Reminisce

Copyright and All Rights Reserved Kevin S. Murphy







REMINISCE

Written By
Kevin Murphy












This is the last entry into Shannon's diary as she passed away just days later. It is a summation to all the previous affairs within the scope of what she did understand, which was apparently quite a bit more than what we assumed she knew at the onset of the project. It is concise and most poignant in her deliberate and resigned tone.



Friday December 31, 2109. 7:30 PM, Thompson House

It is snowing and has been for two days. The blanket of fresh white snow covers everything and this evening the browns and grays of the trees are wonderfully outlined with the contrast of the gleaming white that glistens in the moonlight of a full moon. I take a deep breath, and wonder just how many I have left. The life given me was well lived, I have no complaints. Our four children have done well and I have nine grandchildren to make me laugh and forget for a moment what their world might have been.

When I first had time to reflect on what had happened, I was, at that time actually down right annoyed to realize that, despite what we thought, we really had no choice in playing the roles we played in the Event. The thought of inaction was not even relevant, except perhaps for Ian, my husband, my beloved. We were drawn into it and deprived of our own lives no matter how much of a ‘normal’ life came along with it. Our total experiences of life: our dreams, our thoughts, our goals all seemed to be by design, focused on that overpowering Event which transformed our lives, transcended time, and changed the world. The gods in whatever form only knows what cosmic impact the Event had on however many different worlds and throughout what can only be called a very crazy multiverse.

For myself, at the beginning of it all stood Ian, my husband of 70 years, the love of my life, and a pillar of great strength, a man of deep wisdom. It was his compassion for the rest of humanity that kept his abilities in perspective. I believe he saw it…yes…this…thing, coming at us from quite a distance. I say that in such mundane terms…distance…distance implies a minimum of two linear points: x is so far from y. Three sides, four sides, a circle or a square they all have a distance. Time is from one to another, in a sequence it goes, much like our lives, birth, life, growth, and we wither and die time pressing ever forward. You are not supposed to be able to go back in time…but Anna did, how do we explain that? I have not seen her in my dreams since the end of the War, I can only assume she died…and after losing Braedon, most likely of a broken heart.

What we saw was happening all around us. Others didn’t know it or couldn’t see it and would not know what they were seeing or what to do if they did. Whatever else wherever else happened in the Event I have often wondered what Ian has seen or dreams because he has never spoken much about those other experiences during or since, although I have noticed of late there has been a tranquil calm about him so I can conclude with hope that things are going to turn out or have turned out just fine. He was never able to tell me how he gained the Sight or has ever revealed what happened on the other side of the Door. I believe he was simply born with the ability, and I am sure Aiden knows but says nothing about it. They are after all brothers. Even when he was confined to a wheelchair just before his 90th birthday, Ian’s mind still did not sleep and was connected somehow to a great measure of other things in other places and times, that he was able to see somehow the continuum, where the distinctions in time and distance do not exist and the past, present and future either do not exist or do so simultaneously. How he had the strength, how he withstood this, I will never know…

It pained me to see his suffering the things in his mind he could not ever resist nor fully control. He refused to take the suppressive drugs that would have eased the burden. I still weep; for I do still so love him. After he died, I wept for days, tortured from the agony every time I realized he was not there. Being in a position to actually see where my life would have gone had it not been for the Event is at times frustrating as we had no choice but to be involved as the pathways of those times were not chosen by us. After Fredrick’s death, I blamed Ian, as I knew he knew it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Ian later explained he does not see everything and everything he sees does not necessarily happen. He had no idea of what Fredrick’s fate was going to be and knew nothing of the event that caused his death.

He learned early on to just keep quiet and let it play out and affect it where he could if he had the opportunity. Destiny is a word I do not like as it betrays any control we think we have over our lives and I suppose the refusal to act by any of us would have had far worse consequences. As to the Event itself, I think subconsciously most of us knew this at some level...Ian of course was aware if it the whole time. Facing the truth, it has been said, can be harder than understanding the truth.

There was always that slight sideways glance of Ian’s that always hinted or implied much more to be revealed than was known with the mind or seen with the eyes. Older now am I and dare I say it...wiser? My own health is failing and I have learned from Ian’s quiet lessons, to sit and listen to the universe, and the things that cannot be seen, to listen intently to those things sublime and hidden, where ‘spirits meet spirits and jostle in the dark’.

Oh, well, it is as Anna once told me, “Be lucky to have lived at all and understood that it is the experience of life that gives us and what we do meaning.”

Truly, the magic of wonderment and the power understanding was a gift from the gods to give humanity a degree of control over their own individual fate. No, my dearest and brave Anna, we will not be casting shadows…

STM 12.31.2109