Endings and beginnings.
Winter fades and Spring flourishes. A life ends, albeit well lived, and then we go around again. A natural cycle. A memory fades, a new one forms. With every recollection we put a new twist, or add a detail.
My mother has leaky short term memory. Repeating information is how we spend our days. As I accompany her through the grief of my father´s passing, we recall and even unlock memories from years way gone by. She frequently naps and occasionally asks about something ruminating in her head. Papi, my dad, and she were married for 62 years. They made quite a team, living through dictatorship, migrating to the US, working multiple jobs at once, sending us to college and giving us (my siblings and me as well as many others) wings.
We sit in the balcony of the home of my older childhood in the Dominican Republic. It sits a distance from the now very busy thoroughfare, far enough in fact that a three story office building blocks our exposure to the street. Between the building and the house there is a patch of green that abounds in fruit and flowering trees and bushes. We sit and rock and look at pictures and receive visitors.
As I ponder, during the holiest of weeks in christianity, death and rebirth, I accept this neverending cycle and am Grateful that we have the time on this mortal plane to intersect.