My ex-husband once said, when asked about happy childhood memories, that he had none. "None?!" "No; the fact that happy things that have happened are forever in the past makes them irretrievably sad. And nothing can take that tinge from them."
This is one way of looking at the subject.
Actally, I understood his point - and can probably sympathise with the idea more now than I could then. In any case, in the midst of things and thoughts, this conversation came back to me last night. After I'd been woken up urgently to change sick Tomi's diaper (it took the both of us, Jean-Philippe and me, to get things back in order and our little one back into a clean bed) and then been no less urgently called back out of bed again to play the guitar for Leo, who had woken up in the interim, pleading for the "dih-car!" and as I tried - for a long time unsuccessfully - to reagain sleep... as thoughts and emotions began tumbling.
To a large extent, said thoughts and emotions were brought roiling to the surface by an unexpected email last Wednesday. Our mutual friend, Dave Caliger, had written to tell me that David Henderson's father, Vaughn, had died on August 25th. It's hard to know what lead to take from this point, because there are so many. But I'll begin with the fact that as I read Vaughn's obituary on the Lensing site, I was utterly overcome by the love that had gone into its writing. I believe that David H wrote it; he certainly had a loving hand and heart in it.
To make an unending story ridiculously short and more to the point, I think that it would be fair to say that last week and last night's thoughts could be boiled down to several categories, and that the most abidingly important of them is:
The Beauty - or Beauties - of Being, & why we do better to concentrate on that/those above all else (and less on the negative sides of life, for example). Further reduction obviously boils down to the oft-repeated "we only live once," and also to the idea that if we must leave this life and those we love in it (and unfortunately, so unfortunately, we must), then we'd do best to leave some good behind, even if it's mostly good memories. After all... if we've left those behind for others, then we've undoubtedly left something even better, though it may not be physical or have a name.
Vaughn left a beautiful skein of "things" & memories for his family. And although he may not have imagined it, he left a friend of David's a line to a beautiful school of thoughts & emotions. Thanks, Vaughn. & thanks, David.
