Beltane New (Running Creeks) Moon
The mood here. Still subdued, still gathering the reality of Vega’s death around us. When Mom died, now 52 years ago, the ongoingness of life surprised me. Cars still rattled down Canal Street. Lights went off and on in houses. School was open, teachers teaching and kids squirming at their desks. The sun rose and set. Dogs barked. We needed sleep and ate breakfast.
This no longer amazes me. The feelings of absence, of missing, of longing do not disappear however, though they can get submerged in the running creek of life. I still miss my mom, not in that acute, gut twisting way of 52 years ago, but longing for her, for her presence remains.
Abraham Lincoln called these threads of feeling and remembrance, their resonance, the mystic chords of memory. Yes. Part of their function, a paradox, lies in the quickening of our daily life, jimmying us out of the cracks and ruts we fall into. We realize a life time has bounds.
As the writers of the Hebrew scriptures often said, this background music is a blessing and a curse. It can become a cacophony, a dirge we cannot shut off. A mental tinnitus. Yet, it is the dead, as much as the living, often more, who shape us, create us-sometimes to our exasperation, other times to our joy.
With Vega the only source of pain is her sudden absence. The rest, the memory of her, the mystic chords she sets off, are joyful and loving. And those will persist.
