memories

Twisting Turning and Folding In – ND #18

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All that wrapping paper was exhausting – Photo: L. Weikel

What’s going on? Am I simply noticing the effects of growing older? Or is time actually twisting, turning, and folding in on itself?

While this may sound facetious, I’m asking this question in all seriousness.

I literally just sat here on the couch for a good hour, basking in the multi-colored glow of our Christmas tree, staring off into space. I can barely articulate what I was thinking about. Past, present, future perhaps? Possibly.

Mostly past and present, I suppose.

Lately, when I think back on Christmases past, they feel more like snippets from different lives. And to be honest, I never thought they’d feel so foreign.

Pacha’s First Christmas – Photo: L. Weikel

More to Come

I’ve caught myself thinking about this a lot lately. I’m starting to conclude that it’s a natural progression that happens to almost everyone – like aging – even though we think it will never happen to our family. In some ways, I suppose, it’s probably essential to our survival as a species. Siblings head off in different directions, each spinning their own webs of stories, memories, and interconnections.

Photos viewed decades later conjure feelings that could easily have been felt yesterday, or as freshly generated as at this very moment. Others jar our concept of ourselves and screech us to a halt in our tracks. “How could I have thought what I remember so vividly ‘knowing’ back then?” and the perennial favorite, “What was I thinking?”

It’s possible I’ll be sharing more of these musings. Santa brought a VCR converter cassette that will allow us to watch the ‘family movies’ we created over the past 30 years. How the first converter managed to get lost is a mystery. But it’s barely been missed, as the reality is that we’re not a family known to gather ’round and watch home movies – a curious fact, when you look at all the tapes we’ve amassed.

30 Years and Counting

Karl and I sprung for one of the newest video cameras available back in the day. It was ‘the’ family gift for Christmas 1991, to be precise. The sad thing about that, for me, is that my mother died that previous August – so we never got the chance to record her voice and image on video. As a result, Sage has never heard my mother’s voice or her laugh. That grieves me.

I imagine it’ll be fun and poignant watching some of these videos. Painful, too – since so many of the videos will feature Karl, of course, being our eldest.

Our memories of holidays and the people we were so long ago morph over the years. So I imagine it’s going to be a bit weird now, especially since we haven’t been priming ourselves for these memories by watching the videos year after year.

They’ll probably feel a bit like blasts out of left field, even though we’re anticipating them.

We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, we’ll keep on creating new memories. That’s what we do, right? Most of these, though, will be recorded on our phones. I wonder: will we (or our kids? or our kids’ kids?) be inclined to look back on them even less frequently?

(T+18)

Thrashing – Day 881

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Thrashing and Throwing – Photo: L. Weikel

Thrashing

I’m sitting here in my living room, my front door open to let in the sounds and cool breeze of the spring evening. I’m tired. My back aches. A car just drove by. One of only a handful the whole evening, it seems – and it made me realize just how eerily quiet the night is tonight. I can count on one hand the number of cars that have whooshed by. It’s almost as if the world’s finally stopped thrashing about and is ever so tentatively slowing down and taking a breath.

I spent a while in our attic this afternoon trying to clear out some old stuff that just needs to go. What am I saving this stuff for? I find myself asking this question ad nauseum lately. My need to dramatically shake stuff up is acute. Not just in the attic. Everywhere in my life.

I’m not sure what’s driving it, but the urgency feels relentless.

I’d like to note that spending any amount of time in the attic is back-torturing work because it’s literally impossible to stand up straight anywhere up there. There’s probably a metaphor there that I’m either missing or choosing just barely subconsciously to ignore. Either way, I was willing to endure the discomfort and push myself onward – until the lights went out.

Lights Out

<<Blink>> Out they went. I’d just sat down to rest on a stored sleeping bag after using the shop-vac to suck up the relentless detritus created by a very old slate roof. It didn’t matter that the sun was out and it was early afternoon. Only slivers of natural light illuminate our attic on the best of days, and sadly that’s because random hailstones have put a few small holes in our slate roof, which we’ve repaired with translucent caulk. We have a couple of windows, but they’re very small and very dirty and they just weren’t designed to provide an abundance of light in our attic.

So when the lights went out, I was in the dark. The message was clear: it was time to get out. I’d done what I could in this venue.

