Just to Let Your Betters Pass (in progress)

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Remembering Lyn van Lidth de Jeude

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Our mother and life partner, a lover of song and beauty. A singer, a gardener, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, teacher, and creator and spreader of love, died peacefully on September 18th 2024, five months after receiving her brain tumour diagnosis. Lyn van Lidth de Jeude helped raise countless children in her 40 year career as an early childhood educator, infant development consultant, and music therapist. Through her dedication and constant love for every child in her care, Lyn worked tirelessly to ensure that they all started off with a strong foundation. While you may not have guessed it, Lyn was born in Daytona Beach Florida, and a piece of her identity was her deep ranching roots in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Her father Horatio Ham, an engineer, moved the family of 5 kids many times until the final move north to West Vancouver. Once here, Lyn attended West Van High and Capilano College ending with a degree in music therapy. Music was always a fundamental part o...
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“Go and Make Yourself Content, My Love” (detail). Swainson's thrush in my mother’s garden, to the tune of the Unquiet Grave. Painted with acrylic, graphite and coloured pencil, by Emily van Lidth de Jeude . I was walking down from my parents' house to mine, over the crest of their driveway where the wind blows steady. Not like the rest of the property, through which it tumbles this way and that, scatters just a few leaves, or bursts out of a single storming fern. Over the crest of the hill at the top of my parents' driveway, the wind passes smoothly and calmly, sometimes crisp and smelling of leaves, sometimes damp with the weight of snow and sometimes full of the heaviness of summer and dragonfly wings. I've walked here alone and with my children after Christmas dinner, my heart and belly and arms full of treasures. I've walked here holding my chest against hidden sobs when I couldn't be what the world wanted of me. I've walked on my parents' driveway ...
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