Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Eric's Cabin

The timing of being back in Maine for Ryan's wedding and back in Waterville for a month could not have been better. It gave us the opportunity to lay some blood, sweat and tears on a new structure built behind the Waterville Hospice House, an organization in which we have been active for the past 10 years.

The Hospice Memorial Healing Garden was only an idea when I joined the board in 2001. But it was an idea that excited a lot of people. Richie Houghton, Eric's best friend, was studying landscape architecture at UMass at the time and he developed a plan and a model of the garden to be located on a piece of land behind the Hospice House... which we did not own, nor for which we had the money to buy. Talk about a dream.

Over the years, Dale Clark and her wonderful volunteers raised money, bought the land, and cleared and improved the property. Richie, now a licensed professional landscape architect in Boston, put together a fabulous, updated plan which called for a special, central structure in the healing garden. And the extraordinary Chuck Lakin prepared the plans and the materials for that structure. The structure is unique and impressive, the most outstanding features being the curved, laminated roof trusses, covered with tongue and groove Russian Spruce, stained with Australian Oil.

The building is called "Eric's Cabin" in memory of our son. That is a story that began years ago and a link to which is pasted here http://gdfoss.blogspot.com/2008/12/december-8th.html .

I love the way the Universe works. Everything begins with Intention. Add time and space and patience and persistence. Keep flexible. Keep faithful. Pay attention. Things never turn out as you had hoped for. They turn out so much better.