Exchange me for a star
So that I may shine
To all manner of sphere
And all eyes wander from afar.
I will not leave what I have come to love!
I will break these chains
And break these rules
And dance on the heads of evil fools!
My heart pours out in holy love redeemed
Nothing was ever what it seemed.
The tapestry of tongue and fire;
This chalice of the holy host
For long was in my hand.
I knew no place.
I felt no land;
Yet I am captain
And I command
I will not leave such place of love.
This poem was written by my friend Rita Timmins, who passed away several months ago after a long battle with Hepatitis C and Cirrhosis of the Liver. Rita lived into her 50′s with this disease, but her last few years were hard, terrible and painful ones. She lived in British Columbia and had access to good medical care, and she fought the good fight, but we lost her. She wrote this poem several months before she passed, so I decided to share it because it inspires me so much. The remarkable thing about Rita was that she never gave up fighting, even at the end. How many of use with chronic illness just feel like giving in sometimes? It’s hard to keep up the fight, day after day, setback after setback. It’s so easy to just let go of the world and let illness take you over… but Rita didn’t. She lived her life to the fullest as long as she could. She was alone, unmarried and without much family or money. But she had friends to check in on her and a poodle named Roarke who she adored, and a large online family. It wasn’t easy, but she reached out to people through the internet, which is how I met her, on a photo sharing site called Flickr. She took lovely photographs and wrote these wonderful poems and I admired her quick intelligence and strong spirit. She tried really hard to stay in the world and not give up, and she did so much with the time she had and made many friends. She was an inspiration to me, and this poem says it all, I think. Please enjoy her photo blog http://www.flickr.com/photos/ritatimmins/
Don’t give up the fight, no matter how hard it gets. Life goes by fast enough, stay alive and be a part in the world as long as you can, however you can, even if it’s just here on the internet. You might still make a difference, Rita did.
