My brother, David, calls to see how I am feeling. He does this for two reasons; 1. Reading my blogs daily makes him feel up to date with what’s happening in my life and so he isn’t sure when we last spoke and 2. He is uncertain whether what I am writing about is going on currently or whether they are excerpts from my past. And it’s a valid point. My yoga commentaries are present, some of the stories relating to Costa Rica and my parents’ deaths, are past. Not that the past does not enter the present and vice versa, but still, there is some significance to where one stands temporally. 

I want, at least intellectually, to remain in the present, even when the present contains pain, fear, anxiety, or elements of the past that flood me. Time is a marvelous healer and past hurts rarely ‘flood’ me nowadays. Sometimes they seep, though.

Death can be a transforming agent. And death can be taken in ways other than the literal, it can be the loss of a friend, love, job, way of life. An ending and a beginning. After the death of my parents’, I created a garden in their honor, a way to keep them near. Purple and white sprouts that grow upward like magic from the grass beneath. Their beauty is expressed in living color and splendid design. Sometimes I step onto my deck, and stare in their direction. There were days when my heart and body ached unceasingly, my mind unable to think. Emotions either too close to the surface with an incessant need to express, or so deeply buried that the suppression itself took a toll. However, the feelings did subside. I found myself laughing heartily, or feeling hungry, or having a fun conversation. I vowed (and vow still) to enjoy these spaces of time as often, and as long, as I am able. Because life is life, a roller coaster, but we are still on the ride!