In the Silence I Hear Them

Photo by Madeleine Maguire on Unsplash

There was a foggy film, as if smoke was rising from somewhere unknown that felt both mysterious and clear at the same time.

Tall brown trees lifted to heaven felt ominous — bare, old and naked.

Rotted detritus on the sodden earth, the leaves a deep rust, leftovers from seasons past.

Some things are familiar as we make our way to the cemeteries where my husband and my parents are buried.

A road, a diner, the Italian pizzeria we ate at.

The school bus stop, the long downward hill before we pass the house of a grammar school friend who had the mean mom.

All leading us to their final home — the place where the living go to remember.

It’s a stone village of the past.

Rocks of gray — some looming tall, most short that reveal names and dates.

Marking their passage.

And so many.

So many to remember, to hold in the spaces of one’s heart that we keep open and keep opening.

My oldest son wanted to visit his grandparents. A yearning perhaps. A looking back and wanting to speak amends that got left unsaid. That hurt his heart for what he didn’t see then, but saw now.

I wanted to honor that request and in some ways it gave me the opportunity to reach back through time and presence them.

All of them.

For who they were, for what they gave, for what they provided.

We walked among them and searched until we found their names etched in stone.

They walk in the heavens now.

They seek us when we least expect.

They find their way in the meals we make, in the loud voices at holiday gatherings, in the quiet moments when we are alone and a memory climbs into our lap refusing to leave until acknowledged.

I found that to be the case, their wandering souls reaching down to earth and at times I would talk to them, remember them, hold them.

We didn’t stay long that day. The rain became steady at one point and a rawness started to seep through our clothes.

When I left I didn’t feel a sense of loss.

I only felt a fullness, as if my heart opened again to their love, as if every memory had a place in my bones, as if they could never leave me.

I knew for me they never would.