Adieu Alexandra Taylor

Another page has turned as we say “Adieu” to Alexandra Taylor who has kept us entertained and uplifted with her poems for almost five years. AgeEsteem published her first poem, Celebrate Your Age on October 27^th, 2010.

Ever since then she has been generously sharing her talents with the audience of AgeEsteem blog weekly. One of my many favorites is just four lines.

Rejoice!

Let your voice

Be the clue

To the you

Of your Choice.

 Alexandra Taylor wrote this after reading the chapter “Rejoice” in my book
 AgeEsteem: Growing A Positive Attitude Toward Aging
.

Her poems developed as a genuine pastime after she attended an AgeEsteem program. I well remember our discussion that began with her explaining to me that she had no talents to share. I recalled seeing cartoon characters that she had made into drawings for her children previously and as our conversation moved forward I learned that she had designed greeting cards with both drawings and prose. This soon led to her poems and my suggestion that she might like to write for AgeEsteem.

What few people know is that she wrote her poems while waiting for the bus, walking home from town, or sitting on a park bench. She wrote these rhymes on scraps of paper or envelopes that she found in the trash next to the bus stop or on the program from a concert she had attended. On the rare occasions that they were actually on writing paper, they were often stuck in an envelope already addressed and sent through the mail to someone else before she salvaged it to enclose her latest rhyme. She was a scavenger at heart! I hope to make a book of her many poems, handwritten and on “recycled” paper as she gave them to me.

Alexandra thwarted Google because she never wanted to be interviewed or to have her photo published. She was happy to simply share her talents with no acclaim. It was enough to know that others enjoyed her poems.

Alexandra’s latest poems remain to be published, two of which she wrote during her last days.

Alexandra Taylor left us in much the same way that she lived, quietly and with dignity. Death is, after all, a natural ending to this life as we know it. She leaves us with the precious gift of her wealth of poems and memories of moments shared, both of which are life continued.

Bonnie Fatio