This is a poem written by my best friend in highschool and college. We’ve kept up with each other for sixty-three years across the miles between Connecticutt and Tennessee.
Our journeys have been amazingly similar in the things that count, like family and spirituality. I have saved her letters and her writings from all the way back to highschool. I was reorganizing my files and found this and it touched my heart.

To My Children
I gave you life,
I gave you love: or tried to.
Sometimes I gave you pain.
The scars you carry still.
Because of my own wounds, I wounded you.

I wanted you to know God loved you;
But often my faith was feeble
As a candle
Flickering in the darkness –
And so you had too little light.

Sometimes I gave you much too much.
Sometimes my well was dry.
I gave you dung and dirt, sun and rain;
The things all flowers need
To live, to grow.

All that I gave you, good and bad,
Is yours.
I cannot take it back.
The soil is tilled; the seed is sown.
The rest is up to you, dear child.

Choose life
or death.

Whatever road you take,
I wish you joy and peace and courage.
My prayers are with you
Always.
And my love.

Your mother.

(Myra Berghane)