Yahrzeit

A month ago I saw Diane in a dream. Most of my family--my sisters, my niece Christy, my mother--were in Afton, NY, on our way to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. We were taking back roads and had stopped along the way to wander through antique stores, and that's where I spotted Diane. Nobody else could see or hear her, but we got to talk a while. She looked good--vital, three-dimensional, alive--but she also looked a bit older than she did at 22, as though somewhere she is still growing and changing.

I asked her, "Are you taking me with you?"

"Not this time."

Sometimes these dreams leave me struggling with grief, more raw even than in the beginning, when I was too stunned and numb to feel much. More often, though, they leave me feeling at peace. I don't have any doubt of an afterlife, and I have friends and family there.

Yet that peaceful certitude coexists with wrenching grief and sorrow. I have the feeling at every holiday and baseball game that Diane should be here, along with a four-year-old and a baby who has just started walking. I can see those children and hear their voices, but they will never be born now. Her books will never be written, her songs will never be sung, and those are irremediable losses.

No still image of Diane can convey her completely, but her sister Christy has put up a beautiful web page of photos at http://www.geocities.com/cufarmer76/dianepage.html

Life is short. Love people now.