Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Flitting in and out of memory

On Saturday it will be two years since my friend Bevin left us, and I've been thinking about her a lot this week. She keeps passing before my mind's eye, talking, laughing, moving in that purposeful way she had. I see her welcoming holiday guests in her family's old house, joking around with my dad, pressing a drink into my hands.

In my favorite quote from Orlando, my favorite Woolf novel, she wrote memory is the seamstress. The gist of it is that we have no idea which images memory will link together for us, or why they come in the order they do. So that while standing folding laundry, or waiting for my coffee to heat up in the microwave, I might be so overwhelmed by Bevin's image flitting before me that I'll start to cry, wondering what might have been. What's left is to be thankful for what was.

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