I walked in the back door like I always do.  It was early one morning recently, before the sun had risen, and there he was…. sitting at the table.   He never does that.  It almost scared me.  The words we’d all felt losing Mama seemed to be captured in that one little moment sitting at the table….

The permanence swallows me.

I so want her to walk back through that door,

To hug me, to touch my arm.

The empty rooms, empty chairs, empty conversation.

They’re all hollow.

Permanent.  It’s a feeling you can’t describe until you’ve felt it.

Even then, there are no words.

No one told me how permanence would feel,

how big it would be.

I’m in it and I can’t describe it to someone else.

I look in the shadows and see you faintly

in every room…

but I look again, study intently, and you’re not there.

I want to see you there.

To think I won’t see you or feel your presence again in this life takes my breath.

How do you describe permanence to a person who has not lost….