This Mother Spends Her Last Christmas With Her Family

This is a true story about a woman who has lived with cancer for several years and has a sense that this may be the last Christmas she will spend with her family. 

She desires to spend some quality time with her daughters and grandchildren, so she rents a large, pretty Georgian house in a Dorset village, just a stone's throw from the beach—the beach is where her fondest memories were made as a girl.

Even though temperatures are cold enough for a hoar frost, the children and their grandparents spend time together laughing, sharing gifts and wandering down to the beach in their wellies to mess about.

She is determined to live out the maxim made famous by Henry David Thoreau, that "One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the winter."

She also is a poet, and so I include this short poem of hers:

JOY

rising
in sudden shafts
piercing time
fast beating heart
almost trembling
I look
with blurred vision

these are my child’s children
sharing particles
of my star
shining on
beyond me
down the years

Seeking out more soul-shifting travels? B.E Away is here to take you!

Full Story Credits

Photography by Liz Baker Photography

Film Lab, Carmencita Film Lab

Venue, The Stone House

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