"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring." - Oscar Wilde
For me, May 24 is the longest day of the year. Forget the Summer Solstice. While I do love both the Summer Solstice and the Winter, neither compares in importance to May 24. For May 24 lasts not only one day, but a week at least, and sometimes it lasts much longer.
May 24 is a heavy day. It carries not the lightness and mirth of the Summer Solstice or Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day. Although it often falls on Memorial Day weekend - I cannot forget that - it's no picnic neither for me nor for many of my friends.
The week leading up to May 24 is filled with angst and discomfort. I am afraid I will forget, although my body, my heart, and my soul announce clearly they remember. There are tears and dishevelment and irritation galore - and lots of checking. I am constantly checking. Checking to make sure the day hasn't past unbeknownst to me. Checking to make sure Sarah's candle is still in place and I have something with which to light it. Checking the answering machine to see if any one's called yet - Julie surely will. And checking to ensure that my schedule is not too packed on the 24th, that I will have time to honor my commitment.
At Sarah's funeral, the priest asked us to remember her - to light a candle in her honor - for an hour - and spend some time with her. I always do. But my ritual has changed. Approximately five years later, I not only sat and talked to Sarah for an hour, but I began sitting and talking with Anda too. How bizarre. The same date. Different causes, but the same date. I lost two beautiful, boisterous girls with whom I grew up and now I wear the latter weeks of May with an odd chartreuse shade of mourning and it envelops me.
I sit here and I breathe. What else to do? Call off work and lie at home watching Beaches and Girl Interrupted and ultimately Amelie or Breakfast at Tiffany's? It sounds like a plan, but it is impractical. Best to stay busy and then come home to spend my pleasant, peaceful hour (at least, I often spend more) with two wonderful women whose presence we have been deprived of for 11 and 6 years respectively. What makes the day long is not the time I spend with these ladies and their spirits, it's the time leading up to it. That hour is sacred and one of my most holy of the year.
The anxiety, the tears, the weariness and the overwhelming feeling of injustice are not logical. They are parts of what we call memories of the heart. The discomfort is not rational, it rises from within and settles over me just as it does you when the anniversary of a death, a breakup, a parting of ways from your best friend, an aborted fetus, a lost child calls you back to a time you knew and had long forgotten - or so it seems. Memories of the heart do not follow the calendar, they are visceral and real and they might as well be a mental holiday from reality because your emotions, your memory, and your soul take over and it is far easier to accept the memory than to reject it because ultimately you're fighting a battle you have no power to win. Because memories of the heart have already been decided. And that's part of what makes them so all-encompassing.
It is now May 24. Today is the day I have been working all week not to forget. Today is the day I will sit with two beautiful girls - frozen in their young adulthood - and talk without judgment and without explanation. I will catch them up on the past year, as will many others from our hometown who know this date far too well. And I will settle into my chartreuse mourning, my lace curtain of memory veiled with sunshine attitudes and wild women hearts and be thankful they were here then and that I am here now.
For me, May 24 is the longest day of the year. Forget the Summer Solstice. While I do love both the Summer Solstice and the Winter, neither compares in importance to May 24. For May 24 lasts not only one day, but a week at least, and sometimes it lasts much longer.
May 24 is a heavy day. It carries not the lightness and mirth of the Summer Solstice or Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day. Although it often falls on Memorial Day weekend - I cannot forget that - it's no picnic neither for me nor for many of my friends.
The week leading up to May 24 is filled with angst and discomfort. I am afraid I will forget, although my body, my heart, and my soul announce clearly they remember. There are tears and dishevelment and irritation galore - and lots of checking. I am constantly checking. Checking to make sure the day hasn't past unbeknownst to me. Checking to make sure Sarah's candle is still in place and I have something with which to light it. Checking the answering machine to see if any one's called yet - Julie surely will. And checking to ensure that my schedule is not too packed on the 24th, that I will have time to honor my commitment.
At Sarah's funeral, the priest asked us to remember her - to light a candle in her honor - for an hour - and spend some time with her. I always do. But my ritual has changed. Approximately five years later, I not only sat and talked to Sarah for an hour, but I began sitting and talking with Anda too. How bizarre. The same date. Different causes, but the same date. I lost two beautiful, boisterous girls with whom I grew up and now I wear the latter weeks of May with an odd chartreuse shade of mourning and it envelops me.
I sit here and I breathe. What else to do? Call off work and lie at home watching Beaches and Girl Interrupted and ultimately Amelie or Breakfast at Tiffany's? It sounds like a plan, but it is impractical. Best to stay busy and then come home to spend my pleasant, peaceful hour (at least, I often spend more) with two wonderful women whose presence we have been deprived of for 11 and 6 years respectively. What makes the day long is not the time I spend with these ladies and their spirits, it's the time leading up to it. That hour is sacred and one of my most holy of the year.
The anxiety, the tears, the weariness and the overwhelming feeling of injustice are not logical. They are parts of what we call memories of the heart. The discomfort is not rational, it rises from within and settles over me just as it does you when the anniversary of a death, a breakup, a parting of ways from your best friend, an aborted fetus, a lost child calls you back to a time you knew and had long forgotten - or so it seems. Memories of the heart do not follow the calendar, they are visceral and real and they might as well be a mental holiday from reality because your emotions, your memory, and your soul take over and it is far easier to accept the memory than to reject it because ultimately you're fighting a battle you have no power to win. Because memories of the heart have already been decided. And that's part of what makes them so all-encompassing.
It is now May 24. Today is the day I have been working all week not to forget. Today is the day I will sit with two beautiful girls - frozen in their young adulthood - and talk without judgment and without explanation. I will catch them up on the past year, as will many others from our hometown who know this date far too well. And I will settle into my chartreuse mourning, my lace curtain of memory veiled with sunshine attitudes and wild women hearts and be thankful they were here then and that I am here now.
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1 comments:
Interesant blog.
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