MAY 10
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREThey are everywhere—the reminders of our loss. They rico-
chet off one another, fill the empty spaces of our lives.
My granddaughter comes to visit. She is just the age—two
and a half—my daughter was when she was flower girl in
my sister’s wedding. I have saved the dress. It fits my dark-
haired granddaughter as it fit my dark-haired daughter. My
granddaughter tries it on, turns this way and that in front
of the mirror. “I like it,” she says. It is hers.
My daughter lived more than a dozen years after she wore
that dress. And yet...the dress calls back not only the delight
we all took in that wedding, but the death years later of the
one who wore the dress.
Later in the visit, I read to this small, wonderful child a
story that had been a favorite of my daughter’s. Behind my
voice I hear my daughter’s voice at two and a half, anticip-
ating the words as we turned each page. The reminder is a
shadow. It is also sunlight—wonderful, life-giving sun-
light—that this precious child whom my daughter never
saw delights in her dress and in her storybook, and that I
am a bridge between these two.
There is no shadow without sunlight behind it.