Shifting My Focus

Begrudgingly, I lugged a very long, industrial-grade, extension cord back down the spiral, pie-shaped staircase leading from the attic into our bedroom. The stupid cord, an ungainly length, hadn’t worked anyway. I was going to have to test it because I’d wasted an inordinate amount of time trying to get the shop-vac to work, only to reach the irritating conclusion that none of this might not be the shop-vac’s fault, even though I’d been mercilessly cursing the appliance under my breath.

Turned out it was the extension cord. Who’s ever heard of such a thing? How many times have you heard of an industrial grade extension cord ‘going bad?’ Maybe it happens all the time. I don’t know. But I can tell you: it irked the heck out of me today.

After gathering up the 25’ cord and stuffing it into a garbage bag, I shifted my focus (some would call it the Eye of Sauron) toward our barn. Surely there was something in there I could pitch. (Ha – I scoff at the mere suggestion I’d have to do anything more than open a door before discovering items that could be banished from the premises forthwith.) Oooh yeah. Plenty of stuff to either resurrect or purge. This has been a long time coming – and today felt as good a day as any to end the madness.

A Sense of Urgency

More and more, I’m realizing how desperately we (I) need to do this. And we (I) need to do this now. Freeing up our (my) psychic and physical space is going to make more of a dramatic difference in our lives than anything else we could do at this moment in time. (And even if it’s only my psychic space that’s cleared – that will unquestionably impact Karl’s life as well.)

As quiet as the outside world seems tonight, I sense the same is attainable for my inner environment. If I stop thrashing and persist in doing the work to shed the remnants of hopes fulfilled and then forgotten – or never attained, perhaps I’ll finally have room to manifest the ones that matter to me now.

(T-230)

Missing Our Girl – Day 829

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Sheila Maloney – Photo: L. Weikel

Missing Our Girl

It’s funny how memory and emotions work. Sometimes it seems there’s no rhyme or reason why a loved one (human or otherwise) suddenly comes to mind and slices open our heart unbidden. When I opened my eyes this morning, lingering in that between space of neither awake nor asleep, I suddenly found myself overcome with missing our girl. Missing my Sheila.

Grief is like that. It’s sneaky and cruel, in a way.

If I scratch the surface, though, I probably only label it as cruel because the intensity of that missing, the sudden, excruciating awareness of that void, can knock the breath out of us – especially when we don’t see it coming. And that’s sort of how it is after they’ve been gone a while.

And so it was this morning as I lay in bed, swimming to the surface of consciousness, remembering who and where and when I am, that I yearned to hold my puppy Sheila again. I remembered with acute clarity laying in bed with her years ago, stroking the white streak that ran down her nose and always reminded me of a feather, telling her what a precious puppy she was.

The Fire Brigade (Tigger, Spartacus, Cletus) – Photo: L. Weikel

Something In the Air

About an hour or two later, I took a photo of Spartacus (her son), who was snoozing in front of the fireplace with two of his (feline) brothers, Cletus and Tigger.

I texted the photo to my youngest son without a word of context.

His response? “Wow, what babies. Miss that pup.”

Then a handful of seconds later: “Oh. Wow. I thought that was Sheila.”

Sheila was his pup. Or I should say, he was her boy.

For whatever reason, her memory, her essence, the loving energy that was our ‘Sheila Monster,’ was visiting both of us today. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts – it didn’t matter where we were. Her playful, protective, and utterly sweet-natured essence enveloped us both in the memory of her love.

Sheila: “MY Boy” – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-282)

Remember to Heal – Day 800

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Photo: L. Weikel

Remember to Heal

No, I’m not suggesting that you’ve forgotten that you need to heal something you’ve put on the back burner. The title I chose for tonight’s post is a reminder of the words President-elect Biden used early this evening when he and Vice President-elect Harris, along with their spouses, paid tribute to the over 400,000 people who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19 over the past year. We must remember to heal. The crux of his speech was that healing cannot take place without embracing our memories and allowing ourselves to feel. We must remember in order to heal.

When we sustain the loss of someone we love and cherish, it can feel like we’ve been burned. We shy away from the flame. We don’t want to go there again. It hurts too much.

But the truth of life and love is that we cannot separate our emotions. It’s impossible to parse out only the so-called ‘good’ feelings and emotions and simultaneously refuse the existence of the harder, more painful ones. You simply cannot have one without the other. They truly are two sides of the same coin.

Yet We Try

Just because the pain comes with the joy, the delight comes with the sorrow, doesn’t mean we won’t try to separate them. Of course we will – at least, most of us will try. As humans, that seems to be our default nature.

