I’ve been thinking lately about the power of “moments”
I remember that moment when Dale lay in the hospital bed with the minutes reaching toward his final moment and knowing that would be a moment that would change my life forever. And I realized that (as David Levien said), “At the end, one didn’t remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.”
The moment we met, the moment he held me in his arms and we danced to what would become “our song”, the moment we fell in the love. The moment we were married. The moments when our sons were born, and when our grandchildren were born.
Moments we were breathlessly happy and moments when we were breath takingly sad.
It was Crystal Woods who is attributed to saying, “I want to take all our best moments, put them in a jar, and take them out like cookies and savor each one of them forever.”
Oh, how I agree with her! Not only are they something to savor but actually now that I’m alone, now that I have the majority of my life behind me, these moments from the past actually nourish me. They are as potent as any vitamin, as fulfilling as any meal.
My heart is filled with contentment when my son calls and tells me what he and his family are doing together. I know that without realizing it they are creating moments that will last a lifetime. Moments that will build and strengthen, moments to be cherished.
When my mother was in her last years she couldn’t remember the people who were around her, she couldn’t remember where she was or even who she was. But I called her every other evening and I would read to her from her own well-written autobiography of a life filled with experiences of love and hardship and adventures and a happy childhood spent with a gaggle of loving sisters on a farm with her strong and loving father and her charming and delicate mother. And during those reading hours she actually remembered those moments of her youth and she once again had a sense of self. It was during one of those readings that she mused, “You know, time goes by without you realizing you’re having the time of your life!”
I said “Oh Mother! That’s brilliant! Let me write that down!” I scribbled it on a post-it note and attached it to my computer screen and then read it back to her…
“Time goes by without you realizing you’re having the time of your life”.
“Who said that?” She asked.
“You did!” I said.
“I did!” She said, “That’s really good!”
I’ll always remember that moment, simultaneously funny and heart-wrenching. I quickly continued to read to her and her memory loss for the things of the present didn’t matter to her, she was enjoying the memorable moments of her youth and she was happy. She could always lie down and go to sleep peaceably after we talked.
I like to draw and to sculpt and to write and to take photographs and it occurs to me that what I’m doing in each medium is capturing moments, preserving them, savoring them.
Jean-Paul Sartre in his book The Age of Reason wrote into a dialogue:
“She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond",
"What does?"
"This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.”
There are those ‘brilliant’ moments that are eternal and there are the moments in your life when someone said or did something, perhaps just one thing that hurt you or changed you. Careless words that made you pause and through the years you still remember those as well. And now you find (in a moment of clarity) that it’s easier to spend time now forgiving that person for that moment than to waste any more of your precious moments in grief when the memory pops up again. That would be time well spent now. You can’t change the bad moments but for some you can take measures to just let them go!
This past week I gathered together all of the love poems that Dale wrote for me over the years and put them into a book along with landscape photos that he had taken and photos of us together at important or tender times in our lives. I felt him near me as I worked on this project. And I felt an overwhelming sensation that he still treasures these moments as well.
When I finally finished the project I decided to go for a short drive and enjoy the incredible show of brightly colored autumn leaves that transform the world into a magical place. It was as if Dorothy flew over the rainbow and suddenly everything was now in living color. I took a moment to absorb the beauty, to take a mental picture and savor the feeling that comes from an autumn day. That very night in the wee hours of the morning, I felt a chill and pulled up the extra quilt at the foot of my bed. When I awoke, the early morning light displayed for my view the trees, rooftops, and streets that were covered with a thick layer of pure white glistening snow. It was the end of autumn, the beginning of winter and all in what seemed to be just a moment. I stood at the window, pulling my robe more snuggly around me and took a mental picture of the beauty. While experiencing the silent grandeur of a winter’s morning I somehow felt more alive and yet more at peace. Without realizing it I’d added more moments to the “cookie jar”.
Because of the "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" feeling that the snow brought...tomorrow I go Christmas shopping with my sister. A decision we happily made on a whim tonight in a volley of happy texts. More sweet moments await!
