When someone dies, we are given the opportunity to behold our life as it is, complete. And then of course there is his memory, alive in everyone he knew. Some would say those ashes are not my father, but of course they are, or else it wouldn't matter where they ended up. I left in a hole in the ground. Across from where my mother sits at the kitchen table will always be my father's chair.
Love stays here.
Love keeps us, while we're here, shelters us in the daily from the immensity we cannot bear to behold except in glimpses. And love attends the devastation of those glimpses. Lightning snapped, dimming the lights a couple times. My mother thought the thunder was the best part. Everyone sitting behind us saw her shoulders shaking and nodded to each other, sure she was crying.