"Nothing gold can stay..."

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost~~

Frances May Arnold

May 1st 1927 ~ June 4th 2008

Banned from most K-Marts in Weld County...wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, aunt...and friend. Such a wonderful list of credentials to carry away with you!

Grampa Francie will be so missed~~

...and her memory lives on in the sparkling eyes of her grandchildren~~

Frances was a firecracker. Absolutely. Her strength, character, and personality were exactly like the beautiful flashes of flower shaped sparks that light up summer skies in early July--I'm sure she's still that way. I am certain.

Now, the little gal in the green sweater (above left) is Maggie and she is 4. She is Francie's great-granddaughter. While Frances was passing, beginning her journey, Maggie was blocks away at a play date with her buddies...and one little fella she didn't quite "take to". She would sweetly tell the little boy,

"okay...that's enough....

OKAY...THAT'S ENOUGH!

OKAY!!! THAT'S. ENOUGH!!"

Francie lives on...in so many ways. :)

I could be a complete milk-toast, and still raise strong, beautiful, daughters. It’s genetically destined.

It rained here all day yesterday. It's still raining...it's grey and cold and dismal outside....but when Frances passed, it was in a room filled with light, with peace. A room filled with love as she was surrounded by her family...

It was airy, the light seemed a very pure, pale, blue...the back-drop for a rainbow's promise.

A few moments after, I found my husband and his uncle in a small coffee-kitchen in our hospice. The three of us just stood there, looking out a picture window at the grey and stormy sky....Uncle Gino noted that this was not the sky that Grandma Francie was seeing...her sky is blue and full of beautiful white clouds...no more storms of pain, no more grey. We stood looking at the sky....and then, there was this vibrant, powerful flash of lightening...the kind that's pure light...the sort of lightening that illuminates the entire world...

...at that moment, I knew all was well and as it should be. I turned to Joe and said:

"She just got there."

I have only known Francie for about 9 years--while I admired her strength, her humor, her spirit, I did not know her as well as I would have wished. My sorrow is, mostly, for her wonderful family. A family that is becoming my own, over the years, as we share in the joy of birth and celebration--and now, share the grief of death. The emotions in my "heart" today are a perfect mixture of grief and joy. Francie is cutting a rug on a carpet of clouds, while we all sit here--quite blue--on a cold and lonely earth. How well we know~~nothing gold can stay.

The one thing, a memory, I have gone over and over again these past few weeks, is when Francie and Duane came to see our new little house, years ago. I had planted "just a bit" of mint in the flower beds. Francie told me that I'd better dig it up, pot it, and re-plant it in the pots...otherwise it would spread everywhere. I was 20-something, so what did she know? A lot, as it turns out. That freakitin' mint is everywhere. And now, it's wonderful nuisance-of-a-memory....Francie was right, she always is...

With the single exception of the song, “yellow bird”, which Harry Belafonte did not record…but I know Harry did sing that song...somewhere, somehow—my abundant mint is proof.

You can probably tell what she thought of me:

goodbye, "Grampa Francie"~~

your are loved and missed, quite dearly.

Blessings,

Meg