New Start @ Life on an Island

It's been a week since Nonie left this world. Last Friday was a beautiful sunny day, but I cried so much that my face still looks quite ancient this whole week (or maybe it's just always that ancient) with the weight in my mind. During the course of the past week it was raining or cloudy, but today is another beautiful sunny day. When I walked into my room I sometimes expected to see her curling up in a ball in the middle of my comforter on my bed like before. When I heard something heavier drop, I wondered if she was jumping off a higher surface ungracefully. We can usually find strands of her long white fur on our clothes, and when we went out the usual instinct was to remove the fur when we saw it on clothes. But now it takes a couple seconds to register: this is Nonie's beautiful fur, and if we don't keep it there will be no more... Last night we brought her ashes in a bamboo box home.

Today is the Chinese New Year's Day. It's wonderful to see the sunshine, and we really need to cherish our time on this planet and hopefully do something constructive and contributing to the wellbeing of the lives on and of this world.