Once There

Reality is vital, but not always joyous.

There are the moments when it is cold, clinical and caustic as well as brutal.

When it finally dissipates, your body seemingly lacks any feeling or emotion and I cannot confirm that everyone eventually recovers or that I will.

My blast of reality occurred earlier today when I had a phone call from my niece, Deborah, alerting me of my younger sister’s sudden hospitalization due to a stroke.

Not very long ago, I had two sisters, both younger than I.

More than distance separated us, but we never lost contact, often admittedly in anger or displeasure.

I believe in the two decades after our Mother died, we all reached the same conclusion and comprehension of our emotional distance, but tacitly agreed, it was too late to rectify.

Despite the undeniable truth that we rarely agreed, and never shared adventures or confidences, we always sought the other’s opinions.

Possibly because while we obviously respected each other’s viewpoints and intelligence, we also served as reminders of the gentle Father we had adored.

Soon after it’s global arrival, Covid claimed the youngest of our trio, leaving a space filled with more regrets than I can record,

Today I am aware that my remaining sibling’s voice, always filled with wisdom, and yet so prone to laughter and that I sought out only occasionally, may now be stilled forever.

Yet I cannot and do not weep,

The reality of loss does not allow that excess of emotion.

The void is too dreadful to evoke the healing moisture of tears.

Instead the regret for time lost will become a cloak that envelopes me for the remainder of my days.

And it’s rigidity will ever remind me that

“Nothing is forever.”

not even a time to change.