Blessings and

I still recall that rainy afternoon in St Paul the Apostle School when Sister Andrea read the memorable “Ships That Pass In The Night” passage by Longfellow to her sixth grade class.

Sister Andrea read poetry aloud often to the fifty boys and girls sitting in her classroom, but the words I heard that afternoon became engraved in my memory.

And indeed there have been many other moments when they seemed far more appropriate than others found in my vocabulary.

Today I sought them out once again to say adieu to a young woman I had not truly welcomed into my world.

Relocating from a home, a neighborhood, and yes the medical care I had known for decades was difficult. My husband and I had been blessed for years with both friendship and professional care by Doctor Sal Serpe and his son, Andrew. It was difficult to say goodbye, but obviously necessary.

Upon my arrival in another state, I was grateful to find another internist accepting new patients, Then covid arrived, and when it finally departed, my new physician retired. The good Doctor was replaced by a young woman who, like I, had recently relocated, and was welcoming new patients. I do not handle change easily, and admittedly, I was uncomfortable.

Yet in the small fragment of time, she and I have shared, we have bonded. And today I can only remember the memorable words Sister Andrea read aloud so very, very long ago as I now say adieu to Dr. Morgan Buda, who, unlike I, will return to her native state.

“So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And borrowing the words of another poet, John O’Donohue, I wish her “Beannacht.”