Margie started the car with the remote at about 1:00 PM. Maybe five minutes later, I went out to clean the snow off of it as she gathered up the things that we would need to take to the Thanksgiving feast. I scraped the snow off the windshield with my hand. Our snow here, at least in the past, is most often cold, dry and powdery, but this snow was warm and wet, so I packed it into a snowball.
I was trying to decide what to do with the snowball when suddenly I thought about an email that Sandy sent to me just over two weeks ago. She had dreamed that she had been sitting in the living room of our house here in Wasilla with Margie, Kalib and me drinking coffee and then she and I had decided to go on a bike ride.
It was snowing, and she was exhilarated, because snow was new to her. She was enthralled by the view of the mountains around her. We pedaled for awhile and then stopped, so she could play in the snow for the first time in her life. "I behaved like a five-year old," she wrote. She dreamed she made a snowball, smashed it on me and then we got into a snowball fight.
The dream ended when the sound of Anil's snoring awakened her and she found herself not in Alaska, but back in India.
So, Soundarya, this snowball is for you.
Margie came out, carrying the dough that still needed to spend time in a warm place and to rise before she could bake it into rolls.
She looked so pretty to me, standing in the weak light of a dim winter afternoon, the headlights of the car striking her knees.
I thought about throwing Sandy's snowball at her, but I knew that she would not appreciate getting struck by something cold, wet and hard when she was carrying bread dough. I tossed the snowball into the yard, to join the other snowflakes that were piling up there.
Metro Cafe was closed, but Carmen was having a family and friends Thanksgiving get-together there and had asked me to swing by with Margie on our way to Anchorage.
We swung by. Scott was in the driveway, so we stopped and said "hi" to him first.
Then we pulled up to the window, where Carmen gave us each a coffee and a biscotti and wished us a happy Thanksgiving. Then she was joined by her sister, Teresa, Carmen's son Branson and Teresa's son Evan and together they posed for:
Through the Metro Window, study 242,996.88: Thanksgiving Day, 2010
After we shared our few minutes of smiles and laughter, they returned to their gathering and we drove away. As has been the case for every conscious moment since I learned the news, Soundarya's image was in my mind and grief in my heart.
I felt determined to move forward and to have a wonderful holiday with my family, yet I still felt absolutely, hopelessly, bitterly, crushed. There would be no snowball fight - never. Sandy would never sit in our living room and drink coffee with Margie and me while Kalib performed his antics. We would share no bike rides. She would not look upon Alaska's mountains.
The business of her heart and dreams that she had been laboring to launch in Bangalore would never blossom to fruition.
As we drove through the snow on towards Anchorage, I felt a completely unexpected feeling of peace come upon me. In many ways, I did not want to feel it, because it did not seem right, given that Sandy's many and passionate dreams had all been taken from her, but that feeling of peace was there and it just kept growing stronger.
It felt to me like Sandy was there, right there, in the car with us, here in Alaska, and that this feeling of serenity was coming directly to me from her.
As I have said many times, notwithstanding my religious upbringing, the preaching and testifying that I myself have done in the past and the fact that I constantly intermingle with people of faith, many faiths, so many of them firm and sincere believers striving to make their way through this hard life into the sweet beyond, I know nothing of God or of the hereafter. It is all a mystery to me and will be for as long as I reside on mortal earth.
Yet that's how it felt to me - that this feeling of peace and comfort was coming to me directly from her - that she was there, in a form that I could feel but not see.
She was giving me the feeling that somehow, in the eternal ethereal, it is all okay.
We drove on. Here and there, drivers had slipped on the ice and left the road, this one to tip over.
This one just got stuck.
They have ravens in India too, but they are different than ours - smaller, and while the black of our ravens tends to also reflect a slight, iridescent blue hue, in southern India that reflection seems to lean more toward a burgundy-brown. Sandy loved ravens. Before she got together with Anil, she once brought an injured one into her apartment to care for it.
When her landlord discovered what she had done, he was outraged, as it is believed by many in India that a raven in the house will bring many years of bad luck and ordered her to get the raven out. She didn't care. She had compassion for the raven and was willing to be booted out of her apartment, if that's what it took to help it.
Later, she found another injured raven when she was out with Anil during their time of engagement. She cradled the raven in her arms and took a seat on the back of her motor bike, behind Anil. As he drove in search of a vet, she sang to the raven.
"What song did you sing to it?" I asked, via internet chat.
I expected her to name a Hindu song, or perhaps an Indian lullaby - something that I would not even know.
"Safe in the Arms of Jesus," she answered.
They found a vet, but the vet wanted nothing to do with the raven. He scolded her for bringing it to him. She scolded him right back with such intimidating force that he relented and treated the raven.
The raven healed, and when it came time to let it loose, a crowd gathered. The raven looked around, flapped its wings and rose above the packed streets of Bangalore. The crowd applauded.
Such was Soundarya!
Well.
I said that I would not let this blog dwell upon the memory of Soundarya, but would move on, just as life always moves on.
I meant it, too.
But this blog will never forget her, either.
As we drew near to Jacob and Lavina's house in Anchorage, we passed this guy, blowing the snow out of his driveway.
Then we were there - and there was Lavina and Jobe, in the window above, waiting for us to come in and join them - to join the entire family in Alaska, Charlie and his parents included, for Thanksgiving dinner.
That dinner will be the subject of my next post.
Maybe I will get it up today. Maybe not until tomorrow.
It will be history by then, but so what?
Each action that we take becomes history at the very moment we become aware of having taken it.
I kind of feel like I have blogged enough for today.