Reeve Lindbergh - No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I would like to thank all those who helped to make this last period of my mothers life not only possible but also remarkable: a time of care and comfort and laughter and joy, even in the daunting presence of frailty, confusion, anxiety, and ill health. Thanks first of all to my brothers, Jon, Land, and Scott Lindbergh, and to their families, for their unceasing patience and understanding, their wise counsel, and for visiting us often, traveling over great distances and in all kinds of weather in order to be with our mother at frequent intervals throughout the year.

Thanks to my beloved husband, Nat Tripp; to our son, Ben; to Nats sons, Eli and Sam Tripp; and to his mother, Alice W. Tripp; to my daughters, Elizabeth and Susannah Brown; and to our niece and nephew, Connie Feydy and Marek Sapieyevski, who have willingly and uncomplainingly embraced my mothers care and well-being as part of their own lives, for many years.

Thanks to all our neighbors, relatives, and friends in Vermont, in Connecticut, and around the world for their loyal affection and attention during the past decade of my mothers life and mine. Thanks to the doctors, financial and legal advisers, and health care professionals and organizations who steadfastly supported our efforts to care for her at home during an increasingly vulnerable and fragile old age.

Special thanks to Ann Cason and to the Circle of Care she gathered around us during my mothers last months here in Vermont. The following people generously offered my family the unique and ongoing gift of themselves. Whether they provided daily personal care or organized occasional musical gatherings, whether it was a doctor or dentist arriving at the house to check on her at the end of a busy professional day, or a stylist coming over the bumpy dirt road to give her a new hairstyle and manicure once a week, whether the visitor was a woman of her own age, driven by her daughter for afternoon tea, or a neighbors three-year-old coming for a ten-minute visit on a gloomy afternoon, each of these people enriched my mothers days immeasurably, as they did mine. I am so grateful to each of them:

Ann Cason

Susan Drommond

Alexandra Evans and Phil Sentner

Buncie Shadden

Carla Leftwich

Laurie Crosby

Catherine Clark

Catherine Thomas and Rhoda Thomas

Trudy Meuton

Sue Gilman

Susan Shaw

Karen Frazier

Lillian and Mia Concordia

Jim and Sherri Lowe

Harold Turner and Jane Fuller

Marco Alonso and Ruth Taylor

Ted Soares

Janet and Rick White

Dr. Tim Thompson

Dr. Fred Silloway

Laura, David, and Bea Brody

Newcomb and Ditty Greenleaf

Carol and Patton Hyman

Arthur Jennings

Trenny Burgess

Sherlyn Morrisette

The poetry and prose excerpts that Ive included in this book are drawn from the following sources: Gift from the Sea, The Unicorn and Other Poems by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Disillusions of Childhood, Distance Lends Enchantment, and Success from The Wheel (Miss Chapins School), March 1924; Caprice, Letter with a Foreign Stamp, and To _______, from The Smith College Monthly in the October 1926, February 1927, and May 1927 issues, respectively; Local Vertical by Anne Spencer Lindbergh; Autobiography of Values by Charles A. Lindbergh, and Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

I also used excerpts from some of my mothers unpublished notes, and have referred to, though not quoted from, several other books during the course of keeping my journal, including The Illuminated Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks; The Little Book of Prayers, edited by David Schiller; Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh; The Essential Rilke, selected and translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann; In Every Tiny Grain of Sand, A Childs Book of Prayers and Praise, collected by Reeve Lindbergh.

Now there are no more words ,

But you will know, when I sing

For others, that I bring

To you alone

A leaf, a flower, and a stone.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from

A Leaf, a Flower, and a Stone,

The Unicorn and Other Poems