From Eli on 9/1/09

All my prayers and blessings go on this day to Jeff and his family. I've just come back from grieving by the creek, where I felt Jeff's presence wrap his arm around me, and I believe he is in a good place.

A picture of Jeff pouring gallons of honey from a bucket into jars is attached. If Jeff's hives are still at the Full Circle Farm in Davis, there is an old ritual called "Telling the Bees" that a resident over there might be able to perform.

It was, until recent times, quite normal in the county of Norfolk, United Kingdom, for people with a small amount of land to keep bees. A very interesting folk custom grew out of this. When a member of the family died, the first thing you had to do was tell the bees about it. The procedure was simple. The head of the family would, together with a younger relative, head down to the beehives, whisper the name of the dead person to them, and then tie a piece of ribbon around the hives. The belief was that if you did not do so, the bees would leave. -- From http://everything2.com/title/Telling+the+bees

Among all the wonders and kindnesses and passions that were Jeff, he was a devoted keeper of the bees. When I first moved to Davis with a few hives, people kept telling me about this great guy who knew all the birds and kept bees and would help me extract honey from my hives should the bees make any extra. Sure enough, Jeff and his big smile and bright eyes came through. We invited some folks over to Dome 4, put "The Harder they Come" on the record player, and cranked away at the extractor until the golden nectar flowed.

Jeff comes to mind every time I've harvested honey since, and I know he will visit my thoughts of every harvest in the future. It so happens, by chance or by design, that the weekend of Jeff's passing was this year's honey harvest for Julia and me. Jeff's favorite part of the harvest, as I remember, was using rubber spatulas to scrape the last drops of honey out of the bucket. The man loved rubber spatulas and would wax eloquent on their virtues, and I can never look at one without thinking of Jeff.

Today I will be bottling the year's honey into jars, and will mourn for the loss of a friend and mentor with the filling of each. I love you Jeff, and may your next lives be as inspired as the one past.

Eli Sarnat