Sarah Hoge, seated, on her 00th birthday, 2014 or so; left, her daughter Cecile Hoge Havemeyer; on the left, my daughter Lila Luce, on the right, taken at Sarah’s home in Southampton, New York.

This is a rare photograph, to those who love the Hoge family. Sarah died a few months after it was taken, and her sparkling, great-hearted daughter Cecile (Ceal) died a few months ago.

My daughters Lila and Tina (Botond) are today in Southampton, having flown from Austin (Lila) and Rockport (Tina), Texas, to bid farewell to their friend  Ceal. Now underway as I write is her service at the Catholic Church, and a reception will follow at the Meadow Club. I am not able to be there because I’m still recovering from an unpleasant surgery (is there ever a pleasant one?) and can’t handle the travel yet.

Another grievous loss to me:

Wildly talented singer.songwriter and logptime friend and music colleague, BONNIE NICHOLSON

My dear friend and music colleague Bonnie left

us a few months ago. I didn’t cry until I listened to the country music awards–and that undid me. We had travelled to Nashville together for the Nashville  Songwriters Association awards and critique programs. Her sense of fun, her originality, sweetened every song we worked on. Here are some: Hellfire!, Gonna Scrub My Blues!, Christmas Eve in Texas, Heart Born to be Broken, Wild Bird. 

The music is easy to find on Broadjam; it’s worth listening to. Two weeks ago three of our songs were on the Texas Top Ten list, with Hellfire as #1.Bonnie would have been screening with laughter and delight!

I last saw Bonnie two years ago when she and her pal Kip Kiplinger came down to Rockport to see me, some of my friends, and the Texas bird life. Kip was (he died a few months before Bonnie) a deeply involved bird watcher, traveling around the world to find the yellow throated something that one could only find in a remote Peruvian jungle, or so. The rest of the time Kip was making lots of money and news with his Kiplinger Report. 

And so I bid a gentle soft farewell to people I love.

Wish I had been more gracious and less stubborn; it’s too bad that the sweet words seem to come when it’s too late to express them. But I believe that there is communication across the waves of space, and it graces my heart to believe that they know, they hear my thoughts.

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