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Sustainable Parameters
Yahrzeit ha-Av 5759

I gathered the handful of memories along with the coffee that only you could drink and wrapped them in our bedding which still smelled of you.

Their fire blazes gloriously. Fast and furious--like you lived. The air fills with your caffinated morning against February's sunrise.

I recite Kaddish. The Creatour of the Universe may be mighty, but memory is mightier. Could memory be all that is left of G0d in us?

In this world you have ceased. Therefore, we have ceased. For one second it occurs to me that I face a choice. But survival is not choice, nor duty, rather, instinct. An hybrid of memory.

The best we can do in the way of choice is to define our sustainable parameters. Which is not to imply that infinite permuta- tions do not exist. We walk a furrow we can plow alone, if necessary. If we treat the land well, we will push our claim, reaping ever more.

Then what? Snow is falling on your fire. The crisp smell of it slowly covering that of your coffee.

Then...then we come back? Wiser? Richer? Happier? Or are we spared the return?

A clipper hurls itself across the flatland, which we came to walk together, snow packing up over where your fire only just burned.

I long to walk just one last time across our claim... The blizzard, lonely and white would welcome my company.

But survival is not a choice.

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