In Passing

I have been thinking about how long people live, even after they're gone. In the songs that bring them back. In the gifts they'd given, long ago. In the emails that still sit in your bin, all full of nobody but them.

Yesterday I was at a party honoring a friend who had passed away so suddenly a year ago. The party was the party that Sandy herself had always thrown; now it was being thrown in her memory by daughters who have found their way forward since her passing. Everything Sandy would have done was being done, and in that way she was there in the room. Her friends were where she'd want them to be, making advent wreathes, together.

And then there's my mother, who loved Christmas more than anything and bought presents all year long—stuffed them in secret places and often forgot to find them in time for the holidays. My father spent part of this past weekend in those places, opening boxes that my mother had meant to give. Finding her inside what she had chosen for us and him. She's still there, wide-eyed and surprising. We're still discovering her.