Realization (Interlude).

When I look now for my mother, she can be found only in the pages of my memory.

Every morning I fear the day that I will not remember her face... That I won't remember her voice.

It's something I have worked very hard to capture... every picture, every recording...

But she was an elusive person. And reflections of her are hard to come by... Those that remain are mere snippets of sound and image.

And this intensifies my fear...

But I am slowly realizing just how hollow those things are.

And how foreign her face looks in those pictures, and how empty her voice sounds on tape.

And I have worried about this, too. Fearing that I am indeed forgetting her... That I am losing her.

But I now understand that I am not losing her at all. Indeed, I am now starting to see where she truly continues to exist.

Not in pictures, or sound bytes or video.

She's in here.

I can still see her reflection in my words, hear her reflection in my speech, see her reflection in my dreams. What she gave to my life reflects in everything I do.

She is forever sealed in the very fabric of my spirit. And with every letter that I put down in any journal, and in every piece of art that I create, part of her will always be here.

That is something no technology can capture... No amount of film, nor recording nor video tape.

Alas, science cannot grant us true immortality... we are still temporary. Film can't capture the warmth of a hug, or the true spirit of laughter or the lifting of a heart... It can only allow us to remember those things... And in time keepsakes alone will be as alien to us as the face of any stranger on the street.

But I see now that what she truly was -her indelible spirit, her very existence- is not echoed in the wash of paper and chemicals, or a series of data bits...

She is here. In these words.

So when I get frustrated because I have so alarmingly few sound bytes of her, or pictures of her, I need to acknowledge that she may have had a certain wisdom to her actions... for pictures alone are simply the cardboard facade of memories...

And even if I do someday forget her face or the sound of her voice, I know that her words and her spirit will always be here, woven in with the voice and spirit of my father and generously sprinkled with my own color, for better or worse.

But these words alone are also but a cardboard facade...

Today is warm, yesterday is cold... tomorrow is not guaranteed. I understand now that the best memory of a loved one is the one that is the wind in your sails, not the anchor in the water.

---Me.