Family

We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break. ~Marquise de Sévigné

The thing is that i am highly sentimental, especially when it comes to family. Blood family, chosen family, people that make life bearable. One thing is certain - life can be a lonely journey. Other people make it manageable, bearable, fun.

Today for some reason i finding myself thinking of family lost, those who have left you already. They leave a space in your heart, your life, your world that can never ever be filled. You pick up the pieces, move on, continue with the every day business of life, children, cooking supper, paying bills, washing dishes. But the space is there, a ghostly reminder that something important is missing. Sometimes when you pause, take a breath, stop for a second, the memory of that person arrives, hits you, taps you on the shoulder and says: "I am still here". Like the line in the counting crows song that says: "The price of the memory is the memory of the sorrow that is brings."

Today i am thinking of my mother and my grandmother. How they are gone but not really. How i wish they were with me this morning for a cup of coffee and gossip. How i would love to talk about my kids and share the pains of being a woman, wife, mother with them. Tell my mother that i always think of her when my Gardenias bloom or my grandmother when i do my baking. How i am tied to them in so many ways. That they go on because i go on.

My grandmother's kitchen. My mother's bedroom. Spaces that live tangibly in my mind, still fill my senses. I wish i could sit at my Ouma's kitchen table and drink coffee with her. Laugh at the stories that she shared with me about the family. Sit in my gown on my mother's bed. Talk and laugh in complete,accepting togetherness.

I always tell my children that i am bound to them with magic heart strings that cant be broken and i believe it to be true. I believe that we do lie nestled, protected in a nest of magic connections to those who came before us and those who will come after us.

Today i celebrate those connections.
Al