(I write this as I sit plopped in front of my Dad's grave...the late morning sun bathing me with it's warm embrace and the gentle whisper of the breeze through my ears. The faint smell of lavender and thyme adding to the sweetness; I love mornings like this!)
For the past several weeks when I go to Mom's I would pull out the old family albums and share them with my children. Since my Dad's passing, my Mom's life has been centered around these memories -- housed in volumes of tattering albums, elicited through fading black and white photos and colored snapshots of years gone by...Mom would leave several of these albums scattered throughout the many rooms of the house, keeping alive distant past and claiming it for the present. This is the world that she chooses to live in now...
Funny how a bunch of photographs freezes time, jogging memories of family gatherings...the youthfulness in everyone a stark reminder that the years do take their toll. Last time we were all together, I looked around the table at my siblings, all of us in varying stages of aging... grey hairs and body parts succumbing to persistent gravitational pulling -- I would compare photos of my parent's in their 50's and look at some taken of me as I am -- now, also in my 50's; my own children in their early teens to mid 20's...
I listen quietly to my older kids, the one that is now working for a living, the other recently graduated from college or another who has just begun it -- so full of life's promise and excitement, ready to conquer the world, travel to distant lands.and leave their mark. I would be reminded of how I was thirty years back with the same bravado and confidence...then I smile secretly to myself. I look at my Mom and see her fragility as she nears her 80th year -- everyone says I look like her. So then, I always think to myself, yes -- in a few more years, I would be her...
"If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day 'til eternity passes away..."
(Jim Croce)
and we will love you just as much as we love her...
ReplyDeleteit is times such as these that we are called to remember loved ones here and those who have passed on. Time escapes us day to day and most times without the thought of our dear ones. I understand your mom living in those tattered books treasuring the love of her life and the lives they created together, I understand how my mom does the very same thing. Thanks for the gentle push to spend time recalling such memories, and to realize life indeed is very short. we should always treasure it and those we love.
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