#4 summer solstice 2014

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After our parents are gone I wonder how do we use their names?  My parents imparted a love of water in me. Everything from the bathtub, to a stream or river and of course the ocean. I sit in my chair where I can glimpse my pond and see my dad's sculptures and I miss his hand and his jokes. I don't miss his smoking. I don't miss his grumpiness, but still I have these waves of sadness. The reality of death is a mirror image to the reality of birth. At birth we are imagining the soul of one who is not yet made. And then at death that soul of the one who was made or made us and we came to love and get irritated by and trust and doubt and count on and then the reality is they are not there. But their soul is there in the river of our memory.


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"Memories, I've always believed, are liquid. They can't be buried or burned. When I was younger I used to think of memory as still water--a pond, a lake, a Great Lake, an ocean--but as I got older the water started to move--it was both carrying things and carrying them away--until it became a cataract, a raging river, a waterfall in which all the memories I still had were inextricably bound up and braided with the memories of everyone I love and everyone I ever lost. Here's to all those departed rememberers who are in that river with me, and to all those who are still making memories. We're all making our way back out to sea, where we can commence our drift into oblivion, and float with bellies full of stars."  --Brad Zellar 

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