She had acquired only delight from the perusal of the years together

When the despair of death eats into your soul, the only consolation left is to live in a fool’s paradise of happy memories.

My father was aggressively cheerful and terribly charismatic. He began every conversation with passion and ended it in an obsession.

Women always had conceived for him a dog-like adoration. My mother accepted it rebelliously, but it caused her pain.

Only after his accidental death ten years ago, the memory of his loving nature became a source of happiness to her instead of misery.

With my father passing away, my mother’s life altered. It became calm as a river without the cascades and waterfalls, the eddies, whirlpools, and rocks, which my father had always created.

She had time in abundance to reflect and remember.

She had time in profusion to cry. But her tears were partly tears of happiness.

She loved her husband now with a new love because in her memory their life together was a complete felicity.

The visions about their love oozed from my mother every time we found each other alone.

She used to say,

“He had a knack of saying beautiful things, which caught people on the raw.”

With loving power, she added,

“He told things to me with his voice, and he laughed at my jokes with his heart. I loved every minute of our conversations. With him, I felt such happy freedom of being myself, of talking my mind.”

Time is a perfect artist.

It can craft your remembrance into poetry.

One quiet evening my dear mother and I drank champagne, and the conversation about my father bundled us invisibly.

After the third glass, she whispered,

“I shrank, I tried to make myself smaller still as I cuddled up against his body.”

“There was so much wrathful beating pain in her voice.

“I had expected so much, and that is why I secured so little of the beautiful, emotional moments we shared. Now I pick up every piece with so much care. When he was beside me, I was too often tired of love and hate, tired of my expectations. My life seemed to overflow into his life. I complained of being his shadow, of not having enough of his devotion, and of having too much of his intimate longing. I just needed to enjoy his passion, to thank heaven for the gift of making love every day.”

I was devouring her with my eyes and learning a completely unknown side of my mother.

I had a notion she had more than a grain of truth in her words about expectations.

Our energy is superabundant when we use it on nursing our assumptions, trying to read the hidden meanings in every action, predicting the worst from little coldnesses that pain us.

When my father died, my mother stopped expecting anything from him.

And this change propelled the recollections of how much he had to offer when he was alive.

How death can heighten all memories and dissolve all irksome recollections

Imagine that your memory is a form of storage with many chests, boxes, and strange cupboards full of beads, stones, and crystals.

When someone we love passes away, delightful remembrances strive to take all the room in our head.

Every relationship has its moments of utter despair.

The inevitable disillusionment always happens at some point but pooh-poohs itself when death is taking charge.

Usually, we are able to taste this kind of love only when it is too late.

We cease to demand anything, and the lack of expectations gives us the blissful equilibrium that we all are craving.

The ghastly distinctness of painful memories is lost amid the full vent of a passionate desire to commemorate the best.

I wish we could adopt the same attitude when the dear person we care about is still beside us, warm and soft, kind and loving, gentle, and often pathetic.

Only glorious should be left after death.