Overlaps in lifetimes always give me the saddest reflections. I never met my grandparents and many uncles and aunts on my mother side, though my elder sisters remember them and frequently tell me stories about them. My granddaughter Angelique hardly remembers my father and her uncle Nelson, and was born after my mother passed away. Aubrey never met any of them. My sisters and I are probably the oldest relatives she will ever remember.

And I--I will be gone by the time my grandchildren have their own grandchildren. They will listen to stories about me and can only imagine how I looked and lived like.

Lifetimes are like river water. They pass into the ocean and come back again only after they have risen to the clouds and rain on the mountaintops, and, by then, the trees and the rocks and the shores around them will have changed beyond recognition.