Proustian Bon Mots

Remembrance of Things Past

I was reminded this past weekend of this rather strange phenomenon that has, at various moments, made itself known in my life — call it: “The Space Time Continuum of Me and My Life” or something like that ;) — by way of Marcel Proust. Whatever it is, I am most grateful and thankful for it.

Throughout my life, there have been those occurrences wherein the following occurs: people enter into the doorway of my heart, and then they leave — sometimes this “leaving” is quite literal, as in “death” but at other moments, the leaving has been symbolic, usually represented by a break up or, a move across the country, a fraying friendship that has, sadly unraveled or even just the gradual growing apart of a marriage and the two people that existed in it.

When these events have happened, I have often asked myself: “Was one of us not supposed to let go?” And, to be honest, I’ve never really gotten an answer and I don’t think that many of us ever do, but my answer finally arrived and it was this: “the letting go” part can be brief or prolonged and yet in the ever elusive balance in between it can also be this too: a recognition and realization that sometimes, the earlier parts of our lives are the most “real.”