This Day

22 February 2010

Since then, i have commemorated Fips' passing on the twenty-second of February even if he was finally put to rest a day later on the twenty-third; for it was then, on that resplendently clear and crisp morning of the twenty-second, that we took our last drive together -- with Rosco too -- through undulating fields and woods with sparkling mountains in the distance; and it was then too that i knew, in that quiet way of knowing which lets itself be denied, that this was the end of our long journey together.   

As then and since, i mark out a space between two days for the recurrence of a memory that will never die so long as i live. 

Today, overcast and drizzling, it was a gloomy day for memories as i went about my errands, head hunched down and focusing on small things.  But coming out from the market, i looked up and suddenly beheld in front of me, East, the sweeping half arc of a vibrant rainbow set off against pewter grey clouds and loosing itself in a break of sky blue and sunlit white northward, over Blaine.  

"Oh Fipsie!" I exclaimed. I stood and marvelled until moments later, as quietly as it had appeared, it vanished.  

Why in a cosmos of vast and impersonal events should a moment arrange itself for you?  Why not?  Is everything meaningless chance? Probably not.  The rainbow appeared before me on a day dedicated to a memory as a year before, on this same day, a gleaming shaft of light broke through the dark forest of humus, bark and ferns. 

Hello, Fips, thanks for the visit.