A long time friend returned home with the news that her sister’s ovarian cancer is invading her lungs. The prognosis is dim; the two of them have put their heads together and are spending hours planning the wrap up of a life.

During our telephone conversation, I shared with my friend that for my mother’s memorial I used a quote from T. S. Eliot.  Failing to remember the quote verbatim, I had to revisit T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”

During my college years as a literature student, this set of poems fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. Reading it again umpty decades later, I discovered a treasure. Instead of skimming for a quote, I sat down for a serious read and stood up again transformed.  There is a free download copy of Four Quartets at http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html

Here’s the quote I sent to my friend: from Little Giddings, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.