Birthday

97 years ago. I find it strange and somehow revealing that my father didn’t mention my mother’s name – after all seems she played an important part in this event.

The years have passed, and now that I am 97 I find myself thinking of the many things I wish I had done, or had not done, of the many friends for whom I am grateful. The things I have read and felt and perhaps still hope to feel, come crowding in.

I don’t remember when I first read Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. But the words of the old Abbess as she tries to understand why it was just those five who fell when the bridge gave way have remained with me over the years as I think of those I have loved and those who have loved me. “Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning...” And to give this sort of love is something most of us are incapable of. We give our small jot of love to those we know, as best we can. And perhaps it is in the giving that we truly live.

It is 1955. My mother has just recently left the land of the living and I seek comfort in the world of nature. It is almost twilight. The sky is still blue with indistinct clouds here and there taking on the colors, the tenuous hues, of the end of the day. Above, a gull wings by. Large and close enough to see its various colors – greys and tans and whites. Another one, they seem to circle over the house, over the hill. Nearby a small black flutter, rapid wings of some tiny bird. The trees are full of sounds and leaves don’t hide the branches yet, or the multitude of small silhouettes of birds that flit and hop from branch to branch. The air has that tangible quality it sometimes has in Italy – in the distance, but one hardly notices it, Orvieto glows softly. There is a feeling of absolute quiet – except that it is not quiet, not with all the bird sounds, and in the background the trucks and cars one no longer hears. There is a feeling of peace. I feel my mother’s presence somehow – hers, for she had so much love to give and it is love that fills the air. I can feel it almost swirling around, entering all it touches, like the wind. A magic moment that in its holiness makes one feel part of it all.

How important it is to know that there is someone with whom we can exchange our thoughts, that there is someone who will reciprocate our love. I write and I read and those who receive my thoughts, perhaps only in the form of words on a piece of paper, are more real than those who share my physical space. It is an unbroken string of beads, a rosary, that ties us together. 

I have also put it down in a poem.

If tomorrow they should tell me that you have ceased to be

I would feel myself diminished, part of me would also cease to be.

As long as you (and I) exist,

the rosary that bears your name is incomplete,

and in its incompleteness

offers hopes of growth, of change, of being added on to.

I somehow fear the finality of the accomplished fact,

of when someone says

“the end”.