And that’s pretty much been our national reaction to this pandemic up to this point. There’s been a denial by many of the devastating loss. The deaths – so many, so staggeringly predictable, yet callously rejected as true. And the utter loneliness in which so many were forced to endure these losses.

Now, We Remember

This evening we were finally given permission to acknowledge the losses many of us, and so very many of our brothers and sisters, have sustained – and are enduring at this very moment. We remember. We know. We acknowledge the truth of our love, our relationships, our heartbreak, our loss.

Now, we start to heal.

(T-311)

Imperfections – Day 774

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Christmas Eve – Photo: L. Weikel

Imperfections

I’m sitting here listening to rain pelt against the dining room windows while a long, lonely gust of wind whistles through the keyhole of our front door. No need to worry about ‘closed building syndrome’ in this old house – and that’s just fine with me. I’m happy with the creaks and cracks of this home, the things some people might consider imperfections.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say I love the imperfections that make our house our home. Not all of them, of course. (Oh, for even a smidgen more kitchen counter space.) But overall? I honestly think it’s the imperfections that keep me sane.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a house that was built in 1770. It was nothing like the houses of most of my friends. Our wooden floors were known to occasionally cast splinters as big as spears into my foot, piercing my socks and making me yelp (and causing my father to reach for the black gunky stuff that smelled like tar, that would supposedly ‘pull it out’ if it was embedded too deeply to dig out).

Christmas Eve 2020

I think many of us would agree that this Christmas in particular is filled with imperfections. Certainly, it’s far different than any Christmas most of us can recall. But I have to wonder. What will we remember most about this most abnormal of yuletides?

There are so many people enduring untold grief this Christmas. (And of course, I am using Christmas as a shorthand for all the holidays we may be celebrating at this time of year that celebrate the return of light, and encourages going within, hibernating, and reflection.) Nothing feels the same. And precious little is the same.

People are losing loved ones to the pandemic and other causes by the thousands – every single day. We’re being asked to sacrifice our traditions for the safety of ourselves and others. We’re wondering just how long this no-longer-fresh hell is going to last.

A Reminder

Karl and I were lucky enough to be able to spend a few hours with one of our sons and daughter-in-law. Because the weather is as unpredictable as it is, early this evening, it was balmy enough for us to safely sit outside in their enclosed porch and eat dinner together – occupying opposite ends of the long dinner table.

As we were driving home in the pouring rain that luckily mostly held off until we were leaving, the wind starting to whip around us, a couple of deer jumped out into the roadway in front of us. Luckily, I was driving slowly enough that I saw them well ahead of time. Turned out, though, that the three that popped onto the roadway before us were joining quite the cadre of peers on the other side of the road.

They were so beautiful and such an unexpected sight! I rolled down my window and took their photo, in spite of the raindrops splattering on my face. They were a lovely reminder of the gentleness we’re all wise to exercise with each other and ourselves over these holiday times.

I’m grateful we didn’t have an accident. And I loved the looks they seemed to give us as they stood there in the rain, returning our gaze. I realize this post probably makes little sense. But I wish all of you a peaceful, loving Christmas Day. May we all enjoy a day of respite from the insanity that has marked this year in particular.

And I’ll forgive myself for the vast imperfections of this post – not least being the fact that I just blew right through the witching hour of 1:00 a.m. (when it gets automatically sent out to my email list).

Merry Christmas. Happy Solstice. Let’s let the light shine into our hearts.

(T-337)

In the Blink of an Eye – Day 476

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Cloud sunset – Photo: L. Weikel

In the Blink of an Eye

A couple things came to my attention today that drive home the adage that ‘everything can change in the blink of an eye.’

Not that I’m unfamiliar with the floor of my world dropping out from under me. But the feeling that accompanies drastic change in our lives (usually on the ‘awful’ end of the spectrum), is rarely something we want to repeat or actively seek.

One occurrence that shook me was seeing a friend of the family post on FB that their home was lost in a fire this morning. A home in which two girls spent their entire lives growing up – charred beyond measure. Treasured and irreplaceable family heirlooms – up in smoke. Worse yet? Family pets. All but one (a cat receiving medical treatment tonight) presumed or confirmed dead.

Loss

This family has been on my mind all day. I sit in my home of 35 years, surrounded by my beloved pups and kits, and my heart can only flirt with the sorrow and horror I’d feel to lose so much in such a ravaging manner.

