(from upper left to lower right)There are: Laura in an Impish Mood, Laura and Joan in Tubac, the big close-up of Laura, about to fly off, and the small close-up.
The picture on the right side of the mirror is one of Julia I found while sorting through old pictures. It hasn't been scanned yet.

The lidded brass piece has no other memorial purpose but to insure the large photo stays upright! The tiny candle is the one used at Laura's Memorial. The four zils are there to demonstrate Laura's love of bellydancing. These high quality zils make a lovely tone when they are struck together. The small trophy in the back to the right is Laura's from when she and her brother won the road rally

I bought the small agate piece because I was drawn to it. It, to my dismay, did not fit with the pieces in my special corner, but is right at home here. It reminds me of a globe. The small sections of it seem to represent the 'four elements'. Laura had this phrase to describe herself:

An elemental force
loosed upon
a tame and tawdry
mundane world!

She WAS that, all right. So the agate ball fits here.

And the turtle? Oh, that was something my Mother gave me many years ago. But it reminds me of Laura. See, there is this movie called Tuck Everlasting about an enchanted place with a spring that if you drink of the water, you will have immortal life. The main character, a young teenaged girl, meets an amazing gypsy boy who does stunts at the fair. Death risking stunts, he does, for he has no fear. He cannot die. He tells the girl about the spring, hoping she will drink also, and accompany him through time.

She puts some of the water into a vial, and saves it for the agreed upon time, when she will freeze herself in time. The boy will later return. He, and his family, always have to be moving. It gets too suspicious as the years go by, when nothing about them changes.

The girl has a pet turtle, and her elder caretaker, an aunt or grandmother, keeps telling her she wants that turtle to make turtle soup out of. But the young girl doesn't want that to ever happen, so she feeds the turtle some of the special water.

Years and years go by. The spring is cemented over. The boy returns to look for the girl. He doesn't find her, but we see this amazing turtle at movie's end, defying the cars on the busy highway as they pass by.

Laura loved this movie, as it raised questions and answers about immortality, which she never would have wanted. To live in a world where everything changed but yourself would grow bizarre and wearisome after a few centuries. So this turtle is Laura's turtle. She fed the enchanted water to it, and now it abides here, through the decades.

Go to Index of Joan's pages...
Go to Laura's Online Memorial...