Welcome again to my blog, Nobody’s Gone for Good. My daughter suggested that I write something every Sunday. As I said in my first blog, I am nothing if not obedient.

From my window where I sit to write, I can see the sky, blue at last, and the river in the distance, slowly thawing. A bit of snow is still on the ground. Starlings pick through the bits of grass that are showing. They are searching for grubs, and finding them, they whistle. Today, everything feels like a promise. Today, it doesn’t matter that the winter was long, cold, and dark. Life outside my window is not suppressed. It has not succumbed. My hyacinths are there, under the snow.

Still. There is death. There are those who have departed, and those who will depart. We cannot get around that. In a passage from my book, The Messenger, the narrator, Lukhamen, recounts:

I looked into their crucified eyes. I felt their ventricles flood, then pulsate! And when they departed the earth, their life flowed back into me, and I began to see, and hear! I was aware of the sun’s heat on the jasmine, insects so small as to be invisible, flitting on the surface of the glassy river, the brush of crepe flowers, lighter than air, on my face. That is what death had given me.

Death and the force and beauty of life in the same breath: The great paradox. I had to learn to see it that way. I had to learn not to believe in death. Not in its permanency. I had to learn that hidden in its dark corners is a gift. Hidden in its winter is spring. I had to listen to learn that.

Life has a voice.

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The Messenger will be here, with my hyacinths. When it is available (it will be on Amazon), I will happily, enthusiastically, post it here and on Facebook.