Diana's Writing Blog

Her presence stretches
back into my earliest years,
peppering my memories
with white hair and crumpled
tissue paper skin. Now she sits, worn
and feeble at our kitchen table, lost
in memory. Sometimes she seems to be little
more than a wraith, a ghost,
talking out the bits and pieces
of her life, repeating them over and over
like a Hail, Mary. Praying, “God,
don’t let them forget me! Don’t let my
life fade away.” We sit
and listen, each of us in our turn.
Her memories are like the keepsakes
that she so lovingly wrapped in newspaper
to bring with her. Some are so impossibly
beautiful and delicate that you are overcome
with a need to cradle them in your hands.
Others are chipped, musty, coated in the
dirt of years gone by.
She speaks of true love
and of abuse. She recites parables
of Christian kindness and heartless prejudice.
And each of us take a little bit
of her life, wrap it carefully
and carry it with us as we run,
and later walk and at last trudge,
bent and weary, toward a finish line
that no one really wants to reach.
And as we near it and begin
to repeat our own prayers, perhaps some of her life,
long past, will slip out and pass like a torch
to the next runners.