I will miss so much about you! Your forays into the city, your embodiment of Buddhist teachings, your humor, the constancy of your attention, your love of the written word.
Michelle Slater of mscomfortzone.com
We lost such a generous and bright soul this week! I like to think that the finger on the card she sent me years ago now points to her own face in the clouds. At peace. All-seeing.
PS I pulled the card out of a drawer earlier this week and placed it next to where I write. I suppose on some level I knew she was leaving us. She was one of my most loving and clear-sighted champions!
I have been wandering through her blog and Facebook posts … how much they resonate in hindsight … Michelle will remain with us, in our thoughts, for a good long time …
I did the same last night, a little. The last couple were heartbreaking. But there is a deep treasure there. I want to comb through comments she made on my blog as well.
Who was Michelle?
Ms Uncertainty Principles of mscomfortzone.com. Link on side bar.
(((Dee))) Michelle truly cared with all her beautiful heart and soul, fly free!
She really really did. I keep thinking what an angel she was but really she was all the more remarkable for being so fully human.
In her quiet, determined yet strong way, she moved about her beloved city, sharing what she saw, what moved her, always, always with a keen eye, a compassionate heart and a connecting passion. Several years ago I sent her one of Barry Smith’s peace pins, we exchanged a few emails and I made a few comments on her blog but I wish I had stayed closer in touch…she sent me, in return, for the peace pin, a marvelous creative card and affixed to the front, a leaf that she had found on her travels, she had drawn a wicked funny face on it. It held a special place on my altar for a long time until a few years ago, my eight yr old grandson spotted it and asked if he could have it…he loved the grinning leaf card. How I wish I had told her that her card moved a little scamp of a grandson who took it with him to CA…but then, I think she knows…
She was truly remarkable. You put so well what I loved about her. We once made plans for me to drive out to her friends in western mass during one of her visits there. I really wish I’d gone. But once I found out it was more than two hours away, I just couldn’t do it — what with both boys home and my sister.
Michelle also modeled living a rich life within very simple means.
Marti – I was going back in her FB posts and came across an image of the card and the fact that she’d dropped it into the mail to a friend. It’s there reposted on 9/21/2020 from 9/21/2017. Three years ago to the day.
I saw it too and wondered if it was one and the same!
I was re-reading some of Michelle’s old blog posts and found the one where she displayed the leaf card that she made and sent to me:
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2017/09/peace-be-this-equinox.html
I’m not on FB so didn’t know Deb. Thanks for sharing this; to see those dates actually sent a vibration through my body. I should say that it was a silver peace leaf from Barry that I sent to Michelle, not a peace pin.. Serendipitous joy when I received Michelle’s leaf card…
I usually start my day by having a cup of tea, once in a while a cup of coffee, sit out in our back yard and wait for daybreak. We are getting cooler weather and when the sun came up, the sky exploded into hues of lavender, peace, pink, blue…I found myself walking to our brick wall, standing up on some rocks, looking straight up and I thought of Michelle’s sky, similar colors, silhouetted by Manhattan buildings. Here in New Mexico, nothing but vast sky, Sandia Mountain to my right and I felt that Michelle was here, looking down at her sky, me looking up at her in my New Mexico sky and then, I cried…
I was reading some of Michelle’s older blog posts and I found the one where she showed the great card that she made and sent to me:
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2017/09/peace-be-this-equinox.html
She had a gentleness about her that was inescapable in her posts. She will be dearly missed.
Yes. Gentleness combined with clear sightedness. So rare.
I think there were many of us, alone in our homes, in the wee hours, mourning and honoring Michelle in our own ways. I wished for a moment that I was still on FB, so I could travel back in time there as well, but I settled in on her blog, then Jude’s, feeling a need to go back in time to where we all began. As I scanned comments from 2009 at Jude’s, I saw one of your first and smiled, saying aloud “there’s Dee”…like some odd individual reunion was taking place.
I read backwards at Michelle’s thinking that on some level, I know I felt this coming for her health and more so her weariness for these times in this world kept coming through her words. Her deep caring for all of us and especially, recently for Grace and her goats and me and my breathing during the days of fires drove home again her practically selfless ways. I will miss feeling her care. I will miss her New York stories, which she so freely shared with us, helping me have a meaningful connection to my birthplace, one which I’d not had until I met Michelle of NYC.
I do believe I could write on and on, but I will stop here and say rest well Michelle, you are so loved. xo
I was thinking this morning, too, if how many relationships arose out of the early days of judes blog.
“Deep caring” is a quality that shone in her comments and posts. An enthusiasm for life, too. So admirable.
Yes indeed and her just going ability…(voice trails off…)
How wonderful that you have that card from Michelle! Like her last quote from Wendell Berry, it is so perfectly apropos and now, bittersweet.
I know. I keep reading it. How much it says. For her and for all of us.
I just had to stop at the very first image and retreat for a while.
oh Dee, such a loving post for Michelle, how fast it seems people come and go; I will miss her voice, reading her comments on various blogs, phew….