I had a strange weekend.
I went back up to Northern Virginia–back “home”–for a visit. On one hand I faced it with grit teeth and a churning stomach. Since the accident and having to sell my family home, I don’t go back much. When my parents were there, their house–our house–was like a lodestone, pulling me back…I didn’t leave without already having my next visit scheduled. Now I get back maybe once a year? Twice?
And like poking a sore tooth with your tongue, I had to drive through my old neighborhoods, past my old home, and through my old haunts. (You know, just in case I wasn’t miserable enough with it being the accident anniversary and all.) I had to marvel at and deplore my hometown by turn as I discovered which of my old hang-outs has been replaced with a shopping center and luxury condos this year and which tiny businesses were still operating after all this time. (I didn’t quite have the heart to walk in and see if the management had changed.)
And on the other hand, my weekend was filled with visiting friends and family and that’s just always a good thing. I got to have creative time with my aunt and my sister and see my Great-Grandma Koeller for a bit and visit some stores that we just don’t have around here, and who can complain about that?
I just have this overwhelming quiet feeling right now…sort of a sit back and watch feeling. Aloof. Like time just keeps marching, slow and steady, and I’m watching it…seeing it…not missing it…
I spent the whole 4 hour drive back alone in the truck thinking about time.
How the days can drag, and the years seem to fly, and how the seconds just disappear and you don’t even know where they went…
How everything you know can end in one heartbeat and something completely new comes upon you in the next and none of it is up to you at all.
There’s madness in dwelling on that kind of knowledge too long.
Knowledge and madness…
And I think somewhere in between is Faith.
