Never Really Alone

mom, i spoke to claudia the other night.  she said you were going to grandma rose and ben-henry's graves the next day outside nyc.  i can only imagine how emotional this was for you to return to your parents' grave sites six months after dad's departure.  

i wish i could have been there, too.  i'm sure it was good for your soul and thoughts to be near their resting site for a quiet conversation w/ them.  when i mentioned this to shakun, leah was listening and asked me if you put a stone on the grave.  she knew that jews do that as a token of remembrance from a children's book she'd read.  (we read it again last night...)   

how wise and observant children are in our lives.  they speak such simple truths so openly...

still, for us, as we age, we learn to acknowledge that we'll never really know what happens after death.  

yet, we feel, as well, that these after-life conversations carry emotional presence or substance to an unseen/unseeable world.  we believe that in an uncertain existence, anything is possible -- including some form of spiritual communication w/ those we love who have gone.  

we hear ourselves speak from our hearts, at the very least.  which in itself is important.  

then, if the ones we love can hear us, too, in whatever hearing may mean in the great beyond, at least some flicker of recognition and affection, then all the feather weight of those words and emotions travel truely.  

if they merely echo across the empryean, we believe the echo itself is a form of life.  like the lightwaves that that our science mind tells us travel to eternity across the open, empty space of the universe, there for those to see who have eyes and and recognition, our words, prayers and love may travel, too, beyond any world we could ever recognize, or reach.  

yet, as we look inside and out, we smile gently, if a bit wanly, as we look up to see the universe stretch beyond our imagination knowing that the people we have embraced and love still may have formed their own light waves or sound ripples cascading 'across the universe' (as the beloved beatles sing...).  

so we reflect, we pray, we remain silent, we go down on one knee or put our hands together in solicitation.  we close our eyes to meditate, or open them to stare w/ slack jaws at the immense beauty and distance of the stars above.  

either way, we stand in awe and appreciation of the brief time we are given to acknowledge the surprising existence we find ourselves temporarily inhabiting on this wondrous world.  

we are fortunate to see and perceive.  

we are fortunate to have each other.  

we are fortunate to have had so many who have gone already.  

we are fortunate.

of course, the pain and loss never leave.  the reality of the shortness of breath.  the gut-wrenching fear that something has gone wrong..  the sudden disappearance of those we love.  the broken shelter they offered us in this vagrant world lost, forever.  

yet, to where, we can never know.  so we speak in our silent voices, standing at the graveyard or on the sacred mountain or in the quiet of our own homes.  we radiate our loss and our love.  we send out to that dark and distant universe the love we feel and will never forget.  the message of connection and affection.  the truth that is even greater than the loss.  that time and distance have not broken, nor ever will.  

we love, therefore we are.  we love, therefore, we weep.  we love, and in loving will never forget.

are never really alone.