Monday Morning Musing: Things that Last

I was thinking recently about things that last, as compared to the things that don't. This began to percolate when I read this paragraph by Elizabeth Gilbert:

But other people can leave us sometimes, voluntarily or involuntarily. It’s a risky gambit, to place your sense of belonging in the care of another person, because life is so uncertain, and history shows us all the time that people can come and go. Even the people who are “supposed” to love us the most can change their minds about us and leave us behind, or fail to take care of us when their own needs become too overwhelming — or when it is time for them to depart the planet.

Whew. I was kind of gobsmacked by that paragraph. It felt as though she had reached into my own sadness and pulled it out into the open, like you might pull a sleeve from a shirt that had turned inside out in the dryer. I think of the people who have changed their mind about me; some who are, by virtue of their role in my life, supposed to be constant. It is a hidden grief. I think of the friends or colleagues who have walked away, which I think is now called "ghosting". And I think of those who have died too soon. Grandfathers who died when I was 5 and 7 years old. Friends who died when we had so much left to share together. People can leave us sometimes.

I don't know quite where to put the emotions associated with the complicated griefs. But for the rest, for the deaths, even too soon, it's a little easier to remember that some part of them, maybe even the best parts of them, don't really leave. They linger in me and in others who loved them. The way they smiled or how their laugh sounded. The way they always wore bracelets that jingled on their arms. The way they told the truth. The way they like to fish or play cards. The way they made me feel that I was the most precious thing to them.

I wonder, what love lingers in your life, like a shadow you catch out of the corner of your eye? That is the love that lasts and that never walks away, even after death.

This quote from A.A. Milne, is reprinted generously, but for today, I'm glad for it's tenderness:

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. i'll always be with you.”

Here I am, being doted on a bit by my two grandfathers. My Papa, who is not holding me in this photo, is said to have