Catching glimpses

I've been blessed with a good memory. When I look at photos of Sandy, I remember when they were taken, and I feel like I'm there again. With her, surrounded by our life, whether it was in Greece or our back yard. I have a lot of photos. It helps that Sandy took the camera everywhere, and occasionally I'd think to pull it out of her hands and turn it on her.

I can also go back in time when I read her words: email messages she sent me, or LiveJournal posts she wrote, anything that captures the context of our lives. I sink into her words. I spend hours rereading anything in her voice, enjoying the vitality and the immediacy of her presence.

I wear her clothing. Her wedding ring is on my right hand, and mine remains on my left. (We called them wedding rings though we never got to have our wedding.) I wear a bracelet that was hers. I read her kindle, watch her favorite TV shows, eat the meals we used to prepare together.

Essentially, I'm soaking in her.

What I crave are video and audio. Every time I find some new source of her voice, it feels like a gift. An audio cassette on which she'd dictated a story she was writing many years ago. A recording of her chorus rehearsing back in 2002. Her outgoing greeting on her cellphone voicemail. This morning, I remembered that we both testified at a public hearing in 2008 that was recorded by a local TV station - I need to install Real Player to see the video, but I could hear the audio. It wasn't just her voice. I was there again, that evening, sitting at a table with her, scribbling notes to each other as we reacted to others' statements.

I may spend the rest of my life living in the past, but that's okay, because it was a good past.