Dear Life, Found this pic while going through photos. We had it taken for our parents. They had a “gallery” of family photos in the living room that was always being added to or subtracted from depending on a birth, a marriage, a divorce, etc. I’m smiling thinking about all the iterations of the “family gallery”. Wished I had taken snap shots of each “display”. I’ve yet to see my mother’s new home and gallery, or her and my siblings, daughter, family members in nearly a year, due to the pandemic.
Hope to travel East in the Spring. Missing everyone.
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Dear Life, How patient can I be? As patient as I am called to be. New things take time. A creative idea emerging. A clinical trial treatment working. A body strengthening. A mind learning. A spirit guiding. A soul journeying. A human loving. Looking and listening for these and more. Each day is an opportunity for new experiences.
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Dear Life, I read a NYT article today about the pandemic. Slowly morphing into an endemic, still dangerous to high-risk groups: the elderly, children under 5 and immune compromised people. The upshot for me: Be careful, wear a mask in indoor public settings, and no large groups. I’m embracing winter hibernation. Living day-to-day with an openness to my heart, creativity, communicating with loved ones, interest in the immediate world around me. The crows talk and the birds sing as the cathedral bells toll every 15 minutes. Shadows change with the light lengthening each day. It’s cold outside. Warm inside. I am alive and well and reporting to you from the white cloud of bed.
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Dear Life, A soft inch of snow alighted upon Santa Fe while I snoozed. I am still under comfy covers enjoying a “snow day”. Ate breakfast in bed: French Toast with blueberries and toasted pecans covered with maple syrup. I made this collage yesterday in anticipation of waking to snow today. It will be comfy clothes all day, loud dance music in the kitchen while cooking, good books in the reading chair sprinkled with double chocolate chip cookies, and line drawings with collages in the studio capped off by binging HBO episodes of “Succession”… the least likable people on TV! Hope you’re having a good day, too!
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Dear Life, I’m jumping for joy today knowing I have a full week off from treatments and fewer meds. Stomach feeling solid. Energy good. I’ll get outside for a walk when the mercury moves up to 45 degrees. Laundry, cooking, lunch with a friend, and working in the studio all make for a good day. I’m grateful.
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Dear Life, Prayer works. Not a peep out of my stomach since my request went out.
Big smiles and thank you’s!
Yours Truly, PRM

Dear Life, It’s been four days of gurgling, growling, unhappy stomach trying to assimilate the chemical dump into my achy body since Thursday’s Covid Antibody injections. The line-up this past week: Cytoxin (chemo) and Acyclovir, an anti-viral med morning and night along with an anti-pneumonia med has the winter olympics going on inside of me.
Specific prayer request: “Please have Pamela’s stomach calm down so she can participate and enjoy the events of her life”.
I know I’m winning Gold Medal!
Yours Truly, Pamela Markoya

Dear Life, I recently saw a piece of clothing that I wished I had bought. An unusual sweater hanging on an outside “sale” rack of a consignment shop next to where I pick up my mail. The sweater stayed with me and I called to see if they still had it. Alas, it had been sold. The salesperson said, “You put such positive energy on it that someone bought it right after you left”. Here is my poem of unrequited love for the sweater written before I knew it sold. Moral: Buy it when you see it!
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Aquamarine Ink 01.18.2022

When thread follows needle
Clothe releases tucked pin
Form appears inside line
Neck to waist to knee

Cross stitch near the throat
Embroidery silk
Colors of sun meets sea
Tide of soft texture

Flat to ruffle
Flower knit hues
Waving cotton
Hung on sale

Ten dollars
Hope you are
Still there
Tomorrow

Dear Life, It is known that writing is a healing activity and an art form whether stream-of-conscious or given some order. I’ve been scribbling journals, prose, letters, and collections of writings all my life. December 2018 began the daily Love Letters to Life. This January, I started writing Aquamarine Ink, short prose before I go to sleep. I like projects that have a focus and structure that can be shared with a community.
Here is a piece I wrote last night while considering today’s trip to the Cancer Center for a prevention injection of the Covid Antibody.
Yours Truly, Pamela Rose

Aquamarine Ink 01.19.2022

Don’t dress ragged
To go to the chemo suite
Comfortable clothes
Need not look like
Straight from bed
To chair

Lift head and eyes
To greet each person
Wig on straight and smooth
A gift from the ladies
In the Cancer Foundation
Resource room

Sleeves must go easily up
Pants easily and quickly down
Zippers on chest to access port
Shoes that stay on feet
But don’t feel like they
Are anywhere