the mud

Last week I attended the very sad funeral of my cousin.  He was a firefighter.  He was an exemplary firefighter, as I learned listening to the beautiful eulogies of his friends and fellow firefighters.  Outside the funeral home, the fire engines lined up and displayed his equipment.  His jacket, his helmet, his boots.  Among all the life-saving equipment there, the oxygen masks, the ladders, the axes, the ropes, nothing could save his life.  I was caught, though, by the rope.  I had recently listened to a book on tape, Home Safe, and in it the author uses an analogy of "the hold knots on the rope of life."  Hold Knots - the things we can hold onto when life gets slippery, when life seems to be slipping out of our grip.  The thing is I can't remember what she said.  What are the hold knots of life?  Was it friends, was it laughter?  There are so many things I could plug in there.  The funny thing about a book on CD is that I can't go back and look for the page.  I have