Henri Matisse wrote, “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” There are always flowers in our lives. God plants them all around us. They’re not hidden, we just have to have enough faith to see them bloom. Our lives are surrounded by beauty. It quietly blooms while we scurry around in our every day lives. Even when life is challenging beauty is never absent.

Chief’s sister, Sylvia, died on July 30. After her graveside services Saturday at our family cemetery, we gathered at her home for dinner together. Three generations of our families held hands as her oldest daughter said a beautiful blessing. As we all served our plates and sat down, God’s roses bloomed beautifully and were watered by our tears as we remembered all the glorious family visits and gatherings we had enjoyed during her lifetime.

“Goodbyes are not forever. Goodbyes are not the end. They simply mean I’ll miss you until we meet again.”

We lived down a dirt road behind his sister’s house in Chief’s father’s art studio and his mother lived next door to his sister. Our families all enjoyed holiday dinners and birthday celebrations. We spent many, many happy hours perched in her gazebo porch swings. We’d always call each other if we saw a snowflake and would meet at the end of her driveway to celebrate the snow falling.

My three children worshiped Sylvia, racing over to her house on Friday afternoons. The first one there got to spend the night. She cherished my children as if they were her own. As young children they couldn’t pronounce Aunt Sylvia, so the children shortened it to Aunt Silra and eventually to just “RaRa.” Her husband, Charles, was a kind, gentle grandfather figure to my children, their grandfathers gone years before they were born. They called him Unkie. He and RaRa gave my children many happy years of memories. When Rosalyn died the state trooper brought Sylvia and Charles with him to inform us of her death.

“Life is a journey, not a destination,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

RaRa loved to watch the freight trains travel by and often would run to her front porch to wave as they passed. Eventually the train began blowing a special RaRa whistle as it traveled by. Even when Sylvia wasn’t outside the train would blow its special horn, day and late night. Once during a holiday the train stopped and the engineer and conductor got off and enjoyed dinner with her family. And sure enough, after dinner as we gathered for a family photo under an old oak in her front yard, a freight train rumbled by and blew its horn. We all waved with tears on our cheeks as the engineer waved back. As I write tonight, I can hear the lonely wail of a freight train’s horn echoing down the tracks reminding me of Rara’s love of trains.

Bet RaRa rode a freight train through the gates of heaven. She was a beautiful soul and we all will miss her.

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” — Oscar Wilde