Breathe Full Circle

My mother isn't here.
She’s with my father.
But, they’re gone.

Not on a trip or a vacation;
not in the conventional sense of such,
but gone.

Someplace that I am unsure of.
Someplace that I am assured is good.
A place of no pain or suffering,
filled with warmth and love for all beings and all things;
and, I, 
I can only hope that this is true.

There is no science to concretely prove the theory.
No proof. No evidence found at a graveside or
message carved on a tombstone to let me know
that the world they left behind was merely existence,
and that the unknown is what holds the secret to life and living.

But, there is also nothing to prove otherwise.

All I know for sure is that their bodies
have been returned to the earth from whence they came.

Full circle.

And their souls...

Their souls have been spread among us – the living –
to be shared, treasured, and passed down
through the generations of our own families,
and to the families of families of friends and relatives
whose lives they touched in some way
large or small.

Memories.

Ah, those are my celebration and my heartbreak.
They can carry me through, or tear me down –
rip me apart limb by limb, drain the liquid from my soul,
and leave me parched, empty,
and longing for the embrace that left me.

Memories can lift me from that place of darkness,
that echoing chamber in my mind where I,
for reasons unknown and often unbelievable,
have chosen to allow the infliction of pain to capture me.

Where instead of celebrating
the hugs, laughs, encouragements, lessons, and love,
I grovel at the feet of pity and despair
only to lift my head
and find nothing but a photograph…
a favorite record...
a cherished heirloom…
a pocketknife, sweater, handkerchief.

A threadbare t-shirt.
An unfinished afghan.

Breathe.
First, life-giving breaths of birth.

Breathe.
Invigorating, life-sustaining breaths of living.

Breathe.
Shallow, painful breaths of death.

Breathe.
Eternal, circular breaths of remembrance.