I don't think it is a figment of my imagination. I think I can safely say that this past year of teaching has been amazing - and no more so than the last week. We have returned from our Easter break and thrown ourselves into rehearsals to perform As You Like It at the end of April.
I have permission to use some original music, two of my students choreographed the wedding dance at the end, I have had support from a wonderful actor/director from Bard on the Beach, and the students, for the most part, are working hard and putting up with my demands for 'quiet back stage!'.
Still, and all, I am cranky today. Tired I think. It has been a busy nine days.
It is my Uncle's memorial this weekend. As they often are, this one is called a 'Celebration of Life'. Yes, his was a life to be celebrated. His relationships with friends, nieces, nephews, daughters, sisters, brother, wife are all to be celebrated. Celebrated in those private memories that some of us will try to give voice to on Saturday.
Relationships are so personal. The spark, the life that exists between two people is unique. No one else has quite the relationship you do to another. That thought can be comforting. It is also a lonely thought. For when that person is gone, there is no-one to truly understand it, no-one to replace it. No-one should replace it.
So aging is, in part, a series of losses. Voices you will never hear again. Laughter you will never hear again. Comfort you will never feel again. Dances you will never dance again.
My uncle and I danced once, in Sicily, eight years ago. Cheek to cheek, slow dancing. I never had that dance with my father. In that moment I felt he was the closest thing I would ever have to a father as an adult. It was wonderful, and it was poignant.
This weekend, amidst the stories, the laughter, the tears, the hustle and bustle, the re-unions, this weekend I will be remembering Italy. A 48 year old woman and her 84 year old uncle. They had the trip of a lifetime, and now, one holder of those memories is gone, and one is left behind.
Sometimes being the one left behind can be so hard.
I attended my mother-in-law's memorial this weekend. To me, it seemed her life was small and quiet but there were many people there - not just people who knew her and were touched by her, but people who were touched by her children and her children's families. A person's influence moves out from their centre, touching many in ways that often no one knows but the one who has been touched.
ReplyDelete