Friday, November 14, 2003
  It's cold here, much too windy and cold. The ice has crept into my bones already. It feels like winter and the holidays are just around the corner. Which means...what, exactly? Which means that there are (as there are increasingly every year) people who should be with us(me) and who are not. The rest of the year, I can forget the simple fact of this by sheer stubborn carelessness or by being busy or by being happy or by finding a center in myself that shades me, for a time, from the buffeting winds. My world is a house of cards. Each card a person that I have come to depend on, someone I have infused with a part of my soul. For each that falls, a part of me is taken until I no longer resemble that person I was just six months ago, or a year ago. I can pretend that this is a good thing, that change is warranted in my case and at least is required and necessary. Life is change. I know this, in the deepest part of myself. I don't, however, have to like it. My every bone craves inertia so that I do not have to lose again, even more, so that what is lost to me can somehow return as if by magic. I still believe in magic and karma, and that if I can be humble and strong enough, that which was lost will be returned. Lives, however, are not lost balloons to be gathered up and pulled back. They have wills of their own and go where and when they please, and would I want them back at the cost of their soul's peace? Am I that selfish? What does it cost ME, really? Those that go, that depart that...lets be practical now - die, are my life's lessons. They teach me to cherish when I can and to learn where I am able and to live in the moment because there is nothing BUT the moment. These are lessons I am glad for. To gain everyone back and become an ignorant child again would be wasteful as well as pointless. We don't remember people as they are. We airbrush, we paint over, we polish. We don't remember the truth, in most cases, and the truth is not what we want back. We want the lie, the beautiful, hand-painted lie that we've polished to a shine and which hangs in our heart like a cherished Old Master. In the end, I will toast to those no longer with me and love them in my mind's eye and say the prayers of a sinner on their behalf (they, most of them sinners themselves, will understand) and miss them and perhaps even cry. I won't, however, ask for their return. That would be tempting the fates, and I have done that enough in my life already. Anne let this go at 11/14/2003 12:20:00 PM

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