I awakened this morning,
feeling something near.
Was it dream or a flicker of reality?

I then found on my bedside table
a simple index card with this written on it:

"Walk with me as my Beloved Companion.
Carry yourself as if you are
So in Love,
So honoring,
So honored,
So Loved.
You Know Love Is
and in feeling it,
saying it,
radiating it,
Boundaries cease."

It's in my handwriting, but as so often happens
I don't remember writing it.
I know it was from a time last year,
while hospicing my beloved, blanket-bound Cimi-girl
(whose story is part of Training Two),
through a dark night of restlessness
(mine not hers).
Likely I was reaching for something to soothe
each of us.

It is a reminder for me
—especially as today is Good Friday--
that Love, being energy,
can be neither destroyed nor created,
nor killed,
nor die.
It just is.
Waiting like gravity for
a heart's connection to make it visible.

Thank you to whatever magic brought this to my attention again this morning,
via a lost index card
scuttled under other items
on a bedside table.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while
Loving someone deeply gives you courage."
Lao Tzu

As some of you know, my dear mom has dementia.
She has lost her memory.
The story of her amazing life and career is
lost to her
but not to those of us who knew her Story,
the good and the bad,
the times she triumphed and
the times she hoped to forget that were
"tough,"
is all she says now.

 I was reading to her the manuscript of Training Two before going to print. She always had a good ear for complication and 'the obtuse,' and reading aloud is the best version of Editor that I know.
If it's clumsy to say, it's clumsy to read.
That comes from my mom, who was a gifted professional communicator 
on radio.

As I read to her the manuscript, she was joyful.
Rapt even. And would immediately ask,
"Oh! What happened next!!"
I'd sit for a moment and smile with her.
She was gleeful in her curiosity,
(which was a relief; there's no hiding
 emotions these days, for either of us).

But then--
As I sat with her, smiling at her delight in the story,
I'd remember that she was with me, part of my life, part of the daily life of my girls and pups and the busy-ness and ups and downs of those years.
Her quips are even in the book...
But to her this is a new story.
Never before experienced.
She wondered how it all turned out...

Is this why we write memoir?
To capture times that grow dim and foggy,
whether in our own experience or in others,
to capture moments that speed over the horizon,
so lost to us now?