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Published on 11/03/1999 All articles from this issue

The many worlds in which we live

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

In our golden years, we become increasingly aware of the many worlds in which we dwell. There is the world of the living and the world of the dead. Our thoughts encompass the two, flow freely into the one and back to the other. And there are days when "those who have gone before us and rest in the sleep of peace" are as alive in our hearts and minds as the living, breathing beings among whom we move and dwell.

In quiet moments, long-gone members of the family, friends of our child- and young adulthood, come alive, and we recall vividly a look, a smile, a touch that remains as fresh and dear to us in the present as it was in the past. Thus, I find myself visiting with Sarah and Rosie, my own mother, and Cris'. And I remember the laughter, the strength, the skills of these two women who shaped, guided and taught me all they knew, and left me with a heritage of wisdom by which to survive and cope. "Remembrance of things past" moves us to draw upon love that is never lost, and it comforts us like the aroma of the luscious, hot soup with which they warmed us on a wintry day.

Then there are the worlds of the well and the sick, of the absence of pain, and need to endure it, into which we may be thrust suddenly. In sickness we enter a strange and terrifying world, in which we are constrained to learn more than we wanted to know, about procedures and drugs we hoped never to experience in our respective treks from the cradle to the grave.

And there are worlds of fear and faith, where the latter may sustain and equip us to banish dread. So, we pray and believe (with the unquestioning, and serene confidence of a child who knows only unconditional love) that the parent is certain to hear, and answer.

I pause in the dawn of a new day, to give thanks for all of these - for all exist in the computer that is my human brain. And I may call up each and every one in turn, to examine and savor all: the happiness and the tears, the positive and the negative portions of life.

And this enables me to face my own mortality with a measure of equanimity For I have been part of the river of life - a river that flows out, inevitably, to the sea of immortality for you, and for me. I revel in it, and "rejoice in the day the Lord hath made," and I know I shall continue to find a way to "be glad in it."

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtime contributor to the Town Crier.