Time is and was: 2020 into 2021
Do you believe in what might have been?
How about what was and is again? Do you believe in that?
Multiple strands of time, I’m talking about, so that, in what might have been, the twin boys I longed for in my first life—King and John Powell—are nearing thirty years old. Brown-headed handsome young men. It could have happened, if I hadn’t split the road into forks and chosen to let that path disappear into the woods. But the prayer that showed them to be had already taken hold and so they grow, laughing and happy (so far) every year in that might have been time.
In what was and is again I am forever sitting in the darkened living room of my 9th grade Charlotte home in a moment when I understood one day I would be looking back on that moment, opening up, somehow, a channel that sucks me back onto that green pebbly sofa every time deep sorrow enters my life. Or almost sucks me back, for I will not let that time thread become primary, no matter how much residing again in the heart of my mother and dad and sisters tempts me, because it would require I make this now timeline secondary, and that I won’t do.
“Believe” might have been the wrong way to phrase my initial questions. It’s not that I give assent. It’s what I’ve experienced.
Have you?
I’m serious. When you get the bereaved in a safe place and ask, Have you seen visions of your loved ones? Particularly soon after the passing, the answer is a hesitant, sheepish “yes,” more often than not. It’s a shared experience that is not easily shared. For some reason, we’ve been intimidated by those who haven’t experienced such things into being ashamed if we have.
“May God us keep
from single vision
and Newton’s sleep.”
William Blake
Though, ultimately, Blake was wrong to make a duality of science and mystical ways of knowing. They interweave, one revealing the other.
Grief is a large object that distorts the threads of time, shoving some closer to our perception. We have always known this is true. Passing between here and there is its own place. So many of us these days are weaving in and out of loss. As we shift from 2020 to 2021, perhaps we will meet each other on that plane. Or perhaps we will meet our other selves.
Happy New Year! Merry New Life! God Bless Us Everyone!
Luanne
I’m so sorry you lost your mom, Ellen. XOXO
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Thanks, Luanne. 2020 has been a year…
Emma Connolly
Oh Ellen – grief is is so very visceral. It flows through your bones, through your electrons and your movements with an energy of its own. .Those we have lost exist in a realm that we want to reach out and touch.when we feel their presence. I pray you will continue to thrive, using the energy that grief gives you, however fleeting, to share your gifts of words. Peace be with you my friend as we grieve for lives and futures lost. As we grieve for possibilities lost. As we grieve for a year lost.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Peace also be with you, Emma, who knows grief and yet brings so much joy and exuberance into this world.<3
Joanne Corey
Thank you for sharing from your heart and spirit, Ellen. Peace be with you.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
<3