There are moments in life that we can see coming.  Triggers that are waiting to detonate explosive memories of past events.   When you travel around the year these times are brought out again for examination.  We weep again or we smile, depending on our perspective.  Sometimes we weep this year when we were smiling last year.

   This election year I remember back to 2008 when we were all so full of hope and change.  I will weep this year as I realize how difficult that is to manifest.  I hope I am smiling this time in four years when Obama has held in there and made a dent in the problems of the world.

    Anniversaries should remind us of the wheel.  A spiral that takes us through time and back again.   We fold in on ourselves and reinvent who we are over and over.  The anniversary I remember is every day and every minute.   A bubble of experiences that make me myself right now.  I honor the past and see the new connections with the future that are beginning here now in the present.

   A horoscope of people have surrounded me and as I sit here all alone I can feel them with me still.  When I interact with one person I am touching them all.  Inner life reflected in real time.  However there are events that are out of our control that have altered who we are and will be coming in the future to test us.  Some live in fear of these anniversaries but I try to be brave.

   I see the time of a death as very important.  My neighbor is waiting for her mother to die this week.  It surely won't be longer than that.  But there is a moment when we cross over and it is a window in time.  Or is time infinite?  Do we take our last breath and then continue to dissolve into the earth like we have been doing since we were born?

  From the decay of one form springs another.   I can see death and birth all around me and I honor the new crop of Iris that are coming up in my garden.  I remember there were only two blossoms from them last year and I wonder if this generation will have more flowers.  We grow, bloom if we are lucky, and die.  

   My neighbor just came over and told me her mom had died.  She is a Native American and died at peace with her family around her.  A giant hailstorm has passed thru the area here.  It seems like a good time to die. I remember a pink hailstorm that passed over a Native Chef's funeral in Seattle.  The mother earth knows how to move things along with honor.

    I can see the anniversary of my friend's death coming up.  He died last May 27 and I can see him sitting here sick last year at this time.   His body was cremated at the city forensics lab and the ashes taken out to sea for free since no one claimed the body.  I think that is the way he would be comfortable taking the journey.  There are pieces of him washing up on the ocean in Fiji sometime soon and I know he will be reborn as a hermit crab and pinch my toes when I am there on the beach.

   Who am I?  Who are we all?  As the anniversaries fly by,  pause in the moment to honor what has gone before and what will come.  It is all happening right now and it is all equally important.