The Final Touch

I received the fol­low­ing as a for­warded email and just had to pass it on. But I tend to be a bit cyn­i­cal, so I checked it out on Snopes first — hop­ing it would indeed be true… and it is! (By the way, www​.Snopes​.com and www​.TruthOr​Fic​tion​.com are great sites where you can search and, most of the time, ver­ify whether an email for­ward you receive is true or not. Please do this before send­ing them on — and if the mes­sage turns out to be fic­tion, either delete it or reply/reply all and tell peo­ple so, point­ing them in the direc­tion of the site you used to learn the truth. There is way too much junk out there pos­ing as truth, and being “aided and abet­ted” by well-meaning, but mis­guided (and often novice) email­ers. Take pity on your friends and check each mes­sage before send­ing it on!)

In this case of truth, you can read Meredith’s mother’s own account — lovely! — at http://​www​.snopes​.com/​g​l​u​r​g​e​/​a​b​b​e​y​.asp. For now, here is a copy of the email I received (nat­u­rally, I did proof­read and copy­edit it just a bit!):

“MEREDITH & ABBEY”

It is not known who replied, but there is a beau­ti­ful soul work­ing in the dead let­ter office of the   US postal ser­vice.

Our 14-year-old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4-year-old daugh­ter Mered­ith was cry­ing and talk­ing about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a let­ter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would rec­og­nize her. I told her that I thought we could, so she dic­tated these words:

Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yes­ter­day and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick.
I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am send­ing a pic­ture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.
Love, Meredith

We put the let­ter in an enve­lope with a pic­ture of Abbey and Mered­ith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Mered­ith pasted sev­eral stamps on the front of the enve­lope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the let­ter all the way to heaven. That after­noon she dropped it into the let­ter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had got­ten the let­ter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yes­ter­day, there was a pack­age wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, “To Mered­ith,” in an unfa­mil­iar hand. Mered­ith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, “When a Pet Dies.” Taped to the inside front cover was the let­ter we had writ­ten to God in its opened enve­lope. On the oppo­site page was the pic­ture of Abbey and Mered­ith and this note:

Dear Mered­ith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven.
Hav­ing the pic­ture was a big help. I rec­og­nized Abbey right away.
Abbey isn’t sick any­more. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don’t need our bod­ies in heaven, I don’t have any pock­ets to keep your pic­ture in, so I am send­ing it back to you in this lit­tle book for you to keep and have some­thing to remem­ber Abbey by…
Thank you for the beau­ti­ful let­ter, and thank your mother for help­ing you write it and send­ing it to me. What a won­der­ful mother you have. I picked her espe­cially for you.
I send my bless­ings every day, and remem­ber that I love you very much.
By the way, I’m easy to find: I am wher­ever there is love.

Love,
God

Since I’m a mother, too, as well as a copy­ed­i­tor — and since, in the long run, my moth­er­ing will, doubt­less, prove to be the more impor­tant of the two roles — this caught my eye anew when I received it by email from a friend. (It’s been around, so you may have seen it before.) Dads, keep watch: I’ll try to write one espe­cially for you in the near future! But for now, all you who are also moms, this is for you!

Me, with my baby when he was about 7 months old

Real moth­ers don’t eat quiche; they don’t have the time to make it.

Real moth­ers know that their kitchen uten­sils are prob­a­bly in the sandbox.

Real moth­ers often have sticky floors, filthy ovens, and happy kids.

Real moth­ers know that dried play dough doesn’t come out of car­pets. (I would add that it’s hard to get off the kitchen linoleum, too, but who cares? The kids were hav­ing so much fun!)

Real moth­ers don’t want to know what the vac­uum has just sucked up.

Real moth­ers some­times ask “Why me?” and get their answer when a lit­tle voice says, “Because I love you best.”

Real moth­ers know that a child’s growth is not mea­sured by height or years or grade; it is marked by the pro­gres­sion from “Mama” to “Mommy” to “Mom” to “Mother.” (Or per­haps in those teen years, to “Muh-THE-ER!” and then back to “Mom” again once the child has truly grown up!)

