When my parents were 86 years old, they moved out of their home and into ours. One of the few things that my mother insisted on bringing with her was a 2-year supply of Ivory Soap. Mom had carefully un-wrapped each bar from the paper covering it. Then, she placed the soaps in a used shopping bag, so that they would harden and last longer. Reduce, reuse, recycle that was what she believed and how she lived. That soap was as practical as my Mom, no fancy fragrances or additives, no sentimentality. My Mom believed in tangible things that you could touch, see, hear, smell or experience. When I was a child, I asked her what happens when a person dies? She said, “I don’t know. I haven’t done that yet.” When my mother died, one of my friends told me to expect a big wind. Apparently, a Buddhist monk had told my friend that when someone very spiritual dies, there would be a big wind. At the time, I laughed inside thinking of a literal big wind, like a hurricane or a tornado. I don’t know if my mother would have laughed or frowned at the thought of being described as a “very spiritual person.” But I do know that she defined herself an atheist.

I cannot see the wind itself, but I can feel it. In a strong breeze, I can see the effects of the wind as leaves flutter or branches swing. That does seem to me very like the spirit of a loved one who continues to move others after death.

My cousin B tells me that several years ago one of her friends died. She says, “He was not quite 48 and he left behind a wife and three beautiful daughters and an entire community in mourning. He was a very good man and his death was incomprehensible to those who had known him.” People said the usual clichés: “God works in mysterious ways;” “it’s a blessing for his pain to be over;” and, “we’re not meant to understand God’s ways.” But B could see that “underneath all that noise was rage and resentment that God had seen fit to take such a good man in such a cruel way and leave us all trying to make sense of a senseless death.”

Not long after this man died, my cousin began thinking about life and how precious and short it is. In B’s words, “all I seemed to have were memories and snapshots. So, I picked up my camera – something my friend would’ve liked – and began taking pictures again. I shoot people, animals, things and places that I love.”

Each life starts ripples that extend in ways we cannot predict or fully know.

Once upon a time, when houses looked very tall and city streets appeared to lead a path to the rest of the world, I was a little girl who loved stories. I began listening to my father read aloud rhymes and fairy tales long before I knew the meaning of the words that came from his lips. My father liked the stories and verse as much or more than I did. He seemed to have an infinite supply of poems memorized and would insert them with enthusiasm in conversation at the dinner table or while walking in the woods.

When he wasn’t reading aloud to me, I often saw him reading to himself. Sometimes he would have one of my dolls propped on his lap, appearing to be turning the pages so that the doll could see the illustrations in the book.

As I grew up, I began to observe that my father’s favorite books were religious texts, poetry, and most of all, fantasy: the Hobbit and, after he had passed his 80th year of life, Harry Potter became his friends. He seemed to know them as intimately as he did his own family.

Even at a very young age, I had my feet planted firmly on the ground. I was too pragmatic a child to believe in imaginary friends. In spite of my skepticism, I played along, at first just to humor my Dad. His tales were often amusing and often inspiring and it was shear joy to “play along.” And, finally, I came to appreciate the benefits that imagination can bring.

His questions to me often sounded foolish to me. Each one challenged me to think ahead, to dream, and to solve a problem.

From my Dad, I learned to suspend my doubt for a time and to imagine what I would do if confronted by an angry rhinoceros. It is more than a survival skill to be able to imagine getting out of a difficult and unexpected spot.

In the final months of my mother’s 91st year of life, she became fascinated watching the clouds in the sky. She called them “European clouds.” When I asked her why, she said they had been described in a book she had read. It was important to my mother to have a name for things she liked. She once said that the reason she learned to identify wild flowers was because she wanted to be able to call her friends by their names.

Mom herself had been named for a flower, Daisy, and perhaps this contributed to her personal relationship with nature. She kept a small collection of field guide identification books in case she should discover some plant or animal that she did not already know. For years, she wrote little journals that had the names of each fern, tree, bird, flower and mushroom that she had encountered that day.

After years of living with Parkinson’s Disease, osteoporosis, she experienced a series of stokes that left her unable to use her identification skills in the last two years of her life. Even then she did not stop cherishing the world she encountered. My mother cherished being alive. In fact, she clung to life tenaciously for almost 92 years and seemed genuinely surprised by the gravity of her final illness. The illusion of living endlessly had become a part of her spirit.

As a child, I repeatedly asked my mother, “What happens when you die?” Her response was always the same, “I don’t know because I haven’t died yet.” She knew enough about nature to know that life and death are necessary to each other. She had experienced grief many times after a loved one died. Yet, she had only experienced living. She only knew one side.

In explaining death to me, she would also say that she had seen enough births to know that newborns appear unwilling to enter the gateway to the living; witnessed by their screaming and crying and struggle to breathe on their own. “We forget that we didn’t want to be born,” she would explain. My mother believed the same was true about dying. As I watched my mother in her final days, it was unmistakable that she too was struggling. She didn’t want to go to the other side.

Life appears so ephemeral at times, like drifting clouds in the sky. On the other hand, like clouds, life seems to be endless. One cloud transforms, moves out on, and another comes into view.

My “to do” list is like a cloud filled sky. Items pop up, get accomplished, and more tasks are added. Sometimes it seems my list tempts me into believing that my life will last until all the things on my “to do” list have been checked off. Like the clouds, however, things are accomplished on my list and disappear from the list, as others come into view and are written down. I know that whether my list is completed or still in progress, I will die.

The clouds drifting across the sky are a visual reminder to me of the passing of time and the illusion of the endless flow of life. For me, it is best to simply observe the clouds, and the changes in the weather that they can signal.