MARCH 1
Where? Where has it gone, that light, that spark, that love
that looked into mine? What has it to do with that cold clay?
It’s here, here, here in my heart. She’s in me, around me.
Nothing in that clay.
—ANZIA YEZIERSKAThe change is astonishing when breath and life depart and
the body is left. We look at it—loved, revered—but it is only
a shell now. The processes that sustained it have stopped.
The blood lies still. The chest does not rise and fall.
But where has the person gone? Interpretations differ ac-
cording to belief and experience. But surely one of the ways
a person lives on is in those of us who gather to mourn the
passing and to celebrate the life. It’s not simply that we will
remember loved ones; they live on through things they
taught us and in the way they affected our lives.
So that in the weeks, months, and years that lie ahead, we
may find qualities and actions in our own lives which sur-
prise us until we smile and think, “I wonder. Yes, maybe
that’s a part of __ living in me.”
I will welcome and care for the ways in which my loved one con-
tinues to live on in me.