And while I absolutely value the preciousness of all life and am grateful human lives were spared, I imagine the loss of photos and journals, and a myriad of other utterly unique, tangible items that were artifacts of lives lived by their ancestors leave a terribly raw and open wound in their hearts. It’s precisely the irreplaceable nature of these items that make their loss tragic.

The loss is stark. Only memories remain. And these realizations of impermanence are harsh.

The Little Things

I imagine that shock has probably overcome the family by now. A certain numbness to the magnitude of loss takes over so we don’t implode on ourselves.

The big stuff, in many ways, is probably most easily replaceable. It may not be Grandma’s four poster bed, but a beautiful bedroom set can be acquired. Same with many other ‘things’ we surround ourselves with in our homes.

No, the excruciating pain will probably come in the form of a daily drip of realizing all the little things that have been lost. Stuff we all take for granted. Little things that are so ingrained as a part of our daily lives that it’s not until we reflexively look for them or think, “That must be in the attic…” that we realize yet again what’s gone.

And the worst part may be that intangible loss: that feeling of being swept out of that home and off that land – no matter how large or small the plot of earth that stood beneath their house. That sense of possibly never sleeping there again, the impact of realizing they may never look out windows onto the familiar trees or grass or skyline they’ve lived with and gazed upon for decades, will only gradually dawn on them.

When others experience horrific tragedies, it’s only human to empathize and reflect upon how we would feel if thrust into the same circumstances.

In the blink of an eye, everything can change for any of us. It is cliché, perhaps, to suggest that we look around and appreciate our lives and circumstances. But nevertheless, it behooves us to do it. Take a moment. Look around you. Appreciate your many blessings.

And send compassion and courage to those who, in the blink of an eye, have lost so much.

Photo: L. Weikel

(T-635)

Life After Death – Day 451

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Good Girl/Grey Ghost  Farewell- Photo: K. Weikel

Life After Death

Life after death? No, I’m not going to write about an experience I may have had that convinced me that life here on Earth does not end when our physical bodies stop working. And yes, I’ve had enough experiences – direct experiences – with people who no longer reside within a body to know this is not simply wishful thinking.

And no, I’m not going to write about what transpired today in our national political arena. Although if I’m honest, there were a handful of people who made remarkably powerful and courageous decisions and expressed themselves most eloquently in acting on those choices. I may write about them some other day, because their actions and words were inspiring and gave me hope that all is not lost in our country.

No, this post is dedicated to Good Girl a/k/a the Grey Ghost – my 2005 Prius. She of the Red Triangle of Death posts. I don’t even think I wrote about the fact that she had her odometer replaced after it got stuck at 299,999. I needed a new odometer installed in order to pass inspection last year!

Mourning

Yes, I know. Assigning anthropomorphic characteristics to ‘inanimate’ objects may seem ridiculous. But driving in a car every day for 15 years, having this vehicle be the common denominator of so many profound life experiences: commuting to Philadelphia (when I wasn’t taking my beloved Septa train!) when I worked at the Women’s Law Project, rendezvousing with son Karl at the Clinton bus station at all hours as he attended NYU and afterward, driving to and from the University of Chicago for another son’s educational adventures, trips to Penn State and Susquehanna University, going on vacation to Cape Cod, innumerable trips, near and far, to soccer games, musicals, and track meets, both high school and collegiate…these experiences leave a mark. We had a relationship.

Yes, Good Girl, a/k/a the Grey Ghost, has seen me through a ton of life experiences. I distinctly remember getting into her after receiving the call from my husband Karl telling me that our son had died. I remember sitting in her, beside the creek (my beloved Tohickon) innumerable times over the past 15 years – but I particularly recall the moment I sat in her, facing the Tohickon, and calling my niece, Ellen, to tell her Karl was gone. I don’t know why I remember that particular conversation, but it remains seared in my mind. Every time I pass the specific spot in which I parked, I recall that conversation.

I remember picking Karl up one time after a particularly hard time he’d had while in NYC. I could feel his misery as we crossed the bridge from Frenchtown, NJ into Pennsylvania. He loathed his predicament at that moment in time. I felt it then and I remember it distinctly now.

Honoring Her Time

More recently, I remember her freaking me out with the Red Triangle of Death midway on my journey as I drove the 12 hour trek from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. But even more amazingly, I remember her mysteriously refraining from blaring the RT of D after I asked her to just get me home that evening and not strand me 350 miles from nowhere.

