To those of you who are new to Jillian's Journeys this year, every now and then I take a break from the travelogue posts to mark a special occasion or to honor something or someone who has made a difference in my life.
This post is dedicated to my brother Justin, who would be 22 today if he had not died a little over four years ago in a hiking accident in Peru. I started celebrating Justin Day, as I now call it, last year on his birthday; there are many ways to celebrate, some of which I listed in the following post:
http://jilliansjourneys.blogspot.com/2007/09/justin-day.html
Today I celebrated by wearing all black save for a pair of boots, a caribiner, and a portrait of him given to me by a family friend around my neck. I went down to the Bocasteria, a place here on the Sagunto Campus where they sell food items, etc., to us students, and drank a cup of coffee in his honor before writing the following poem. It's not the smoothest or most beautiful poem I've ever written, but I thought I'd share it with you today:
A cup of coffee I raise today
For the man with the hair of fiery red--
To honor all those who've crossed his way,
To honor the words he has said.
"No fear!" he said--
Let courage be your guide.
Go wherever you think God has led
Your way across the ocean wide.
"No regrets!" he added, with a grin--
Don't let the past be your chain.
For we were all long freed from sin,
And will come home again.
"No holding back," he finished, smiling--
Be bold, live all the life you can.
For what use is it to waste life whiling
Your time away where you began?
So, a cup raised high from foreign land,
I drink to the man with hair of fiery red--
Forever to celebrate his words, which stand
As wise and great as the day they were said.
No fear, no regrets, no holding back.
Thank you for bearing with me for this out-of-the-ordinary post; the next one will be more fun stuff about Spain. After all, not much of interest has happened around here over the last few days--I single-handedly flooded my floor of the dorm on Sunday (that was exciting; for an explanation of how this is possible, go to the website and check out the video), helped register immigrants for Spanish classes, and started Choir--other than that, nothing particularly interesting has occurred. Tomorrow I get to go to Valencia, which will provide all kinds of interesting pictures and whatnot, and this weekend I'll get to see my first Spanish fiesta in Sagunto. I hope life is treating all of you well, as always, and wish you a very happy Justin Day!
In my prayers,
2 comments:
Hola, Sweet Girl.
It sounds like it has been a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. Some days are like that, even in Spain.
Good news! You're human. Better news! God loves you anyway--and so do we.
Fun things to do in the rain in Spain.
Run through the orange tree groves, roll in the wet grass.
Of course, personally, I think rainy days are perfect for a cup of hot tea, a fireplace and a good book.
Tia Fe
By the way, we celebrated Justin day here as well. KJ is reading a 700 page book, just for grins. Kaiti planned an appropriate costume ensemble within the bounds of dress code including a carabiner. I wore black mostly and threw a few more interesting accents and voices into my conversations. We thought about having Uncle Kenny make pizza but that's hard to do on a school night. KJ said we should take Kaiti to a theme park and get her lost. I said let's skip that part and just have ice cream. ;)
Love you.
Tia Fe
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