Kaleidoscope

We had the first real rainfall of the season yesterday, the last day in September. It felt like both tears of sorrow and relief mixing together, falling welcomely onto thirsty soil and wetting drooping greenery in my backyard.

This past summer has been a kaleidoscope of happiness, healing, and loss. My oldest granddaughter passed her final nursing school exams; I reached the 3-month mark with my second total hip replacement surgery; the husband of a dear friend succumbed after a heartbreaking battle with dementia. Often called “the long goodbye”, he passed from a spectrum of Lewy body disease (widespread deposits of abnormal clumps of protein that form in neurons of the brain) that included Parkinson’s. She never left his side, even though exhausted and often bewildered and sometimes angry as his illness progressed. He was her best friend. I grieve with her; he was my friend also.

As I enter a season full of events –5 family birthdays, a graduation, and 3 major holidays– my mind settles on how quickly life changes even though it often feels static. My two online art classes continue like clockwork; my excursions to circuit training get me out of the house three early mornings each week; I feed my fish daily and water my plants on Fridays. Meanwhile, quoting from an article from freethink.com June 2023, “. . . about half a billion people live in areas that have undergone desertification since the 1980s, and one-third of Earth’s total land surface is at risk of desertification.” Our taken-for-granted once-fertile land is becoming desert-like while we grocery shop, do laundry, and watch for awaited next-season series on tv.

Then there’s my awakening memory. Sometimes quiet moments are suddenly saturated with vivid sensory recall. Not so much events as emotional presence, tactile recollection, transient visualizations. If I stop moving and allow these moments to linger, I am almost transported fleetingly to a period long forgotten, like stepping through a time machine. Nothing earth-shattering, no ah-ha revelations, it’s more like momentarily finding myself mid-memory in my childhood home or other long-forgotten location. I don’t see people but am aware of myself.

Fall into winter, my life will move forward one day at a time. As when a kaleidoscope turns, randomly falling cut pieces of glass arranging unique prisms of light, I will continue to experience an ongoing, mostly happy anticipation of what is yet-to-come.