The first week of September is upon me this year without the usual prior recognition that this is a week of death remembrances. I forgot to enumerate the dates and years since the passing of my mother, father and ex-husband, of my grandmother and grandfather and a favorite dog.
All these deaths took place in September, the first three in the first week in 2009, 2011 and 2012. So the most recent, my father, died five years ago. I think of him every day, but didn’t put special emphasis on the day he died until I read my daughter’s remembrance of that day on her Facebook post yesterday. I am grateful to her for remembering and remarking.
It is human not to like change. Loss of someone important, someone who has been present our entire life to that point is a huge change. An end of a relationship which may have been good or bad or complicated. But it is also a beginning of life beyond that relationship. The shadow remains of what was for a while and for me at least, has gradually receded, much like the recent solar eclipse. So thoughts of those who have moved from this life to something else remain, even bringing tears at times while thinking of them, but healing of the hole in the heart has occurred and I can open my heart and stream light and love out into the world again. that is a good feeling.
September has always been a beginning of sorts for me as well. Growing up in academic settings and many years spent in school myself meant that the school year was the biggest organizer of my life. Moving happened in the summer months in order to be in place at the start of school. And there were so many moves! Come April each year I still begin to get itchy feet wondering where the next move will take me. Compiling a page-a-year autobiography of sorts, I decorated each page with a pencil sketch of the floor plan of the place I lived, as I remembered it. From the house in Elizabeth City where I was born, through the Victory Village apartment in Chapel Hill in 1946, to the New York City two room apartments, and so on, I visualized each one in detail. I guess my mind sees shapes, outlines and spatial connections most easily, so these are strong memories. Now, from the porch, I recognize patterns in my environment: spider webs, tree shapes, the lines in the yard made by the lawn mower. Making sense of the world by seeing the patterns, the repeats, the recognizable shapes is just one way of making sense of it. This is a most human task, trying to make sense of life, of death, of endings and of beginnings.
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