There was a period of two or three years where Maya had this thing going, after every meal together, she would give me an impish grin, get out of her seat, crawl under the table, and come sit on my lap.  It was something we all expected to happen, it was so regular, and it felt like that was the way it was going to be forever.  It was a simple thing really, but so innocent, so full of love.  I don’t recall the years, probably around middle school, when she began to stop.  It happened slowly.  She would do it sometimes, then not at all.  I remember asking her about it, she would say, with a wry smile “I am a woman now”, with a self deprecating humor that I always loved.  Then, something that felt like forever, became no more, and I missed it.

Years later, when the “teen angst” period began, I remember talking to her about feelings, their impermanence, the nature of emotions and suffering.  I tried so hard to help her understand the fleeting nature of it all.  I think sometimes she got it, and would joke aloud about her just “acting like a teenager” and again, making fun of her own angst.  Other times she was fully immersed in it.  And of course, in the end, I think, she lost the perspective she had, the sense of impermanence that is always there.

Now she is teaching me the same lesson.  Each day, every day, feels like it is going to be this way forever.  Each day, every day, I feel somehow in touch with Maya’s sense of despair, but I have not lost perspective.  I know that this is not forever, although it feels it.  I know enough not to trust that feeling, but it would be so easy to do so.  I know where that thinking leads, and I will not go there.  My dear Maya, you have helped me to know, in a bitter way, something that was really an intellectual understanding before, now I understand it in my entire being.

Sometimes I wish I could just speed up the process.  It is hard to believe it has been four months.  Time has a new sense.  Every moment is rich and full, but I wish all the time I could skip this moment and get to the next one.  Of course, that is not to be.

At dinner last night, I looked at her empty chair again, and remembered those days when I looked forward to the end of the meal, to her nightly routine.  I know the challenge now is to keep the memory alive while feeling the loss, and all the while remind myself that all this will change.

Seneca Falls, NY, 2010

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