The meaning of my life...

And so, the time came when my boys had grown to men and I to old age,

when our lives remembered seemed never to have been lived at all.

Since the moment of my awakening at their birth

I have lived with the great weight of knowing this,

this time, would come upon me.

I have lived each and every day of my life knowing…

In the photograph that hangs on the wall of my life

they are small, hand in hand, walking away from me even then

through the woods in autumn with no sight of this time to come

though I saw it watching me, looking at me with kindness and sadness

for even then they were growing and walking their own paths.

As we walk through now I remember times that I did not know existed

and some that I have visited often, as we walk one before the other

our separate but inevitable lives playing out their themes in concert

one moving apart from the other in the letting go.

I miss them so profoundly even as I hold them to me

striving to hold back time, this time, reaching up to push it away from me.

Each moment passes in a time that seems never to have been

filling my life with its wonders, the wonders of them, the moments of our time.

My life that seems never to have been lived in the remembering takes on meaning

and I know that every memory is a photograph of a life lived

of my life made real with them and the growing sadness of knowing

becomes the wonder of my life, my moments in time, my meaning.

I will see them forever walking through those autumn woods

on that day that was the same as every day before and after

as my boys grew to become men, and I to old age,

when I remember my life for having lived

and theirs for having lived in it.