To me, something is right. I just need to find what it is and follow it wherever it leads. I’ve come to know the phenomenon as invisible memories. They are memories I can’t see on the surface of my day, but buried beneath the hustle and bustle is a low-grade feeling, an undercurrent undetectable to the noise, yet I feel it. I feel something drawing me deeper than the day.
Invisible memories remind me of that part of me that is gone. I have my own season of sorrows. Just as Fall segues into Winter and Winter into Spring, I have a moment, or even a flicker of a moment, that transcends this time into another time.
A familiar smell can drop me into a familiar moment that has nothing to do with what is left of me here. A sound out of nowhere echoes a conversation long ago and leaves me once again in nowhere.
I’m not here. I’m not there. I’m in this invisible world with an invisible memory that reminds me that the visible world no longer fits like it used to. The world out there is not the world in here.
Invisible memories surface only in stillness. And it usually takes awhile to realize I need to pause in the stillness and see what rises. I can go long in my day with this underlying feeling of sorrow, or a feeling of being “out of sorts”, or feeling weighted down and not put all the pieces together as to what I am feeling and why.
Others may ask what’s wrong. Nothing is wrong. Something is right.
I’m out of sorts for a reason. The daily activities do not fit my sadness. It can be a beautiful day and everything is going wonderfully well and I’m just sad or preoccupied with something that has nothing to do with the day I’m in.
On another day, the day of before, I remember life seemed to fit. In the days now of my Afterloss, nothing really fits the same.
I’ve learned to accept I will be forever out of sync with the world of before. It is gone. I have yet to find a passage back to the day when I do not carry both what’s lost and what’s left.
I do not lament the landscape of my life. I have come to a place of peace in my Afterloss. It has been a long journey and I still have yet to scratch the surface of this new terrain, but I take peace with me wherever I go in my unfolding sorrow and solace. So nothing is wrong. Something is right when I realize in this out of sync day something is missing.
I miss a lot. I miss their voices. I miss our snuggles. I miss our laughter. But beneath the surface, I miss everything. I go about my day knowing that loss changed everything. I have no need to live in desperation of clinging to what’s gone. What’s the point? So much of me is gone, too.
I rest in moments of memory. Many of them lead me to a warm feeling of gratitude. I call them sun drops that drench my sorrow and quench my thirst for connection. Others are like raindrops that cascade down my cheeks and leave every muscle contracted and clinging to my empty bones. Still other memories are simple reminders of love’s residue that will always be a part of my life…our life.
I know from where these invisible memories arise. I just never know when. I do not know how long the memory will last, but I do know they will last for the rest of my life.
I do not force feeling, either in their resistance or creation. Feelings come; feelings go. I watch them rise from places beyond my consciousness into consciousness and fall back into the milieu of the moment within this moment.
When I’m feeling down, I know it is time to go down into the layers of my Afterloss. I go down into the depths of my sorrow and loss to see what awaits me there. I ride the precious memory to the place where it guides me. It is there I meet what is missing. It is there I find what is left.
There is so much of them left in me. Invisible memories rise from the layers of my loss and we dance in the celebration of remembrance.
I pause in the insanity of the surface world and follow the music of my soul. I go deep into the delight of our embrace and when timelessness bows and says it is time, I depart with the sweet music of love back into a world of noise.
I am out of sorts because the music I hear comes from an invisible place on the wings of an invisible memory. The world does not hear the melody of my love or taste the deliciousness of memory.
I can show them pictures of my child, but they cannot hear his sweet voice sing to me the symphony of love dancing in the world of my Afterloss. I can tell them a story, but it is only I who can live the story of his wondrous presence. I can taste it, smell it…live what was with what is left.
To the world, I am distant. To me, I am emptying the distance. I am emptying into the invisible memory that reunites me with all that is. I am following the undying love death could never take from us. I am dancing with the ones I love in a land of pure love.
To the world, something is wrong. To me, something is right.
Something out of sight surfaces out of nowhere in my surface world and says, “Come, let us remember. Let us dance and let us remember that our love is always here. Let us remember and never forget that through the eyes of love we still can see everything that love is with all that love is. Let us dance once again, for the very first time, again and again. Come, let us dance to what brought us together and will keep us together forever and ever. Come, let us dance. Come, let us remember.”
