To get the year off to a start, here is a post from my neighbour and friend Alison about what life is like in the caring knot of community that we have here on Bowen. Last year she and her partner suffered life thretening illnesses and this is how people responded:
We should never tke this for granted. This community is knit together by acts like this, folks looking after each other. If this was a reserve, we'd call each other "cuz." This closeness, I believe, is our most precious resource. It can be put to good to use and it can be depleted as well.People, some of whom I barely knew, fed and cared for my animals, cleaned my house, answered my messages, picked up my mail, did my laundry, stocked my fridge with food and when I still wasn't home a week later threw it all out and restocked it again, delivered firewood, chopped kindling, paid my bills, made the trek into Vancouver to visit me - so many kindnesses I didn't even know about at the time.
When I got home and was recuperating and sweetie was still in a coma for what would turn out to be another 6 weeks, they ferried me into Vancouver for doctor's appointments and to visit him, read to him days I couldn't get in, took him food from restaurants when he woke up, called me with visit status reports, brought me food, flowers, music, books, movies, and kept the woodstove going. Every day. For weeks. I lacked for nothing.
A woman I'd only ever spoken to twice gave me an old sweater she'd always found comforting, a friend wanted to rent me an apartment in the city so I'd have somewhere to stay in between hospital visits, surrogate daughter phoned from Wales where she was going to school to say she was coming home. (*sternly* You'll do nothing of the kind, you'll stay and finish your degree)
I returned months later to a part-time job to discover paychecks waiting for the time I hadn't worked there.
So my wish for Bowen for 2009 is that our most precious resource grow and flourish and that we do all we can to make that happen.
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