Hope at the Roos

Quite some conversations today, deep catching-up ones.

In one I learned from an old friend this story:

A woman gets cancer. She is told she has a year to live. She gets illuminated by bird-watching and sets out to spend the rest of her days just doing that, bird watching. Eventually, she dies -- eighteen years later, after traveling all over the world watching birds -- by a bus. It's a book published this year called Life List. She beat the odds.

In another, I learned from another friend this story:

A woman is afraid she will never forge the right connections, never make her relationships work. She is broken, she worries.
A man says to her, "You aren't."

"How do you know," she says.

"Your cats," he says.

He goes on to explain that sometimes he looks down at this dog, before they go to sleep at night, and is overwhelmed by his love for the animal. So much so that it keeps him from sleeping. And the woman's love for her cats, he says, is proof that she can do that with a human being.

I was feeling overwhelmed. Now, I am less so.