Day 168 = 4  sets of  7 day weeks x 6 = a kind of 6 months


what i am working really hard at is in the first line of poem below,  "to love life" - not always so easy.  


However this pretty perfect poem arrived in my mailbox this morning, for anyone who is facing loss - which we all do - but sometimes you just feel it more ----

the thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Ellen Bass


who can not hold to that line, "hold life like a face" - wow.