People love to tell me not to worry. My mother says it, my husband says it, my daughter says it…why don’t they realize they are wasting their breath? If I could turn off my worrying, don’t they think I would? I like to think of it not as worrying but rather thinking. I like to think. I think about things that have happened, that could have happened, and might still happen.
My sister died on July 7th after a terrible battle with cancer. She was strong. She was healthy. She was beautiful. She could do anything. I spent so many years being jealous of her. Isn’t that sad? I spent time being jealous instead of being with her. Maybe that’s the whole point of not thinking about tomorrow. If we don’t put so much energy into tomorrow, maybe we’ll do better today.
This photograph was taken by my sister in 1984. She gave it to me for Christmas but I never got around to framing it. She was just messing around with photography and naturally ended up with this beautiful picture. I hadn’t seen the picture in years. It was packed away somewhere. I was feeling bad that I never had it framed and wanted to find it. I had no idea where to look. The more I thought about it the more I started to remember it as a picture of a thistle. I knew that couldn’t be right. What were the odds? We are not big thistle lovers or anything. Why would she take a picture of a thistle? My father always had roses, bright, beautiful roses all around our white picket fence. A thistle? I couldn’t be remembering the picture right. Then I found it.
You see, the name of my first book is The Bruised Thistle.
Don’t be anxious about tomorrow, it’s already covered.