Julie Leung had one of her brilliant "blog bursts" today.
Julie also referenced Ayelet Waldman's article, "Truly, Madly, Guiltily" in the NYTimes in her post entitled "Different kinds of kisses."
It's raining in Minnesota tonight. The cold rain of this day will bring gorgeous blossoms soon. They'll fade all too soon, but the showy burst of color will help me forget the long winter.
Jim is there. The atoms in his ashes by now have become part of the beach. So perhaps one could say he is there, in the sand and sea of the Olympic Peninsula. But he wasn't in his body. He borrowed some atoms for a while as a storage case for his soul. Once his body stopped breathing on that December morning years ago, he stopping living here."
Julie Leung, "He is not here: Easter morning 2005."
When I hear about someone who lost someone precious I can't help but wish I could meet the object of so much love and loss. Who were they really, that they left such holes in those around them?
I feel like I'm a person warming myself by the fire of someone else's love. It's just so beautiful to read about or see such devotion; I can't help but stare at the dancing flames or the dying embers. I don't mean to be rude or intrude; it's just that love and devotion is so precious and rare, how can I not stop to admire it.
When Julie finished her entry about her brother, she talked about Easter and the hope present in the account of an empty tomb. Is there any bigger expression of the desire that death won't separate us from those we love than an empty tomb? Even those of us who struggle with faith or believe differently can see the beauty in the hope and the longing to not be separate forever from those who have died.
The memorial Julie made with her memories reminded me of a blog I don't check quite as often, Seraphic Secret. I stopped by today and felt my emotions swell when I read the following lines.
"I slip into Ariel's room. I open his closet, caress his favorite blue suit. I slip my foot into his Shabbos shoe. It's eerie, but I imagine that his shoe still feels warm, as if he has only just pried them off. I sink to the edge of his bed and hold my head in my hands. I wonder: did it really happen."
Seraphic Secret, Seraphic Snapshots, Robert J. Avrech
It's hard for me to read that quote. I read it and re-read it, honoring the father who has to live that quote. I can't begin to imagine it.
Julie also referenced Ayelet Waldman's article, "Truly, Madly, Guiltily" in the NYTimes in her post entitled "Different kinds of kisses."
"... even in the event that I face a day of reckoning in which my children, God forbid, become heroin addicts or, God forbid, are unable to form decent attachments and wander from one miserable and unsatisfying relationship to another, or, God forbid, other things too awful even to imagine befall them, I cannot regret that when I look at my husband I still feel the same quickening of desire that I felt 12 years ago when I saw him for the first time, standing in the lobby of my apartment building, a bouquet of purple irises in his hands."
Ayelet Waldman, "Truly, Madly, Guiltily"
Who wouldn't want someone writing about them that way?
So where does all the beautiful writing about love, loss, desire, and longing leave us?
Same place as usual.
It's raining in Minnesota tonight. The cold rain of this day will bring gorgeous blossoms soon. They'll fade all too soon, but the showy burst of color will help me forget the long winter.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