Friend­ship Con­nec­tions Around the World: ‘Global Help’ by eduard­trag, via Stock.Xchng

It’s amaz­ing to me to stop and real­ize how my webs of con­nec­tion have fanned out and mul­ti­plied since I started work­ing as a free­lance proof­reader / copy­ed­i­tor. I now have clients on both coasts of the United States and in some states in between, as well as one in Finland!

As much as I value and enjoy assist­ing all of them with their writ­ing projects, what is truly pre­cious and pro­found to me is how, in some cases, our lives have become woven together such that, when one of them rejoices, I rejoice… and when one of them is hurt­ing, I hurt too.

Indeed, this is how God would have it:  “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15, NRSV). It is one of the rea­sons God placed us in com­mu­nity, stat­ing that it is not good for human beings to be alone (Gen­e­sis 2:18).

Much can be said — and is said, fre­quently — about the neg­a­tives of spend­ing vast amounts of time com­mu­ni­cat­ing online, but on the pos­i­tive side, it cer­tainly allows us to con­nect with peo­ple we oth­er­wise would never meet — in my case, clients who turn into friends. And so, I have the oppor­tu­nity to be (I hope and pray) a com­fort and sup­port to a client in Chicago who is recov­er­ing from a rup­tured aneurysm in her brain… and to a client in Cal­i­for­nia who lost her beloved niece to H1N1. And I can cel­e­brate with a client whose book turned out gor­geous!… with another whose busi­ness is boom­ing!… and with one who recently had a baby!

On a social net­work­ing site recently, I read the user­name of some­one I don’t know; it was some­thing like “Con­nected by Words.” I, too, feel like the love of words has con­nected me with so many won­der­ful peo­ple — so much so that they have got­ten not only into my head through their writ­ing, but into my heart through their open­ness, their pos­i­tive and ener­getic spirit, their friend­li­ness, and their very lives. In some cases, I would say we are con­nected by more than “words” — but by THE Word — God’s cre­ative Spirit at work among us! I am so blessed and grateful.

Well, it’s not for lack of try­ing, but I have not yet been able to locate a link to an archived record­ing of the Christo­pher Gabriel Pro­gram from yes­ter­day morn­ing when Gram­mar Girl Mignon Fog­a­rty was a guest on his show (970 WDAY Radio out of Fargo, N.D.). I will keep an eye out because yes­ter­day morn­ing, there was a link for his March 3 show.

In the mean­time, the National Gram­mar Day web­site is still live. I invite you to visit and poke around. Among the top “fun finds” is this music video, also acces­si­ble on YouTube, in cel­e­bra­tion of National Gram­mar Day; turns out the Gram­mar Girl has a bit of singing and song-writing tal­ent as well! It’s worth a listen!

I hope you’ll click on the “Play” icon in the video below to hear the whole song. Just one great line to which I can per­son­ally attest: “If you love good gram­mar, you’ll never be bored!”

TIME TO CELEBRATE! It’s NATIONAL GRAMMAR DAY! What do you plan to do to make it special?!

If you see this blog in time, you may want to spend part of the day, begin­ning at 9:10 a.m. PST, lis­ten­ing to Mignon  Fog­a­rty, a.k.a Gram­mar Girl, on the Christo­pher Gabriel Pro­gram on 970 WDAY-AM radio (or by stream­ing audio online). I assume it will also be avail­able as an archive after the fact; check back here in a few hours — I’ll let you know and pro­vide a link if it is.) I don’t know much more about it — I just had the good for­tune to catch Mignon’s post in my News Feed on Face­book — but you can be sure I’ll be there (lis­ten­ing from my home office) with bells on!

I’ve writ­ten about the Gram­mar Girl web­site before on this blog. I highly rec­om­mend it!

Cel­e­brate National Gram­mar Day! And don’t for­get to hug your res­i­dent gram­mar­ian today!

The fol­low­ing sign demon­strates the impor­tance of word order.

At a Santa Fe gas sta­tion:
“We will sell gaso­line to any­one in a glass container.”

But what if I drive up in a car instead??

~~~~~

And this one shows the impor­tance of unam­bigu­ous word choice.

In a New York drug­store:
“We dis­pense with accuracy.”

Remem­ber that “dis­pense” can mean to pre­pare and dis­trib­ute, as with med­ica­tion, but it can also mean to set aside or dis­re­gard some­thing (Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dic­tio­nary). Hmmm… do I want to go to that phar­macy or not??