Moon

     We have been packing up our parents' belongings to move them to a new home. It has been an experience fraught with a plethora of feelings; there are so many memories wrapped up in almost everything we put in a box or a bag. It makes the process a lengthy one, one that keeps getting bogged down in remembrances of times past with photos and correspondence, bits and pieces of years and years of life fully lived. 

     Change is hard; grief catches me off guard. Deeply felt emotions surface at sometimes inopportune moments and I can either experience them or stuff them away, to be dealt with at a hopefully more convenient time, whenever that will be.... Whenever I consider my own parents' end of life arrangements, I can’t help but ponder my own. Thinking about my own mortality is never easy, particularly with a special needs daughter to consider. There are always those things left undone (at least in my case there are) which can keep me awake at night. 

     One thing that I enjoyed finding as I packed was The Montreal Star from July 30, 1969, printed one day before my twelfth birthday. My father had kept a few noteworthy headlines and used them to line a dresser drawer. That was the day the paper published photos of earth that were captured by the Apollo 11 space flight. What amazing images! On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle had landed on the moon. As all of us kids crowded on my parents' bed to watch the moon landing on our small television, my father declared that as a young boy in school in England, he had been told that what we were witnessing was an impossibility and could never be done. We knew then that the impossible can become possible. At this moment, in a world seemingly full of violence and division, I pray that that might still be true.