Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

~ from a headstone in Ireland

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Mom’s greatest dream was to be a published author, and not by using self-publishing. At the time, self-publishing had quite a stigma attached to it. She rightly felt our writing deserved to stand on the firm ground that only going through the submission process could provide. Going down that path made us better writers, individually and as a team.

 

We published Ethan’s Flight April 1, 2008 with Whiskey Creek Press, and achieved some impressive reviews. We have been treated well at Whiskey Creek, but Victoria’s goals require a publisher with a bigger reach. We worked on the sequel to Ethan’s Flight, with our valuable mentor and friend, JoEllen Conger. However Penelope’s first love was the very first story we wrote together, that unfortunately, it requires major editing.

 

So while writing/editing You Can’t Hide From Justice (working title for Ethan’s Flight II), she was struggling to edit Legacy From Yesteryear. In February of 2009 we got the news she was in stage 4 renal failure. For other medical reasons, a kidney transplant was not a viable option. She fought valiantly, but lost her fight in November 2009.

 

She wanted me to continue writing, and attempted to help organize our unpublished manuscripts so I would be able to pick up and write easily.  But our writing styles and organization methods are so different, I have struggled to find all the pieces and put them in the right order. Also, loosing my writing partner was very much like loosing a limb. I have had to learn how to continue in many areas of my life, since I lost not only my writing partner, but also my mother.

 

For Penelope, writing was so much a part of her that she couldn’t imagine NOT writing. From the time she figured out that what a pen and paper were for, she wrote stories.  She “wrote” her stories before she learned to read and write. And she never wrote short, she had pages and pages of marks and squiggles that comprised her first stories.

 

Her parents never understood her passion, and expected her “real life” goals to be more physical than imaginary, so she wrote her stories in notebooks that were never shared with other people and eventually lost in one move or another.

 

Later in life that she told me she had a passion for writing, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant with twins and forced to find something to fill my time on bed rest (or couch rest, since I had little kids and tried to supervise from the couch) that we actually began our writing career.  Thanks to a very good friend starting us reading Dianna Gabledon’s "Outlander" series, we very quickly got caught up and were waiting impatiently for the next book. Penelope was grousing about how long it was taking for the much-anticipated book, I snapped and said, “Then write your own.” Thus our writing career began.

 

One very complicated, massively long manuscript later, we decided to go through the submission process. We learned many things while going through this process, but the amount of fixing necessary was staggering. So we wrote our next epic tale, Ethan’s Flight. We took the lessons learned and wrote a story we ended up loving almost as much as our first story.   

 

Penelope continued writing everyday during her illness, right up to the last week of her life. 

 

So, I will share with you two of her favorite poems, and her determination to NEVER give up on your dreams:

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The Serenity Prayer

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God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

 

Living one day at a time; 
Enjoying one moment at a time; 
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it; 
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life 
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.

Amen.

 

--Reinhold Niebuhr

 

Footprints in the Sand

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One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.

Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,

Other times there were one set of footprints.

 

This bothered me because I noticed

That during the low periods of my life,

When I was suffering from

Anguish, sorrow or defeat,

I could see only one set of footprints.

 

So I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord,

That if I followed you,

You would walk with me always.

But I have noticed that during

The most trying periods of my life

There have only been one

Set of footprints in the sand.

Why, when I needed you most,

Have you not been there for me?”

 

The Lord replied,

“The times when you have

Seen only one set of footprints,

Is when I carried you.”

~ Mary Stevenson