by CeCe Day Hill

Created on: March 20, 2009   Last Updated: March 21, 2009

Like the echo of soft whispering winds, I still hear mother's gentle matriarchal voice: "Life is short-lived and glutted with agitation in need of the blossom of compassion, the only road to peace and reconciliation."

Stephono and I learned: "compassion road" develops from within the vine of family love, sprouting its shoots of inner strengths of humility, long-suffering and endurance, a spiritual goodness and a mildness of speech. A continuous work in progress often waylaid by our state of human imperfection, emotions and our silly ole pride.

From our mother's love came the ability to develop the skills for translating compassion and concern for others into concrete action. She helped us to find the balance in attitude so as not to develop an "I don't care" ideology in life.

She taught us to think beyond ourselves and to remember we are not better than anyone else. To keep an upper chin because compassion and mercy doesn't always yield a fair playing field or justice. She gave us the warmth of love that taught us: the act of compassion can bring us closer to the important secret of life. . .happiness and joy.

My brother Stephono is a laid-back gentle soul, of soft-spoken wisdom and heart. I, feel the fire in my belly grabbing life by its tail ready for a roller-coaster ride. We know by example, without concern for others life becomes chaos of an unfulfilled nature. Both of us have been nurtured by the one person who can explicate the art of "caring," an emotionally sensitive mother, a counselor of love, of altruistic values and support, who if anything, gave too much of herself to so many.

Stephono and I have experienced, as so many others, the fracture of compassion for each other. Our own family breakdown in attitudes made brittle by time and distance. We allowed a waterfall of misunderstandings and hurt feelings to be fired by our pride and a larva of building anger. Neither of us willing to give into the other, neither of us willing to give of the compassion from our childhood, we have given so freely to others.

Most of us preach a good talk, but when it comes down to action, we fall short. So it is before Stephono's passing our heartfelt childhood compassion flowered once again into moments of laughter, and days filled with the joy of living. Barriers melted away by a brother and sister's return to their childhood roots overriding the foolishness of the heart and adulthood. Strange, how we hurt the ones closest to us.

Our children have seen our division and rebirth. They have learned sometimes with difficulty, to climb out of their own skin into another's. Using love's beacon of light, hope and inspiration to channel "I see your need" into an act of moral awareness to do the right thing impacting the world and themselves, despite what others may think. For whenever we give, the "law of reciprocity" kicks in; we always feel its reward somewhere along the way, as "compassion road" curves, zig-zags and cuts into the road of life.

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