Friday, October 19, 2007

Mystery

I inhale deeply. This cool autumn morning smells spicy. Can you smell colour? It is overcast. Sometimes the colours seem more intense then. There is something mysterious about the feel, the smell, and the look of this kind of fall day. Again I inhale deeply. Doing so my Mother is with me. Some things you never forget.

I can see her with her auburn hair, in a cheery, printed dress, smiling. We, the family, are biking along trails, through woods and fields. Warm sunshine. The smell of wild flowers, grass, and woodsy floors. “Breathe in deeply,' mom would say, “expand your lungs. This is the best medicine. The air is healthy.”

My mom loved nature. She would have liked not to live in Amsterdam. She always longed for a home in the country. She always hoped that after the war, maybe that wish could be full filled. My dad was a city man. Amsterdam was fine with him. But I believe, had they lived, when things turned better after the war, that he would have found her such a place, maybe not too, too far from the city.

It stayed a dream. After troubled times, after working hard, after caring for others, they lost their health, would not find their reward on Earth. They are no more. But still they are. They are in me at such times, when I inhale deeply, expand my lungs, and drink in that healthy air. And not only that. In so many things I do, my parents and other people I lost, live on in me. That is the mystery of life.

Wild Thing (The Lone Blogger)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The line from the NT that always rang most true to me is the verse where Mary watches her young son and holds the thoughts and memories of him in her heart.

I don't think one understands what it means to keep someone alive by remembering them in your heart, holding them in your heart, until someone close to them dies. I didn't. I, too, now hold my parents in my heart, and in memory - also friends who have died, a small community of them.

I think of the writing community of twenty years ago... many are no longer alive. I think of their passion for words and desire to see their own stories and memories and thoughts live on the page... the creative spark that ran through them.