in the shadows

 I looked up at the pictures on my wall and suddenly got a strange feeling. Staring further at those images I realized I was looking at the past. The strange part is I am in some of those pictures. Not my baby pictures, or the ones from my youth, no these were taken just a few days ago it seems, yet reality tells me otherwise. One, as soon as a year ago is especially poignant. I'm there with my sister in law, but Joan has been gone for a year now. She stares out from the past and I am struck by that. My eldest brother, whose birthday is today, has been gone for almost four years. He would have been 71 today and the only Happy Birthday I can offer him is to the heavens. Scanning the rest of those old photographs I do see familiar faces, all too many faces from the past. And yet, I feel like they are all with me still, even the ones I never knew! I have been there before, in the past, and I look at this day, awaiting the future. 

 What I feel isn't a premonition, I'm not expecting anything to happen. My future is certain, as is all of ours. The day will come when we no longer walk this earth, but that doesn't mean we are gone. All it means is we are past. Can our spirit move from past to present? Can our spirit travel to the future? Those are the questions we all want the answers to, but never will. Or will we? Perhaps in the future we will, and perhaps that is where our spirit goes, into the future. Life goes on is an old familiar saying, all that is required is a definition of life, barring that faith.

 As I look at those pictures I am reminded of the past, of all that has gone before me. Truth is it is all behind me and that is a quandary we all must face. A quandary because if it where all to have gone before me, I would have had to already been. For some I know very little of their life, for others a great deal more, but I am struck with the truth that only I know the complete story of my own, at least up to the point that picture was taken. In those that I remember being taken I know the thoughts in my mind, something that can not be captured on film or digital media. Thoughts that will be forever lost once I move on. And I think maybe that is the strange feeling I experienced this morning. The faces staring out at me, their thoughts locked forever in that instant. It has been said a picture is worth a thousand words. It seems to me you must supply the words. I wonder what words the subjects would provide given the chance. I'm listening. 

 It was a strange feeling this morning. I mean we all know pictures are captured moments from the past. The strange feeling was seeing myself in that past, residing in history. It's a difficult thing to explain. None of my pictures place me in a historical moment. At least not a recognized historical moment. And yet I understand that each moment is history to someone, yesterday is history. The only question remaining is will someone remember that moment, for memories make history. Still, even moments unremembered are history aren't they? The picture untaken was still a picture, a moment in time. Where do those memories go, where does that history reside? As I said, a difficult thing to describe. I feel like I was looking back, back over my shoulder, and I saw the road behind me. I saw myself on that road, and I was a stranger. It was just a moment, a glimpse. And now I face the road before me, familiar, yet unknown. The future, like the past. Did I see my shadow over my shoulder, or was my shadow cast into the future? All depends upon the light doesn't it? If the light is before you, shadows follow. Turn from the light and shadows lie before you. Tomorrow and yesterday reside in the shadows, today the light is straight overhead. The question is; where are the shadows?