Tonight, I visited a relevant person's blog. Leaving his thoughts and his words, I felt like writing this. I am not feeling maudlin and, though I'm fast approaching the first "anniversary" of my wife's death, I don't intend to get that way and write a whole lot of only serious stuff about relationships and growth in the month ahead. Promise {;?)

Some of you know a bit about my attitude regarding religion. So, it might come as a surprise that I am a friends with a local church pastor. His blog is titled "From Out of the Wilderness." His name is Ryon Price. I commend his blog to you to read and think about.

For the record, and I guess this is one of those "buts" my friend Ryon Price refers to when writing and discussing race issues, Ryon is my brother's pastor. Ryon, on his own offered to speak at my wife's Memorial service last August. I had neve met him.

Never having met anyone in my family but my brother and his family, Ryon offered and I accepted with grace. He did that knowing that I entered churches rarely and usually only for family gatherings around Thanksgiving (our homes don't hold the 75 or so Conants and their families who join and commune around the lives for which we are grateful)as well as for funerals and weddings.

Almost the moment he entered my home to become acquainted with my wife's life and our families, I new I had met a stranger who had become a friend - one of those rare occasions when one just plimb blank* knows. Through the year we've gotten together for lunch and spoken on the phone a few times. Late in the evening last Christmas Eve, on a whim, I drove over to his church, walked in and sat with my brother whose wife sings in the choir. Together, as children and as middle-aged adults, Ed and I sang songs with tears and smiles. Years ago, he and I entertained grandparents and other family members singing together. We hadn't been together in song for more than 15 years. It felt good. As Ryon Price began to speak, he looked out over his small congregation and spied me. There was a halt in his voice before he picked up his pace again. A few choir members who I've known as friends in town for several years winked and smiled at my brother and me a few times on Christmas Eve. I've not returned to that church since and may not again. Communion to me is the joining of people, and I've never really enjoyed the religious strictures and requirements which "church" sort of demands if one is to be in communion within the physical and spiritual structure of that 2000 year old social institution.

Ryon and I spoke this week. He had agreed to join my family when we commit Lynn's ashes to the hallowed grounds of the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery. We will ride together, and I'm looking forward to him and my family who have circled and supported me when needed this past year. This will be one of those bittersweet endings which, for me, marks one more step in this beginning as I "grow up" one more time {;?)

One more thought, and then I'll end this. For many years when someone close to me has died, I've yearned for the sounds and symbols of beginnings and have never been disappointed when I've heard an infant's cry, laugh or some other sound at those moments of yearning. On the first or second day following Lynn's death, I was in my sun room listening to folks and interacting. At a point, I recall saying, "I need to hear a baby, I need a beginning..." Not five minutes later, my nephew, Trevor, walked in and his newborn infant was making small crying noises ... I had my beginning. The night of Lynn's Memorial service at a point when I felt particularly over-whelmed by the kindness and numbers of people (a few hundred, literally), I told someone "I need to hear a baby, a beginning..." A very few minutes after that feeling and statement, I looked up and there were Ari and very young Abigail Price in her mother's arms - my symbolic beginning once again.

I am thankful that this young man, this minister for others, of candor and honesty, Ryon Price, is a part of my life - not an everyday physical part, but a thoughtful, accepting spiritual part AND I am thankful that I know, albeit less, his daughter and his wife. It has been many years since I've had the joy of knowing groups of inter-racial people - families and friends, and I know I have missed that important aspect of life since moving back to Vermont in 1972.

Having these experiences at this point in my life, losses and beginnings, is one of the significant reasons I know truly how fortunate and blessed I am. Life is good. Accepting and giving life to others is also good - at least for this child.

Sam Conant
Colchester, Vermont
http://samcvt@blogspot.com