Perspectacles

It's been two months.
She didn’t take the conversation, the lessons or the love, with her when she left. What we learned from her illness, what amazes us still, is how much remains after so much was taken away.

Much in the manner that we communicated with her mutism, we hear her even now. She makes us alert to the sort of encounters we might have otherwise missed, the things that speak to us simply because we know to listen.

Yesterday was nuts. The kind of crazy that made my eyes blurry and my soul feel small. But she reminded me to see. Those high moments in the midst of a low day seem to indicate that I am probably better than I think I am. I bet most of us are.

That every picture of Celia has been taken, even given all the perspective and all the enduring love, is close to unbearable. It’s only how we changed, and how so many other people changed, that makes what happened any less horrible.

JEB