I`m sitting at a Starbucks (dependable WIFI) on a gloomy day in Budapest where I have come with my husband to set up assisted living for his ailing parents. I came to the cafe to write this post, mind overflowing with ideas, but it`s the two year anniversary of my own father`s passing, and my mind insistently defaults to thoughts of the last moments we spent together.
I can`t help reflecting on the many different levels of living, loving, loss and dying. How personal it is...how intimate. And somehow, as time moves on, we hold close to our heart that one small pearl of loss. A sweet pain that is our last shared touch.
So I hope you will forgive my indulgence.
My father, known as Captain Mr. Bob, died in Grenada, the West Indies where he had lived for thirty-five years.
Adieu!
It has been two years since you left us Captain Mr. Bob and I still pine for you.
As you were dying I sat by your side and watched as you dreamed. I saw the many lives shift and form one life. I saw the boy, the youth, the man. I watched the flesh melt from your bones as you sipped honeyed water and weak tea like the tiny humming bird drinking from the cup of a red hibiscus flower that bloomed outside your bedroom window.
It was steamingly hot, and the smell of ginger flowers and crushed cinnamon hulls rose from the garden below. White egrets stepped their long-legged gavotte in the lush green of the callaloo and lemon grass that grew along the tiny stream running down from the hills beyond.
It was sweet... this life, this moment in the never-ending spiral of time. Every second precious as you slowly unwound the thread binding you to physical form -- the thread that you would soon climb, or that would gently lift you to rest.
But still I weep for your passing. I weep for the lost moments, the time and secrets we didn`t share.
I weep for your sorrows
Your joys
Your hurts and forgotten dreams
Your moments unshared
Words never spoken
Love never expressed
But...
I touch the veil that separates
this world from Forever
And know...
And know that we are One
Yet still
I weep
I miss you.
Comments