Mom, I Miss You

      It has been one year since you left us, Mom.   In some moments I forget that you're not there for me to call.  I think of something I need to ask you or want to tell you and reach for the phone, but then suddenly realize that you won't be there to answer.

      Life sometimes seems long while we're living it, but looking back it all went by too quickly.  Our family had some great times and so often it was you coordinating it all.  We never lacked for anything.  Food was always on the table at mealtimes.  Our house was a home where all my friends were made to feel welcome.  You were like a second mother to many of my friends as well as the friends of all of your children.

      Now the living room of your old house is still and silent.  There is rarely activity in your kitchen.  The furniture was all taken out last weekend with few traces of a home that once was bustling with people coming and going.   You reigned like a queen and indeed you were the queen of that house.  

       That house will soon be sold and only be another part of my memory and the memories of your children.   Happy times and sad times in the shadowed corridors of our personal histories.   We will remember and pass the memories to our children who also remember from their own experiences.

        Mother, you shaped lives and created a home that may no longer exist in a physical tangible place where we can be,  but will continue to exist nevertheless as a place of comfort, warmth, and safety in our memories.

         I love you, Mom, and I miss you.

                    In Memory of Lois K Jackson

                                    April 11, 1929 -- November 21, 2014

The Sense of Remembering

senses (Photo credit: joaoloureiro)

       If you're gathering with family during the holidays or even if you're just out and about where the celebration of the season is evident, your senses may be in heightened arousal mode as you are assaulted with the sounds, smells, sights, and other stimulants that cry out "Christmas!".

       This is a time when our senses might be tapping into our past.  Wherever you may be during this holiday time it's good to stay on special sensory alert.   Make connections with your memory as the senses are bombarded.  Hopefully the memories are happy ones, though undoubtedly some may be wistful or even sad.  Take them in.   They're all part of the story of life.

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Memories Are In The Air

Downtown Morgantown, WV from atop a hill near North High Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

         Does the feel of the air ever bring back memories for you?

         Autumn especially evokes remembrance of times and places of my past.   I recall the smell of burning leaves and the feel of the crisp fall mornings.  The dry midday warmth and the chill in the air as the sun begins its descent below the horizon.  As gray days of November lead toward winter, the colder days become the norm with expectations of snowy days to come.

         Any potential bleakness is cheered by the holiday seasons.  The savory scents of Thanksgiving dinners being prepared makes mouths water and hearts fill with warm feelings brought by memories of family gatherings and the promise of gatherings yet to come.  Food smells waft in the air to touch the nerves that tap into recollections.

        The first frosty morning.  The silent snow of night that creates a magical crystal landscape that greets us when we rise.  Visible breaths in the icy air.  The atmosphere which we cannot see but feel, seizes what we see around us so that later when we experience the similar feel of the air we might remember a snapshot of some captured yesterday.

          Those are things I no longer experience where I live now, but I remember them.  When I go home for holidays I welcome the chance to experience these wintery things once more.  Memories to carry home with me so they can be plucked from my mind like I would pluck up a photo album off the coffee table.  If the memories cannot be lived then they can be perused with reflection.

         There are refreshing summer mornings when the feel of the air takes me back to a morning in Morgantown, West Virginia as I stepped out on my grandparents' porch to feel that same feeling of air.  It's a connection made across the decades locked in my mind to be let out when I feel the air in that special way.

          A brisk cool breeze rushes down my neighborhood street on a sunny Southern California morning and I am momentarily transported to a pull-off on a desolate West Texas highway where a friend and I have stopped for a break after driving all night.  As I step out of the van I am greeted with an unexpectedly chilling wind that takes my breath.  It is July and though a chill is in the morning air, I know in a couple hours it will be blazing hot.  These memories delivered in a morning breeze years later.

         There are memories in air.   Times of day.  Seasons of the year.  Unexplainable moments in time when memories are drawn from the deep well of the past.  The invisible force that we breathe, bask in, and sometimes fear in the power that it can wield.  The wind blows and we are caught up in it.

          Does a feeling in the air ever bring back special memories for you?   What does the smell of burning leaves remind you of?    Are you ever struck by a long forgotten memory because of something in the air?

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Winds of Change Without Awareness--A New Year's Eve Once Upon a Time

Image via Wikipedia

          I try to remember but I can't.  It's the exact year that I don't remember, or most of the details of that evening.  I do know it was New Year's Eve.

          I was married to my second wife, Susan, at the time.  We were in Tennessee at my parents' house.  This is where we typically spent New Year's Eve.  It was the more happening place between going to Richmond, Virginia, where her parents lived, and being with my family, who were the more fun party people.

          My father was still alive at the time, our kids were still babies, and my wife and I were still in our thirties.  The house was aglow with lights and music and chatter and laughter as the festivities pressed on toward the turning over of one year to the next.  Everyone was having a grand time.

         At one point Susan and I decided to go out into the dark quiet of the night to take a break from the activity in the house. It was unseasonably warm that end of December night.  Strangely and unseasonably warm--more like a summer night, but with the crisp dryness of autumn.

         In silence, we strolled into the expansive back yard to a point that was about fifty yards from the house and sat down side by side in the desiccated winter grass.  Wordless, we smoked a joint under a cloudless starry sky and basked in the comforting balminess of the evening breeze.  Gazing upon the big house with lights in every window silhouetted against the black night sky, I slipped into a meditation.

        Here from where we sat in the back yard, the lights, the house, the people seemed so far away, and it was only Susan and I with our life together beautiful and filled with so much promise.  A feeling of serenity and security enveloped me as I clutched Susan's hand.  I felt that now was forever and this moment would have no end.

         Then a whoosh of warm wind swept over us and I felt exhilarated.  With a deep breath I leaned forward to breathe in the moment.   It was only Susan and I.  Our world was perfect.  A mental image of a distant future filled my mind--a place peaceful and beautiful where my wife and I would grow older together and watch our grandchildren grow and we would fade into the twilight years happy with the satisfaction of dreams fulfilled.

          That was then, one moment on a New Year's Eve many years ago.  Not too many years after that night it ended.  Things changed and became different.   I'm not even sure what happened or why it happened, but only that it did happen.   Susan left and what we had was over.  Any dreams she had once had about us were simply shrugged off as she moved on, leaving me to shoulder the burdens of memory and the confusion of questioning why things had come to the point they had reached.

        It was one New Year's Eve when things were weirdly warm and sublimely wonderful.  It was only an illusion--my personal illusion I guess.  The winds bring change that we don't even realize, things we don't understand even after they've blown past us.  Life sweeps us forward to where the next adventure awaits.  There is time for memories, but no real time for memories.  The memories are only illusion.

       A new year is a new year and an old year is an old year and all of the years just blend together.   Our minds capture certain memories isolated without reference other than the years that came before and the years that followed, whichever those years might have been.  And even then we sometimes don't know which years or why.

      Capture this moment in time.  Savor it and breathe it in deeply.   This is the last time you will ever be here.