As I worked on a book review for The Lost Spells that I wrote in the Spring of 2021 for The Cultivating Project, I came across a poem called “Thrift” which immediately made me think of Leslie. I called her and read it to her as a benediction, then wrote:
Immediately this poem described not just a plant with which I was unfamiliar, but became a metaphor for a friend who has lived for the past year with multiple forms of cancer in her body. She is choosing to bloom fiercely and honestly, to cling to the cliff of uncertainty, to bring beauty in the midst of her grief and pain. The poem ends:
Thrift blooms on spot-heap and tailing,
for Thrift knows hardship is a limit not
a failing; Thrift persists despite all odds,
and Thrift’s gift is—Thrift’s grace is—
to give a glimpse of hope in the tightest
of spots, the toughest of places.
This picture of hope and beauty in the middle of pain and limitation continues to lift my gaze.
Leslie is leaving a hole in the fabric of this world that will not be mended. She has taught me about finishing—not just her last days, but in the way she chose to live all the way to the end. When we spoke last, she was concerned that she wouldn’t have time to finish the letters of blessing she wanted to write to each of her daughters. She loved generously (and by her admission, imperfectly), and didn’t want that to go unsaid, especially to those she loves the very most. She lived as a poeima within the strict form of her cancers, and challenged me by her living, to live my life more singularly. Not to be more like Leslie, but to be more Amy.
This tribute by Amy Malskeit is part of an “In Memoriam” series we are running this week for our dear friend Leslie Anne Bustard.
The featured image, “Distant Drums Unfurling,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Amy Malskeit, a columnist for Cultivating Magazine, holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University in England. Her poetry and creative nonfiction explore questions about God, faith, and the soul, letting these refract through the small moments in her life.
She lives in the foothills outside Denver where she plants her garden and makes her home with her husband, two children and a sassy Tibetan Terrier. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys laughing with her family, finding ways to swim in an ocean, and nurturing ways of living creatively.
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