Birthday

Elizabeth would have been 29 today.  So many people have written and texted, and this blog seems hopelessly outdated, but it is what I have to carry on the tradition of remembering her, her humor, her sensitivity, her love of reading.  Her photography.  She was studying Latin, her notes all over the walls of her room so that she could study them.  I wish to learn a bit of Latin too, or to read Cicero, or to understand the philosophy of the stoics and I wonder if it would help me to carry on, and to remember to enjoy life without Elizabeth. 

Washington Market Park, 1989

2 comments:

  1. Always when we visited Narrowsburg in the summer, Elizabeth would have a pile of books in the living room that she planned to read. She'd proudly go over them with us, explaining why this one or that caught her fancy. We're readers, too. We understood the unparalleled joy of having a whole summer ahead with a stack of books to go through. I can't help but wonder what she'd be reading now.

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    1. One of the pleasures of the summer was sharing a couch with her to read on, having those long days of vacation to maybe even finish a book in a day because you had given it your undivided attention. Some of Elizabeth's favorite authors: Shirley Jackson, William Faulkner.

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How Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

> From A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry