Thank you's are in order

posted by Mary Lello, Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 5:17 AM

Everyone who has visited 'from away', as we like to say in Maine, has been amazed at the outpouring of support and love that we have here. Mick mentioned it on the message board - how the meals show up all cooked and ready to be warmed, how the drivers arrive on time and ready to take Jim to radiation, how the care takers arrive to spend however many hours they are needed to be here with Jim. How even Ella is being sponsored! And this is just what happens here at the Pitt!

Then there is the fund raisers being organized with the pasta social and Jim's photo show. So many people mobilizing and volunteering to pull these together all for our benefit.

Then there is Jim's fund that keeps generating more for us. This one is the hardest for me - in these troubled times so many of you have offered us help financially that is just so incredibly generous. And as these medical bills start coming in and I have more and more sleepless nights around so much of this I am truly comforted by the nest egg that has been created for us from which I can draw on.

I have tried to send thank you notes via snail mail or email to folks as I get names of donators or when you have cooked an additional meal and then driven it over here just for us. I have to write here what I have written in so many of those notes because there is so much support coming that isn't always as tangible as a dinner but we are still so very aware of the love. The fact is "thank you" does not feel nearly close enough in expressing our gratitude to and for this community of so much love and support that is offered in so many different ways, all of it so incredibly wonderful.

In Bhutan, a small country in the Himalaya (that Jim and I are determined to visit!) they are known to say "thank you, beyond the sky and the earth". And, truly, this feels so much closer to how Jim and I feel in expressing our gratitude. So:

Thank you, dear friends, BEYOND THE SKY AND THE EARTH for all you have done and are doing to help us!

With Love,

Mary