57120--57 if

[zyzyly]

The flowers are from the front yard, just outside the window that I am looking out of as I write. This is the first bush to bloom--it always is.

She would have been 57 today. I can still picture her at 47, at her last birthday, and I can imagine what she might have looked like at 70, but I just can't picture her being 57.

I went out to the cemetery yesterday and spent some time. I hadn't been there for a while--at least a year, maybe two. I thought a bit about why Arlina has been on my mind more lately. She seems to pop up in this journal fairly often. Part of it is because she has always been a part of what I have written here, from the very beginning.

She will have been gone ten years this year. I suspect there is some kind of symbolic closure in that, as there was at the one-year mark. Ten years is a long time. Most of the time it feels like another lifetime altogether. Every once in a while though, it still feels very immediate. I don't know. It feels like there is something in all this that I don't really understand. It's not a bad thing, it just feels like there is something under the surface.



The irises are in bloom at the cemetery, and they are lovely.

Comments

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love iris, so full of life and memory.

[noetic-toe.livejournal.com]

+Memory eternal!

I recall Arlina's death very vividly, even though I've never met her or you, other than through your lj chronicles. At the time of her passing, I posted this:

http://noetic-toe.livejournal.com/48852.html

Your accounts of your experience with Arlina affected me -- and many others, no doubt -- profoundly. Thank you for being willing to share those experiences.

And thank you for visiting her.

[vaysha.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about something that we are suppose to understand but that is elusive and I wonder if we won't know what that is until it is our own time to go and we have moved on- something of the soul and just beyond this human experience. Maybe even something we have known before... one of life's mysteries.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sending you much love

[egg-shell.livejournal.com]

I thank noetic-toe for pointing me in the direction of your old journal. I wasn't in LJ at that time and didn't know you yet. I am reading now though about the end of Arlina's life and your love. Love doesn't go away. Even after 10 years.

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Ten years approaching - wow. Even though I only experienced her presence and your partnership through your words and photos, I can pull up a memory of her beaming face in my mind. Warm thoughts to you as you swim around in the not-understanding.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Augustine and I both think there's something very weird about memory, vivid memory, the presence of persons, things, and events in one's mind, in one's viscera, as present.

So many things are simultaneously yesterday and long ago.

And I imagine it's so much weirder than anything i know, to have a much-loved yet no longer in this world wife with you, and to live daily with a much-loved and mundanely present wife.

Travelling through time and its changes, with memory, is weird.

[ticklethepear.livejournal.com]

lovely.

[3-black-cats.livejournal.com]

It'll be ten years for me this year, too. I loved this entry.

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

Ten years and so many changes. Much love and respect.

[blue-by-you.livejournal.com]

I understand. I lost my mom not long after you lost Arlina. How well I remember your journey. How your writing was so beautiful and sad and human. Ten years. Sometimes it feels like a fraction of that. I'm glad you found happiness again. Back then I didn't know if either of us would ever be happy again.

[88greenthumb.livejournal.com]

What a touching entry.

The roses and the irises look beautiful.

[thoughtsbykat.livejournal.com]

Remember that she is always with you. I'm glad that you have found happiness again and I'm sure Arlina is too.

[blistermoth.livejournal.com]

It's hard to believe she's been gone so long.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

I've really wanted to comment on these last few posts ... but I've had no idea what to say.

All my good thoughts to you. *hugs*