What Will You Dream About?

I watched a movie last night that has me thinking all day. It wasn't a particularly good movie at all, but one line jabbed at me and hurt. The old woman lay on her deathbed, slipping into dreamstates about her past. She said that people don't remember the bad things as they die, they remember the small good moments. Just those regular good moments, those are the things that run through one's mind as they die.

This made sense to me, I think it's probably true. And it hurt because I'm afraid I'm not cherishing those moments enough. I feel like I've been in a blur. I've been yammering too much, complaining, spinning around, running there, taking care of this, doing that. I read a book to Sean in the orthopedic's waiting room the other day and the thought occured to me that I couldn't remember the last book we read together. He's watching SpongeBob, I'm trying to find something for dinner in the freezer.

All day today, I've been flipping through my mental files, trying to imagine the scenes I'll return to on my own deathbed. One will be the weekend that Luke was conceived. Stan, Seth (4) and I were visiting my friend Jane in New York state. The four of us drove up to the fingerlakes, climbed up a beautiful gorge where we stopped for a rest in a cemetary on a steep hill and my beautiful Seth explored watery pools and rock bridges. We went to an earthy restaurant with the name of a flower. We three friends had a lively conversation over vegetarian food while Seth's eyes closed as he chewed his grilled cheese in the highbacked wooden booth. We put his sleepy body in the car and drove further through the gorgeous countryside. We found a winery with an outdoor tasting bar and parked the car next it. We sat and had popcorn and tasted wine in tiny cups as he slept in the back seat with the windows down. It was May. On the way back down to her place, as we descended from the higher hills into a lovely storybook town, a light wind blew the fuzzy buds off of the flowery trees that lined the streets and we drove through them as they danced around our car like big warm snowflakes.

I adore this memory. The years between Seth's birth and that day held much pain and sorrow, miscarriages and confusion. That enchanted weekend was the beginning of my wonderous Luka, who has brought us nothing but peace, harmony, love, art, constancy, soundness and balmy comfort. It will always be at the very top of my most sublime memories.