Shivering through another frigid winter, I remember telling myself last year that I wasn't going to do this again, and yet, here I am doing it again. It is a little different this time, my daughter and her kids are in the house, brightening it up; also, it is a colder and snowier winter than last year though at the time, it didn't seem possible.
In the long cold, I am followed by ghosts, and though I do not believe in ghosts, I believe in photography, and I think that the images we retain of our lives and how we experience them imprint and that imprint remains after the action and emotion has moved on. In this way, nothing leaves, not the sweetness, nor the unpleasant after taste, even though one often follows the other.
I looked towards inevitable bereavement as a thing to be feared, yet now that it has happened so many times as to be routine, I find myself less alone than anticipated.
Friends are dead, parents are dead, people have drifted off in other directions or moved out of reach, yet they stay with me, and the time that our paths ran parallel affected the trajectory of mine.
From another life I remember love, but remember it now as a dream interrupted by a loud noise.
I was dreaming I was young and pretty and had a man I loved wildly. We were traveling in winter in his old silver Chevy, sleeping in the back, couch surfing at his friend's houses, and I no longer remember being cold. I remember the warmth. Today, I remember that precious time that I could not keep, and no matter how hard I tried, I didn't know how to be the pliant, obedient female he wanted, nor could he be the man who was on my side that I needed. Though it ended in acrimony, only the sweetness remains.
It is important for me to remember also, the loud noise waking me is my own howl for freedom.
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