A Sunflower for Tina Downey
Tina Downey passed away on Saturday night 23rd August. Here is an Etsy Treasury full of Sunflowers.
It has taken some time to collect my thoughts about Tina. This was not an easy blog post for me to do.
Tina was a special blogging friend to me. We had our secret language, Swedish, that we had fun with together, in spite of the fact that Tina did not always have Swedish letters on her computer keyboard. It made spelling a challenge.
I can speak and write Swedish every day here in Sweden. No big deal. But to do it with someone like Tina Downey, who had preserved it like a precious treasure from childhood, while being surrounded by a sea of English, was a humbling experience. She had what I might want to call "linguistic courage".
I'll miss her slant on language, on life and I'll miss her kindness and her unique sense of humour.
I am still looking for a photo that I took a few years ago of a lone sunflower that grew up out of a pile of leaves and dirt behind our garage. I'll post it if I find it, because it would be an appropriate symbol of Tina's tenacity and spirit.
Kind regards,
Anna
P.S.
Tina's commented on my blog post for IWSG om March 5th. I cherish it as her last message to me. And as always so kind and thoughful. She wrote about her asthma. Take a look at the comments here.
First Commenter:
