate her, to carry on her legacy.  The question I find myself asking each day is: How can I be a healing spirit, a gentle touch, a kind word for others?  So, this Christmas season and beyond, I will try each day to take the gifts she gave me and give them to others.  Mom was a light to so many.  I hope to become that light and shine it on others.