Eleven sisters slip down the stairs staring down at their mothers closed eyes

Cold lids, lifeless, beautiful 

Fallen too soon from the fire of youth

Wife,mother,sister,friend

Heaven can’t wait to see you daughter of love

As you prayed Father I will enter into this new world you find me in

May my daughters carry me in their laughing hearts

May they love and live and know they are free

May they dance as I did under Nebraska skyline

Fathers memory deep in my soul

May they hold close the stories he told

Father said, Ada my love can you sing me a song

from the grave, a song of love?

You in your black dress so young and beautiful

You and me forgetting time waiting for the sunrise. Can you sing for me again?

Long stairs bannister winding down to the ballroom

Down past the colored lights that mother bought in Venice

Your merry heart

Your eyes of blue

Though I have no memory of you

I remember you when I see myself

Dancing with a merry heart

Following love to the better part of wisdom

I see you when I see my mother

Face of longing for her mother

I see you when I see the past

Cut coldly in a song for the brave

Don’t weep for me my lovely

I walked hard against the grief

I carried your love always

I’ll keep you close to my heart

Beating fast in this dream in the dance hall

George and his real life love story

“When we got married we laid our cards on the table – about what we wanted for ourselves, our children, our future our lives everything. We were not rich – we were middle to maybe middle upper class- my children went to very expensive private schools where they learned French and German very unusual for a school in Buenos Aires at that time- I worked in International banking. Now it’s all gone in the crash and I am driving this cab sending money to my daughter and son in Brazil when I can.

Carmen – I came home and found my husband in bed with two women – it was the end and now fifteen years later I am looking, I am ready to be married again- I am looking everywhere.

Cashier :Are you sure this is how you want to spend your time and money; consuming I mean?

Customer: Oh well I I I ummm.. I don’t. I don’t know.

Cashier: Why do you come here so often. No family? No kids? Are you alone?

Customer: Did you get my discount card? Always like to make sure the card is swiped.

Cashier: Have you thought much about the future? Where will you be in ten years? Still spending lonely afternoons filling your closet with clothes at designer discounts?

Erisa says ” All of my family members were killed. They killed everyone, burned our houses down, took our land. There is nothing to go back to. Things are better now because they have told us what they have done. We do not have any family left in Rwanda. No property. Others still had family members. All of mine are gone. Still it is good they finally told the truth. It helps.

They are gone but now they have confessed. They have told the rest of the villagers what they’ve done. It was a slow process of remembering as people from the villages would meet each week and recount exactly what they remember until slowly the picture was filled. Brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, gone. Somehow it helps me to know they did it. To hear them admit it. 1 million or more murders is too many to be handled by the law.

Well now we must go to lunch. Life must go on. I cannot remain sad anymore.

My grandfather, soul shining like heaven while he was waiting to catch the light streaming through the tiny window above his hospital bed: clinical, clean, white sheets, soft pillows, one plastic chair for family members to enter and exit in the dark dream from life to death. He watched this game of chance: his family members exchanging worried glances, scraping chair legs across the linoleum and glossy floors, staring at the silver chrome steel frame adjustable bed with a tiny sliver of New Mexico clouds floating across the window sill.

He woke up in this life for that last time while it was my turn to say goodbye. He rose up in his bed and told me something he wanted me to understand, ” I can see the next dimension “, his eyes gazing up into the blank t.v screen, this ending is just a beginning. I am going to Ada, Grandpa, Florence; I can see their faces now getting closer, smiling with open arms, waiting for me.” I will never forget this memory of his face, peaceful, unafraid.”One thing I want you to know before I go, this story is just a beginning. I will miss these days we have had, the dinners, the conversation. I love you all so very much. I am so sad to leave you. I will be waiting for you there. It’s just the next dimension of my life.”

When I looked into his silk-lined casket, I knew he was gone, the skin, the eyes, the rumpled suit, the make was all wrong, but his soul was flying free of the slavery of the human race to space beyond time, his soul eternal and divine was joyful dancing above the night sky. Departed into infinite spaces. Forever was real to me then. I understood what he meant by all of it. He knew this ending was just a beginning.