Our friend Ellen died yesterday morning. It was peaceful, she was in no pain and she was not alone. We, in our little group, have been grappling with this. All day I looked at pictures and postings from her friends, her students, colleagues, and finally had to shut my computer down. Our group has communicated with each other but still I find for myself at least, the pervading confusion and emptiness. "What just happened?" It's not that her death was sudden. We all knew it was coming. We all prepared; we wrote her notes; Nancy went out to be with her. In short, we knew she was leaving us. But still the confusion and emptiness remain.

When you're a cog in a wheel you rely on each other to keep going. But what if you're the wheel? I've always thought of Ellen as the wheel. The one that kept us moving toward each other and yet separate; the one whose life we revolved around, kind of like the planets revolving around the sun. We are here; we are entities with our own lives but we've been brought together by our sun. The sun, of course is a star and a star loses light and heat as time goes by. And we've seen her getting weaker as days went on and now that our sun has faded where do we turn?

We turn, of course, to each other and savor the sun that we had and forge through with the sunlight she imparted to each of us.

And so to Ellen, "au revoir" and "merci". Be seeing you.