Sunday continued the beautiful, merciful rains here. These were not thunderstorms but gentle soaking rains of grey skies that lasted the entire day. Such days are so rare here. I found myself sitting outside on the porch to listen to the sound, and draw in the sweet humid air.
In the afternoon I went into the bedroom to take a nap for half an hour while Ginger sat in the living room watching a football game. When I take naps in the afternoon, I can fall asleep almost instantly.
After about twenty minutes I awoke from my dreamless nap, in those seconds after waking, I was in a state of suspension from the world, my conscious thoughts not having returned yet.
I could hear the sound of the television set from the next room, and in that instant, I was carried back to a sensation from long ago, fifty years perhaps, of being in my grandparents house on a Sunday afternoon, with the television set on. The purity of the feeling was a great comfort to me. The veil between the present and the past was pierced.
As my awareness returned to me, of my surroundings, and of the present of my life, I held the sensation I had felt, of being fifty years in the past, on me like a warm blanket.
How beautiful it had been, so long ago, to have lived those moments with my family. I reflected on how I had spent my childhood only wanting to grow up, to leave behind my childhood, and to live an adult life. Here I was, five decades later, drinking the pure water of memory like the waters of life.
Grief can be overwhelming at times, even years after one loses someone. The finality of death is brutal, One somehow believe the absence will pass. But it cannot pass in this lifetime. These moments when the veil between past and present is pierced are merciful gifts with no downside. One cannot manufacture them, yet they come, often enough to make life pleasant, and to quench the thirst one feels for the comforting love that has fled with the death of others.
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