She is every bit here....
"For her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color." - Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
It has been such since the day she passed away, red, orange, gold-red- burning, hurting, unending. For someone who hadn't but spent a night without many a family member by her side now rests alone in that narrow place. We prayed and walked away, yet how I wished I could lay there beside her so that we would go through the trials together, I owed it to her for she had never left me alone- she was always by my side. It's been just about two weeks now and life doesn't seem to move on, waiting for her to come back to somehow just be amidst us. They share excerpts of poetry and of eulogies previously read, all this in the face of our seeming inability to cope. If it were a physical phenomenon I would compare it to an avalanche, though I have never experienced one before but the word itself feels as forceful, as unending as this grief. I sit and write as a work-meeting goes on around me, for almost two weeks now there has been an unbounded hiatus on all thought. Life will continue and time will heal, the insincerity time lends to the situation.
Her teary-eyes as I left home and her parting kiss never leaves my memory. My turning to her room even before I entered the house was a ritual I will cherish forever. I want to have millions more chances to just gently peck her on the forehead, exchange a nice warm greeting and to just revel in her presence. I am a bit angry though , you shouldn't have left while I was away. I have so much to thank you for, you have been so kind and so loving every inch of my life. I always used to wonder how I would ever be able to pay you back for all the love, kindness, generosity, support, prayers that I have accumulated in life and then one day I was caught, I had no time left to return only a small measure for all that you have done for me. Please come back. I want to have dinner with you like we used too, I want to be caressed by your gentle hands as my head rests in your lap.
As I go through old pictures of us I would wish for life to come to pause, like the "happy happy boughs" on the Grecian urn whose leaves "never bid the spring adieu". For all over her urn are stories of a kind, strong-willed, well-read, brave, risk-taking, persevering individual who left everyone around her awe-inspired. A beautiful person- you could never stand before her and not notice that it was her strength of character that emanated such beauty. She gave being "beautiful from within" a whole different dimension- every time one stood before her, always!
I was standing next to you as you slept peacefully the day of the funeral praying so hard that you would come back- so hard! Still wish that would happen somehow. Don’t know how life will go on from here, I guess until the next big shock that will jolt us into a newer, harsher reality- till then we just stand victims to the insincerity of time.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."- John Keats