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Wooden Heart
We often wash our minds clean here on memory lane,
so what was a dark portrait is illumined once again.
Daily random memories wash up on the shore
while sadder associations stand waiting by the door.
I do not choose remembering the dark spots in our past.
It is the brighter moments that I prefer to last.
The heart I formed from copper, the heart you carved of wood.
All the broken contracts healed by all the good.
Love stories come in fits and starts and so it was with ours—
we must choose our final endings by our selective powers
to decide what we will sift from memory’s fine sand,
and though the bitter moments haven’t been fully banned,
I daily choose the moments that I will remember—
that March day when our love was young, not your final September.
When I met Bob, he was teaching art in Canyon Country, California. One day he brought me this pouch necklace he had made of leather in class. Inside was a wooden heart with his initial on one side and my initial on the other. Yes. I had to marry the man. Later, with his encouragement, I became a metalsmith and formed this heart out of copper for him. The pouch now also contains a lock of his hair, a lock of mine, a miniature bar of chocolate–his favorite food on earth–and a tiny dinosaur carved by one of his small sons in the studio where he worked with his dad. When I admired it, he gave it to me, just as Bob gave to me the family he brought with him when we married.
Prompts today are memory lane, daily, dark, portrait and wash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Oh, so sweet and touching.
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Awww, very romantic, Judy.♥️
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How amazingly beautiful! Love continues, doesn’t it? Not even death can end love that makes our hearts whole. What joy memories can bring us. It’s so important to make memories that will sustain us in our losses. We can imagine the depth and breadth and width of your love for each other just from reading your memories and seeing the evidence in your art. Happy holidays to you and all the people and animals who matter most to you.
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Thanks, Regina..and thanks for including the animals. Every creche does. I think there is a reason for that.
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It’s a beautiful little shrine! And such touching memories inside the pouch 🙂 !
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;o)
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So beautiful, in subject matter and the way it is written. ❤
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Many thanks…
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“I daily choose the moments that I will remember …” Me too. Thanks for participating.
I have been very behind in things and I have not answered many of my blog replies. My apologies. Here’s to doing better in the New Year.
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That’s okay, Roger. We all get in that bind. We have to live our lives as well as our blogs!
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