Shadows and Silence

Margie and I both felt like shadows of ourselves today. She was tired, dizzy, vague. She remembered Camp Mikan but not the names of the two lakes  at the camp. I said their names, and she nodded. She asked if I remember the names of her children. As I named each one of the three, she smiled appreciatively but said, “Don’t ask me to name them.” After our walk and coffee, we returned to her apartment. She settled into her chair with Snubby2 on her lap, kissed my hand and said sleepily, “What a good visit we’ve had,” and fell asleep before I was out the door.

I have been having an atypical migraine for 14 days now. It will ease up for a few hours and then come slamming back in my left eye and temple. Nothing irregular has shown up on a variety of medical tests, so we have ruled out brain tumor and impending stroke, which is a relief. Apparently migraines are complex and can change their pattern of presentation at any time. I’m fed up with this one, though maybe it’s the new normal. The doc said I should limit screen time, so I’ll turn comments off again, this time for a while.

Putting all that aside, yesterday I heard Sue’s stories of her trip down the Colorado in a raft. I delight in the joy she describes in sleeping outdoors in a place without light pollution. The arc of Milky Way overhead, a gleam of moonlight on red canyon walls. I remember seeing that arc in Lesotho, a band of diamond dust from one horizon to the other. A bazillion miracles. How infinitesimally small we are, how little we matter, we specks of dust with our sound and fury, our wants, our loves, our weapons and ego. Sue said she listened to a silence deeper than silence, wider than silence, more silent than the quietest nothing there is.