Caregiving Story

On the one year anniversary of my mom's death, I've had only a few moments of melancholy, of loving memories, of the emotion rising.

I remembered late tonight that almost a year ago I Tivo'd the singer from Death Cab for Cutie on Conan singing "I'll Follow You Into the Dark".

When I first saw it, I knew nothing about that band, but the song moved me to tears as he sings about following someone soon into death. So close to my mom's passing away, this really choked me up last year so I saved it, knowing that I'd want to see it again.

So, I remembered it tonight suddenly and I played it late and alone to conjure her once again. It worked.

The images that rise up for me range from those of her as that "mystery girl" in the pictures I have from her at 12 yrs old and earlier (I'll write about that another time)... to her together with my dad - and the way I imagined him following her and "meeting in that dark place" someday soon, as the song sings... to her in that room in those last days.

The span of a life. The sadness of how short it is when you look back. The loss. How scary it is to think how small we are and how quickly we might fade for those who remain.

...and then, I just read this story about the passing away of film drop off sites with the advent of digital cameras (only the first 3 paragraphs are relevant here):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/business/09film.html?hp

It reminded me of the place my mom used to go to drop off her many rolls of film and how it disappeared in that depressing way we see places from our childhoods vanish and take our History away. What struck me most was this quote from a guy who saw his local place go:

"When he returned to the store 10 days later, both the box and the sign were gone. “It’s like it never even existed,” he said. “As if it had all been a dream.”"

Yesterday my one strong moment of reflection came out at the beach on a beautiful fall Pacific day with long views to the horizon and the blue ocean rolling in and rolling out at my feet. I felt her there too. And that blend of joy and sadness at the endless cycling of Life. And at the fragile wispy insignificance and simultaneously boundless significance of each and every life.