My Grey Ghost, my trusty companion on so many journeys both physical and otherwise, started giving me signals upon entering 2020. I knew her ticks and groans. I could tell when things weren’t right. And a couple of times, recently, she hesitated. She caught her breath ever so slightly and I wondered if I’d have to pull over and give her Last Rites on the side of Route 611.

The service people at Thompson Toyota were gentle with both Grey Ghost and me, replenishing her fluids and giving her boosts of automotive energy cocktails that kept her going for just a little bit longer. Alas, her head gasket would cost too much to replace. It was only a matter of time. She was, in her own way, placed on her own form of hospice.

I listened to my Good Girl. I knew she didn’t want to strand me somewhere. I could feel her time was perilously close. Indeed, once I registered that feeling deep within my bones, I had to act upon it; I cleaned her out. All of my reusable grocery bags and the couple of blankets I had in the back in case of emergency were brought into the house. All the kitschy stuff I’d accumulated over the years and stuffed into the glove box or console compartment: cleaned out. I even removed the EZ Pass from its Velcro nest at the crest of my windshield.

Within a day, the perfect replacement manifested itself. You can’t make this stuff up.

Resurrection

Best of all, my Good Girl, my Grey Ghost – instead of giving up the ghost, will be given the unique opportunity to become bionic. To resurrect herself in a way almost no other vehicles ever get the chance to do.

It just so happens that our family’s trusted mechanic expressed a desire to have a Prius of his own to tinker with. He happened to mention this to Karl quite randomly (as if!) within days of my decision to replace Good Girl. Our mechanic is amazingly brilliant with cars. He wants to figure out how to make a regular Prius (which is a hybrid) an all-electric vehicle.

It was too great a resolution to pass up. My Grey Ghost would get a chance at resurrection, and we could give a guy whose kept so many of our vehicles running and on the road over the years a chance to indulge his curiosity and creativity. Win/win.

Not many cars, especially those with 312,856 miles on them, get to dodge the crusher and perhaps – just maybe – get a chance to become bionic. But my Good Girl, my Grey Ghost, just might live to see another day: gain life after death – resurrected.

Letting Go of the Grey Ghost – Photo: K. Weikel

(T-660)

Random Snapshot Memory Moments – Day 258

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Photo: L. Weikel

Random Snapshot Memory Moments                                                      

Every once in a while I have a peculiar experience that is both strange and inexplicable. It’s simple, really. Simple, yet profoundly odd.

The best way I can describe it is as follows:  I’ll be standing in the little nook of our kitchen, to the left of our sink, where I keep our espresso machine. I’m most often either grinding the beans or waiting for the brew to drip into my cup, when I’m suddenly reliving a ‘snapshot moment’ in which I’m transported back to a town in Vermont in the early afternoon, in a small bookshop.

It’s the weirdest thing. And it’s happened to me many times over the years. The exact same trigger taking me to the exact same moment in time that I actually experienced.

Snapshot Moment

The five of us were on a mini-vacation, having taken a jaunt up to Vermont after attending a travel soccer tournament probably somewhere in Massachusetts, although it may have been upstate New York.

That’s part of the weirdness of this ‘snapshot moment.’ I have little recollection of any of the details surrounding the rest of the trip. I just know we were in Vermont.  I’m reasonably sure I could even pinpoint the exact village if I had to come up with it – which is the benefit of my journaling.

But that’s not actually the point.

It’s this absolutely vivid ‘transport’ I experience. I assume it must have something to do with the smell of the coffee or something, although the moment in time to which I’m transported does not, as far as I can tell, involve coffee.

Why Does This Happen?

I think that’s part of the reason I find this experience so odd. Inevitably, when I get ‘flipped back’ in that way – momentarily – I always find myself wondering what triggered it. And then my second thought inevitably is, “Why does this happen?”

This experience always serves to remind me that I never know, from one day to the next – one moment to the next – when an experience is going to be so indelibly seared into my brain that I will recall it, perhaps randomly, for the rest of my life.”

Another moment I remember and which is indelibly imprinted in my brain is driving with my mom in our car on Route 22 in Easton, after having just dropped my sister off at her high school. My sister was probably 15 or 16, so I was six or seven years old. I was in the front seat, and I remember my mother and I having a conversation about words.

