padla

Katy Butler quote ✍️

Quote

When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice, the colors and patterns of what's left behind do not change,' wrote my neighbor and friend, the poet Jane Hirschfield, after she visited an old friend suffering from Alzheimer's disease in a nursing home. And so it was with my father. His mind did not melt evenly into undistinguishable lumps, like a dissolving sand castle. It was ravaged selectively, like Tintern Abbey, the Cistercian monastery in northern Wales suppressed in 1531 by King Henry VIII in his split with the Church of Rome. Tintern was turned over to a nobleman, its stained-glass windows smashed, its roof tiles taken up and relaid in village houses. Holy artifacts were sold to passing tourists. Religious statues turned up in nearby gardens. At least one interior wall was dismantled to build a pigsty. I've seen photographs of the remains that inspired Wordsworth: a Gothic skeleton, soaring and roofless, in a green hilly landscape. Grass grows in the transept. The vanished roof lets in light. The delicate stone tracery of its slim, arched quatrefoil windows opens onto green pastures where black-and-white cows graze. Its shape is beautiful, formal, and mysterious. After he developed dementia, my father was no longer useful to anybody. But in the shelter of his broken walls, my mother learned to balance her checkbook, and my heart melted and opened. Never would I wish upon my father the misery of his final years. But he was sacred in his ruin, and I took from it the shards that still sustain me.
Katy Butler Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a… dementia mind misery ruin sacred

Related Quotes

Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to m…
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reading
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectu…
Henry David Thoreau Walden music nature
So here is what I see when we reclaim the church ladies: a woman loved and free is beautiful. She is laughing with her sisters, and together they are telling their stories, reveali…
Sarah Bessey Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit… church feminism religion women

Similar Crossword Answers

Answer Clues
RUIN 416 clues
MIND 222 clues
MUSIC 219 clues
NATURE 180 clues
WOMEN 176 clues
MISERY 140 clues
SACRED 130 clues
CHURCH 77 clues
DEMENTIA 60 clues
READING 52 clues
RELIGION 37 clues
FEMINISM 10 clues

Similar crossword clues

  1. Actor Butler 78.26%
  2. "The butler __" 76.19%
  3. "Batman" butler 75.00%
  4. "Katy, bar ___!" 73.68%
  5. Wayne's butler 72.00%
  6. Captain Butler 72.00%
  7. Butler 70.59%
  8. Funny Butler 69.57%
  9. Rhett Butler 69.57%
  10. Major- -- (butler) 69.57%
  11. Suave Butler 69.57%
  12. Batman's butler 69.23%
  13. Gotham City butler 68.97%
  14. "Katy, ___ the door!" 66.67%
  15. "The butler __ it" 66.67%
  16. Addams butler 66.67%
  17. Sitcom butler 66.67%
  18. "Tintin" butler 66.67%
  19. "The Nanny" butler 66.67%
  20. Famous Butler 66.67%
✏️ Suggest new clue

Related word tools

Unscramble KATY4-letter words that start with K4-letter words that end in Y4-letter words containing AT4-letter words containing TY4-letter words with K and A
Poet’s word, with inverted comma, for the end of the day
?
E
?
E
?
N
Hint 1 meaning
The old plural of Eye.
Hint 2 anagram
NEE
Hint 3 another clue
AND STILL ___
Play Crossword
7 +1

New Crossword Suggestion

Clue
Answer (solution)