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I'm sad to say that, somehow, in my flurry of re-formatting and putting the archives in chronological order, I managed to delete the August entries of Maria's Musings. A dear friend had printed the entries for August 1, 4, and 8. Entries from 17, 20, 25, and 28 are still at large and may never be recovered. I think they probably had some good stuff in them, considering the time they were written. If anyone happened to save or print any of those entries, I'd appreciate your contacting me: maria@palensky.com

August 1, 2007 Click here for this entry with pictures of our salmon feed from last night.

August 4, 2007 John's children and I have been blessed with tender messages of support from our extended family of friends. John would want everyone to know that, though he fought as long as was reasonable, it finally became time to follow that call home to the sea. His breathing was very labored, but we didn't know at what point the captain would decide to turn in, so the children all kissed him good-bye for awhile and left the house to get some necessary provisions. I told him what they were doing and that they would be back in a short time. Right then, his breathing changed and quieted. The room became still, like flat water. Thinking it would bring him some comfort, I put on a CD of five songs John and I had requested and began to sing them to him. His breathing relaxed even more as I started to sing, each breath farther apart than the last. The last of the songs was his favorite, Roger Whitaker's "For You Are Beautiful" (and I have loved you dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell). The music evokes waves and a huge ship pulling out to sea. I held John's hand and sang and he released his last breath with the last note of the song (only John could have pulled that off!). I truly believe that he chose to leave when and how he did so we could go through it together, just as we have everything else.

I thank you all for being witnesses for me to the impact this big-hearted man had in the world. Thank you for reading our love story and for being part of it. I know that, though John was always the center that held this big wheel of family and friends together, he stayed long enough to be sure that we were well woven together so that, when the hub was gone, the wheel would still hold. The children and I are in the process of planning for a memorial celebration of John's life. We hope that John's many friends will come to share memories and fish stories with us. And we'll be at Buoy 10 with the Czech-Mate, camp central, as usual, to share some intimate time around the fire with John's closest fishing buddies.

A kind and generous friend sent this to me and I think it says everything I would say if I could find the words:

August 8, 2007 I've been talking to a lot of people in the past several days and continue to receive emails filled with memories of times spent with John and offers of support for me. I find I'm wavering between my own memories of fun times and the last days we shared. It had bothered me that the people from Hospice were not seeing him the way we all knew him. He had begun to detach from his body, it seemed to me, and was traveling back and forth between worlds. The body was getting too heavy and unwieldy to manage and he just couldn't control the robot anymore in this world. But I should have known his mind was still aware of his surroundings and still connected to those who loved him. I thought that he was asleep several times while I was sitting with him, but when some memory or thought brought tears to my eyes, he opened his eyes and looked directly at me, catching me in the act!

I just learned yesterday that the Roger Whitaker song on that CD I mentioned is actually titled "The Final Farewell." John had often explained to me that it was really about a  man leaving a place and a life he had loved to go somewhere else. How fitting that he chose that song to carry him away from a life he had love and savored completely. And I leave it to his creative mind to find a way, even in the last moments of his life, when he couldn't use any other part of his body to do so, to communicate with me and let me know he was still aware of what he was doing . . . and probably winking a "Watch this!" at me in the process!