I Remember Thinking “How ‘Silly’ a Word…”

Specifically, I remember telling my mom that I’d heard kids at school talking about that part of a boy’s anatomy that makes them different from girls. I don’t actually remember how the topic came up or how I phrased my question – I think I wanted to know if those words were ‘real.’  But what I remember is my mother, in that moment, telling me the proper word to be used. And I distinctly remember stifling my laughter (or perhaps I didn’t actually succeed at stifling it, come to think of it) because I thought that word was absolutely hilarious, as it so closely resembled ‘peanuts.’

I randomly remember that conversation (again, never knowing what might trigger that specific memory) and yet I remember exactly where the car was on that stretch of road and viscerally remember that sense of internally giggling to myself and thinking how silly a word it was.

Random Moments – Persistent Memories

If I tried, I could probably think of at least another half dozen or more ‘random snapshot memory moments’ like these.  And I just have to wonder about the nature of memory.

What makes certain moments imprint themselves so deeply that we recall them throughout our lives? I would understand if these instances were profound in some way – traumatic, for instance. And I do have some memories like that. But the ones I just recounted are certainly not traumatic. (Don’t even go there with the associations…ha ha.)

I’m not sure why I wrote about this tonight, beyond the fact that I probably <<blinked>> back to that afternoon in Vermont while making my coffee this morning, and it made me think.

A random moment in my life. A random – if persistent – memory.

thrivaholic.com

(T-853)

Deep Thrum – Day 217

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Tohickon Creek – Photo: L. Weikel

Deep Thrum – Old Fashioned Cool

I’m sitting here on my couch, alone in my living room. The front door is open, and that usually means I can hear the nighttime sounds of ‘outside,’ which for the most part at this time of the year consists of bullfrogs. In a month or two, crickets and katydids will join the boisterous, gravel-voiced amphibian chorus. But for a split minute, there are no bullfrogs, no sounds at all filtering through the mesh-screen door that separates me from the wilds of the darkness outside.

Even Sheila is failing to provide her usual contribution of deeply resonant snoring.

As many of you who’ve been reading my posts for a while know, I savor silence. Every single time I give myself the opportunity to bask in it, I’m better for it.

And so it was a surprise when I closed my eyes and just sat for a few moments, pondering what I would write about tonight, that I recognized a comforting, lulling sound far in the background of my consciousness. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a real sound alright. But it is such a deep part of me and what makes me feel ‘at home’ that I rarely think about it consciously.

Deep Thrum of a Different Silence

I’m speaking of the comforting deep thrum of our whole house fan. This contraption, comprised of a small motor, a belt and a couple pulleys that turn the blades of the fan, and a slatted vent that opens in the ceiling of the hallway of our second floor, sucks air into the house from outside through our screened windows and doors. It pulls the air in from outside, creating a cool breeze, and circulates that air right up into our attic.

Most of the time, except when the weather is extremely muggy or relentlessly hot (such that it barely cools off at night at all outside), our whole house fan is a wonderful way to keep us cool. We have a couple room air conditioners perched in a smattering of rooms throughout the house, but we try to minimize our use of them.

Part of our desire to rely primarily on our whole house fan is environmental. It uses a lot less electricity. And it also just feels more natural, less of a subtle stress on our constitutions by jerking our bodies from cold to hot, muggy to dry.

It’s the Memories

Trust me, though, this is not a crusade. It’s not some holier-than-thou passive aggressive attempt to shame others who use air conditioning as soon as it gets a little warm or elevate myself because I don’t. Not in the least. I’m simply realizing that I love the whole house fan because of the memories, not least being the aforementioned deep thrum.

Yes.

I grew up in a stone farmhouse that was built in 1770. For a long time in my childhood, I remember the only means of staying cool in our home was via our whole house fan. That fan, too, was mounted in the hallway ceiling of the second floor of our home and sucked all the air up into the attic. It was situated right outside my bedroom, so I grew up with that deep thrum front and center in my consciousness.

Nearly every summer night I’d be told to ‘run upstairs and put the fan on,’ and it was always sweet relief to feel the coolness of the evening cascading into our rooms and throughout the house as soon as I turned it on. Not only did I fall asleep to its rhythm, I also realized I couldn’t hear anything from downstairs (like the tv or my parents having a conversation). This could feel disconcerting. I could either be afraid something would happen to them and I wouldn’t hear it, or I could let myself feel wrapped in a cocoon of cool, quiet thrum.

