Snow

On Monday night, I got stuck in the snow coming home from work. A journey that usually takes around 45 minutes became one of nearly five hours.
The town I live in had nearly come to a complete halt.

I try to avoid lengthy periods without distraction. Usually, this is relatively easy to achieve. I never leave the house without a book in my bag. I usually fall asleep listening to the radio. I play with, talk to, sing to and generally annoy my living child who sometimes gives me a look as if to say 'geesh, just five minutes peace mama. Can't you see I'm busy here.'
I sometimes even talk to my dead one. When nobody else is around and I am really desperate to reach her. Although I know she doesn't hear me and my words fall into empty space. Or perhaps she gives me that same old-fashioned look, a slightly altered version of her sister's.

As the snow swirled down into my windscreen, the radio blathered on and on. I wasn't really listening but the host mentioned in passing that it was Winter Solstice. And I thought of Lucia Paz.

I turned the radio off.
I watched the cold snow falling in fat clumps.
I felt the fuggy warmth inside the car.
I felt the heat of the tears on my face.

I opened the window and whispered names into the cold, snowy air.
In a traffic jam.
On the outskirts of a boring suburban town.
Stuck on a motorway junction.
I whispered all the names I could think of.

I wish that I hadn't been stuck on a motorway junction.

I wish that I could have gone to a more beautiful location to remember (although the town I live in is one that is arguably improved by being rendered invisible beneath the snow.)

I wish that I could have said something more eloquent, more beautiful, more graceful.

But then, what could possibly be more graceful than their names.

I whispered all the names out of my car window.
The cold stung my face which was rosy from the car heater.

Then I said, 'You are remembered. You are missed. You are loved.'

Then I put the window up.
The traffic hadn't moved an inch.
For a moment, I almost felt as though we had gathered for that purpose.
To remember.
That we were waiting for the end of the ceremony.
That we would disperse immediately my last whisper steamed up into the snowy air.

But of course, we didn't.
I sat there in the traffic jam and I cried some more.
For all those whose lives were so short. Whose moments between the big horizons of human life were so brief, so tentative.
For all of us here who miss them so. Who love them so.

One life - a little gleam of time between two Eternities.
Thomas Carlyle