I have a confession to make. Today I spent quite a lot of my yoga class looking up.... I couldnt help it. Any time I could lift my gaze without falling over, I looked up through square windows in the roof out onto the blue sky. Every few minutes the sun would shine brightly through, making an already bright room even brighter. I couldnt help it. I looked up.
And as I looked up I was thinking about one of the happiest days of my life... the morning Noah and Cara were born. You see... the yoga instructor today is the daughter of the pediatrician who was in the operating room that day, and the man who I have always believed saved Noah's life. Like Matt, this man was also taken from us way too soon. And so two of the people who were in the room on that day are no longer here... and yet I think of them both often. This morning made me think again about memories. What we remember and what we forget. I'll always remember that day my kids were born of course. I'll remember how the alarm clock woke us with the song "you are so beautiful" playing. I'll remember the way the pediatrician spoke to us gently in a soft voice. I'll remember seeing my beautiful babies in teenie tiny beanies under bubble wrapping to keep them warm. I'll remember the look on Matts face as we had our first family photo just a few moments after their birth. But what of the things I wont remember? What of the memories Ive already forgotten? When I look back am I distorting what was our reality because there's noone else to confirm it? Am I making the memories brighter than they were... or darker? What of the memories of our life that he held for us, that I let go of because I knew they were in his keeping? I wish we could one day be old together arguing over whether it was Amalfi or Positano where we had a room with a view of the side of a cliff. Fifteen years of memories that only he and I shared... The memories of a marriage that nobody else will ever know. It feels like a moment ago he was here, and a lifetime ago that he left. And in between there are the three years I've had on my own. Three years of memories Ive made without him. And here's the real confession..... Some of these memories are, almost absurdly, the happiest memories of my life. I argue with myself... How is that possible? But I have to acknowledge it is true. Because this shadowy hole that sits in my heart without him, a gaping hole which draws me deep down into the depths some days and makes it hard to even breathe... somehow this hole is what has forced me to look up and see the world, and all its possibilities, through new eyes. And for that I honestly couldn't be more grateful.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorFiona is a writer, consultant to government and not for profits and former cynic turned yogi. Archives
June 2017
Categories |