speechless

I am not sure how much this I want to share with the world, but I am going to try my best. This is not my story to tell.

My friend Jan has been my hair stylist/brow waxer/friend for over 10 years. Monday morning her daughter lost her battle with cancer. This was truly a battle. Summer was an cancer ass kicking machine. It was decided about a month or so ago that she would no longer undergo treatment to return home. 

Then a movement started. Summer asked people to partake in Random Acts of Kindness and to Pay It Forward. Then because it is 2014, people from all over the country are sharing stories of their kindness. I am still moved by the power of kindness in others. 

I am wordless on how to react to the passing of a wonderful woman I have never met-I only know her mother. 

After reading post after post on Facebook-from her friends, family, and strangers-a poem popped into my head. If you have seen "In Her Shoes" you are familiar with this poem. If you are an English teacher you are too..or a poetry lover. I am not a lover of poetry, but this one just works. 

i carry your heart
by E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautifully you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here in the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
hither than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Jan, I don't know if you will ever read this, and that's okay-words truly cannot express, nor should they be able to express, how much good there is in the world because of Summer. 

Readers, find a way to be kind to a stranger (and those you love) each day.