I know you are here

Reading fluffikens' beautiful blog this morning gave me a wee shiver of recognition. She talked about closing her eyes and imagining that her departed husband was coming in from work. He wasn't gone, he was just unseen. She was, in her honest writing, worried about losing that sense of him and themselves that it was evaporating away.

A while ago I was at my parents' house visiting. I was upstairs and as I came down I heard my Gran, dead for years, in the kitchen with my Mum. I knew she was there. I had the sensation of a time slip and of course she was there. She had popped in to visit and have a cup of tea. "I don't mind", she would have said when offered. I descended four or five steps more and the sensation slipped away, and of course my Gran wasn't in the house. I was startled for a couple of days after that. Everyone indulged me when I said what I'd experienced.

But I do know you are here. Gran, Granny. My family, my dear friends. I carry you all the time. We are vessels of memory and emotion and everyone that has touched us is carried inside. We carry multitudes and they are here right now this very instant, only unseen: that is all.

When I dip and feel really low then the vessel cracks. These people inside, these fellow spirits, leak away to leave a hollow feeling. Then I feel noone is here, just lonely old me cracked and ringing false. It does feel that way, but it does, also, pass and I'm filled - magically- with the voices and personalities and lives of all who mean something to me. I am full of life, I am not one but many.

Thank you. I know you are here x