What's Real?

PARADIGM SHIFTING January 9, 2009


In your first e-mail to me,
You stated you had
“No fixed ideas how things should be”—
Creative spirit, you spoke truth.
Together, we thought easily, solved problems quickly.
We shifted paradigms with glee.
It was exhilarating, sometimes frightening.
Arm in arm, matching strides,
We changed our lives, moved, married, bought, sold, remodeled,
Learned, shared, taught, traveled, healed –
Forward steps with few skipped beats.
Decisive. Sure. Eager.
Like children still, despite our years.
You even died decisively, with grace.
As I live my grief, I can change focus,
Move on with energy,
Rejoicing deeply --
Or remain cheerless.
Or both.
Joy can survive with sadness.
We can proceed together,
Still celebrating love.

Reflections:


I really wanted to come back to Dartmouth, to where I had grown up and we had married. It seemed important to be here on our anniversary, to spend the day mindful of the great blessing we experienced a year ago, finally, to marry each other.

Today, I drove up the Rhode Island coast, from Connecticut, toward Dartmouth, arriving here tonight. Route 1 was slow, with a lot of traffic. I passed towns with wonderful, tongue-rolling names, each of which resonated from childhood memory as I read it and knew how to pronounce it with certainty and a sense of pride: Meshanticut, Wampanoag, Apponagansett, Padanaram…

The couple of times I stopped at a store, or paused to ask directions, my ears reveled in the rapid pulse and tight, flat vowels of Rhode Island speech. It hasn’t changed, amazingly, in 70 years – who knows how much longer before that? Once upon a time, I also spoke exactly that way. I’d wondered, for years, before coming back home last year, how I had sounded as a young woman. Now, I’ve heard that speech enough, recently, to know the answer.

Strangely, these childhood resonances have seemed more real this time than my memory of our four days here last year, to apply for a marriage license, wait the required 3 days, and then be married, before a justice of the peace and two witnesses, on Apponagansett Beach in Padanaram.

We had come, oxygen machines and cancer medications in tow. But you didn’t feel well after the trip, so we spent our waiting days resting at the hotel. I was concerned how you would be for the wedding. That day dawned bright, warm, and sunny, and, fueled by adrenalin, we both felt marvelous. It was a transcendent experience.

Being here again now is pressing home to my consciousness, however, how transitory is the glory of past moments.


Tricks of Memory September 9 2009


Just last year, we came here, you and I,
For our joyful wedding day.
I’m here again, commemorating.
Driving past the now familiar landmarks,
And, now, in the hotel we shared 12 months ago,
It feels strangely as if last year happened in a dream.

I have the pictures with
Our beaming faces, radiant smiles.
Who were those happy women?
As I now see how quickly time
Erases even deepest heartfelt moments,
I once again become aware
How what is present now is all there is –
All else is make-believe.