Kathy and Connie are gone

 and then they're not

people are there, and then they're not,

two former colleagues were fully there with me, and then we lost them,

I visited one in her local assisted living home in the last year,

marveled at how "with it" Kathy Harris was,

of the marvelous view out her window

of the nature she loved so much,

got her to sign her permission to use the CFS story

she wrote for me and our book, Callings and Answers,

when invited the last few years, she has visited CFS

for a meal, a sharing of a middle school production,

her story for the book was of how thankful she was of her time at Friends,

a year ago I pressed another special colleague, Connie Toverud,

to write and share her story of her and CFS,

in the dark days of January this year in snowy Norway,

she defeated self-doubt and hesitancy

and wrote beautifully of the best of her

revealing itself within the challenge of being on staff in the upper school,

when she read the collected stories in Callings and Answers,

she emailed me that she "cried and cried" after reading it all,

deeply moved by the collective wisdom and experience expressed in those pages,

her own story told of finding herself and her gifts at CFS,

that in her latter decades in Norway

she was called to be there for whomever found her and needed her,

she answered by hearing them, seeing them, connecting with them,

people are there, and then they're not, 

now Kathy and Connie are gone.

by Henry H. Walker

October 30, ‘25