remembering-loved-ones

. . .though the names of lovers are forgotten in time, their nameswritten across the sky as ogham threads are tracedbetween the stars

Not the slow Hearse, where nod the sable plumes, ____The Parian Statue, bending o'er the Urn, ____The dark robe floating, the dejection worn ____On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes ____It pays Affection's debt, is due concern ____To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mournFashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame ____Memory shou'd hourly feed;__f, thro' each day, ____She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, ____O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light and life, a reunited love!

She likes to write messages on balloons and send them to the sky. She takes out a black Magic Marker and she starts writing on the dozen or so balloons, one for each member of our family who died. She doesn't think she can write well and asks me not to read her notes.She likes to think they'll soar all the way to heaven. I think she knows they end up tangled in power lines or deflated in a pile of orange leaves in someone's backyard miles away, but I can never bring myself to say that to her. I've often wondered what they must think, those people who find our balloons. I've wondered if they read the messages and understand what they mean.I remember watching those balloons as a little boy, each fall, wondering if someday I, too, would be nothing but a balloon in the sky, soaring toward the sun until I began to fall slowly back to earth and into the hands of a stranger.

I release ribbons of gratitude to flow back upon the path I have walked as it stretches out behind me, so they brush past everyone whose path crossed my own. May they feel the brief kiss of remembrance within their hearts, there and then gone again, passing like a spring breeze, so that they suddenly know the things they have done for others, in so many ways big and small, seen and unseen alike, somewhere are known and treasured.

Heaven left a hole in your heart. But it__ up to you to choose if that hole will be filled with pain, anger, and the eternal darkness of loss . . . Or if you will choose to fill it with light and love and have that hole shine out of you like a spotlight into your life, keeping their memory alive . . .{It__ up to you.}

After you are gone, people may forget most of what you have said and done. But they will remember that you loved them.

The only way anyone can hope to live after death is if he leaves something that posterity can remember him for.

My dad__ life was magnificent, but only if I let myself see and remember more than his years of decline.

Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope.

But I suppose it's part of being old to feel that way, half in one world and half in the other, all of it mixed together in my mind. No one's left who even knows my name. Folks call me Auntie, on account of I never could have children of my own, and I guess that suits me fine. Sometime it's like I've got so many people inside of me I'm never alone at all. And when I go, I'll be taking them with me.

No matter how many times you say you'll give up with words, if your heart still says "love", there's nothing to be done.

If we knew a person was going to die, we'd hold harder to the memories."Fire corrected him, in a whisper. "The good memories.

Oft in the stilly night,Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,Fond memory brings the lightOf other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood years,The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shown Now dimmed and gone,The cheerful hearts now broken.(from When the Splendor Falls by Laurie McBain)

Well, memory can play tricks. Most people, I think, tend to remember the good rather than the bad when someone close to them dies.

This is me being sad.Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.