Cousin Patricia has joined her Niall, and the ancestors...

To Patricia and Niall's much loved, and faithful, loving, tribe...  

I cannot begin to imagine what devastation you must be feeling, even as you will surely be relieved for their valiant selves that suffering is no more.  Our hearts reach out to you with love and sorrow for your enormous loss, and our best to you, each and every moment.

Perhaps all of us feel that it is unsurprising that Patricia and Niall would not be long apart.  We thank them for the rich treasure of shared memories and laughter with which we were blessed during their sojourn here.

How to find the words that speak to Patricia's beauty?  Her courage, her wit, her common sense, her grit,  her gift for living, her tenacity, her ability to love abundantly, her lack of artifice, her joie de vivre, her dedication to family, her extensive knowledge of the Punnett story, her appreciation of others, her absence of self absorption...?

There are so many reasons to rue her departure from this Earth, but yet there is gratitude that her life was full; that she was cherished; surrounded by care and love to the end; and released to peace ever after.

Blessed be,

Lisbie x

...

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

...

Stanley Kunitz, The Layers