So many things remind me of the Tiny Girls I’m no longer allowed to know. Yesterday it was the sunset. It reminded me of a time several years ago when I became obsessed with the span of vivid gorgeousness across the sky every night and made it my mission to take one moment every evening to appreciate it. S would often join me in my quiet moment of reverie on the front porch where the view was best and sometimes she’d even remind me to stop and peek at the sunset when I had forgotten. So when I looked at the sunset last night S came to my mind and sudden tears I didn’t know existed fell from my eyes.
Today it’s a range of snow drift hills that make me think of her again. Two winters ago, while I was home for a few days in the middle of winter, I spent some time outside with her. Walking, climbing tirelessly along hard packed snow drifts ranges, we pretended we were mountain climbers scaling sheer, difficult cliffs, giving each other a hand when we needed it, shouting encouragements, and pulling ourselves onto precarious ledges. That hour spent with her, imagining and playing like the child she was and I had once been is one of my happy happy memories, and, perhaps, created one final lingering moment of my own childhood.
It’s the moments I think are gone forever that are really still happening. Only this time they’re not reality. They’re memory. But one thing I’ve learned from losing my precious sisters is that a memory, though not a current reality, is alive in the every day things that trigger it.
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