Many of the most emotionally challenging times in my life are, in my mind’s eye, made up of flashes of moments.

Sure, when I focus, I can recall threads of conversations, who was sitting where as we cried or laughed, and the stories.

Always the stories.

But the flashes of moments are always the first to show up, like fireflies at dusk.

…

Flash on.

My newborn son, naked but for a tiny diaper, folded down at the top because it is too big. He is lying still, on a flat warming table, with so many tubes running into, and out of, his tiny body.  It is hard to see his face, and who he looks like.

Flash off.

…

Flash on.

The black-green of three, large Hefty garbage bags, full of everything I own, in front of the louvered closet doors in my ‘new’ room at John’s parents’ house. When I open my eyes, on my first morning there, the sun shines through the window, right onto them. There is dust floating in the beam of light.

Flash off.

…

Flash on.

The sound of the highway wind, mixed with Matchbox Twenty’s Mad Season, in the powder-blue convertible that rockets me back and forth from home to hospital for a single week, until I hold the hand of both my dying mother, then sister, for the last time.

Flash off.

…

Flash on.

Sitting at the foot of my Dad-In-Law’s bed. My Old Yankee Man. Grampa. And watching him sleep. The surreal feeling of floating, not knowing where we are going to land. Not knowing if I want to know. Reaching for hope.

Flash off.

Thanks for readin’.

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