Always a Choice: Fear – or Surrender and Trust

I remember consciously making that choice a bunch of times. Was I going to give in to that fear? Or was I going to surrender to the comfort of the deep thrum.

I think I was in high school before my parents bought the first couple of window air conditioners for the house. One in the kitchen and one in their bedroom were the first to arrive. Eventually one in the ‘den’ where we would watch tv. But my parents still used ‘the fan’ most of the time. Just like we do now.

It’s a peculiar comfort, I suppose. And yet installing our whole house fan was one of the very first things Karl and I did when we bought our home (which is also old – not 1770 old – but more like 1840 old). Installing central air has never even crossed our minds.

All of which brings me back to an awareness of what I sense at this very moment. I hear (and feel in my very bones) the deep thrum. The thrum that’s both a visceral reminder of my childhood and a present-day comfort, calling me to come to bed so I may savor the stream of night air being drawn in to dance across our summer sheets and keep us cool.

Good night; sleep well. And don’t forget to whisper your sweet dreams to the full moon tomorrow night.

(T-894)

Moments and Memories – Day 215

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Norah Claire Guerke – my great niece; Photo: A. Guerke

Moments and Memories

I know there are certain members of my family who, right this moment, are ever so slowly, achingly, marking the minutes and hours of their lives now – tonight and into tomorrow, in particular – as they remember and relive those same moments that unfolded exactly a year ago.

This marking of seminal moments in our lives, this remembering each second and minute as precisely as we can (even though our experience of them may have been blurred by the impossibility and horror of what was unfolding as it was happening) is inevitable. It is, I suspect, a sacred ritual that happens universally. It is an honoring; a witnessing of what was. A ritual of remembrance and cherishing.

As I think about my eldest nephew and his wife, my niece, I know they are remembering the last hours they had with their little girl, their daughter who was only 110 days old. They are remembering, as best as they can, the way that last evening they spent with her unfolded. The feel of her hand gripping their fingers as they held her on their laps, laughing, their family watching tv and just being together on a Friday night. Remembering her almond shaped eyes and wise little smile; her baby smell. They’re recalling the irreplaceable feeling of cradling her in their arms as they took her upstairs. How they placed her gently in her crib that night and tiptoed out of her room, never imagining – at that moment –what lay ahead.

We do this. As humans, we replay those moments. We both savor them and allow them to torture us in the exquisite way love does.

I know they’ve been dreading this ‘anniversary’ for weeks. It seems impossible, in some ways, that a year has passed. The pain of their loss is so deep, so take-your-breath-away awful, that it often feels like it happened only yesterday. And yet, a year has passed. There is a difference to the pain.

A Testament to Our Love

We think it won’t change. There’s a part of us that vows it won’t. Somehow, even the thought of our searing pain becoming anything less than that driven-to-the-edge-of-madness-and-despair that’s engulfed us feels like a betrayal. We tell ourselves that we will never forget. We will honor and carry that pain as a testament to our love.

But then we realize, yes; the pain does shift. It must. It takes on a different color, a different hue.

As they are noting each peaceful series of ‘lasts’ tonight, and then tomorrow, marking each excruciating step in the process of losing their precious Norah, they are honoring her. They are honoring their journey, as well. And through this ritual of marking the moments and honoring the memories, they will feel an almost imperceptible sense of relief.

As this weekend passes, and they tick off each moment, each memory, they will begin to sense an almost intangible – yet undeniable – lifting of the overwhelming heaviness that has been the cloak of grief weighing down every step they’ve taken over the past year. Perhaps only the weight of a feather will be removed; but if they pay attention, they will feel it.

Rituals of Remembrance

And that is Norah’s gift. It is the gift that each of our loved ones gives us when they’ve left us behind, wondering how we’ll cope without them, how we’ll manage to make it through even one more minute, one more hour, one more day without them.

They witness our rituals of remembrance and cherishing, and their love and our love somehow meet and merge and cause a slight breeze to wash over us, like the breath of a kiss, swirling away a little bit of that stone cold heaviness that threatened our own will to live.

We think we’re dishonoring their memory to allow the searing pain to shift into a different expression. There’s a part of us that swore we’d never let them down; never lose that edge. But they want us to. They want us to live on, remembering them – and celebrating that we had that time together in this lifetime.

Love never dies.

Photo: L. Weikel

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