In the basement this afternoon, looking for a paint brush, I noticed a clear plastic bin on a low shelf. What caught my eye was a snatch of colour I immediately recognized as a beautiful throw that my dad’s mom, my grandma, had crocheted. I won it at a family reunion, more than 25 years ago, after spending a small fortune on tickets that I deposited in the Kleenex box in front of my prize, hoping for my number to be called. 

For many years, that blanket got a work out in our house— keeping us warm in front of the TV and comforted when we were sick. It was the roof of blanket forts and it played a lead role in most basement tea parties, picnics and sleepovers. I stood there holding it, cherishing the memory of the dear soul who made it, and remembering that time I spent the better part of a day picking chewing gum out of it. 

I wondered how it got there, on that low shelf. But isn’t that the way it goes with boxes full of the past? We keep them through the years — on low shelves in the basement, piled in the attic or wedged under the stairs — not remembering what’s inside, but knowing on some level at least, that it’s too hard to throw away history. Throwing it away will be like throwing away part of yourself.

Underneath the blanket, I found three guest books. Two from anniversary parties thrown for my mom’s parents at a time when the couples who attended from our small town were mostly defined by a phone number, a street address, and the rumour mill. The final guest book was from my first marriage which began on a cold and rainy day in the fall of 1991. Looking through it, two things struck me. 1. Good penmanship is a lost art. 2. So many of the people who most loved us and came to share that October day with us are gone now.

My mom, my brother, my former father-in-law, all four of my grandparents, most of my aunts and uncles, our best man. I counted almost 40 people who will never sign a guest book again. I ran my fingers over their names as if, by some kind of magic or sheer will, it would somehow bring each of them back to me. And then I thought to myself: Thank God we can’t know what’s coming.

Somewhere in there, longing took over. Longing is like some weird, inescapable pledge we all make as humans. It says that there will be things in this life that will make us feel beautiful and good and happy — and we will eternally hunger for them.

So, there I stood, holding that guest book in my hands, longing for the impossible. For what might have been. For what never was. For things to have been different than they were. For lost family and for what family was like when they were here. I thought about the good times with so many of them. When we think about the past, it’s always the beautiful things we pick out. And I think that’s all a matter of love. The more you love a memory, the stronger it becomes.

I think we all live in the hope of becoming someone’s memory. Why else would we have guest books at the most wonderful and difficult times of our lives? We hope to be remembered. We hope our love is remembered. We hope that the things we do in our lives will outlast our mortality. That maybe something we do in our lifetime will be like one of those monuments that people build to heroes after they’ve died. Only instead of being made of stone, it’ll be made of memories that people have of you.

I stood there thinking how fortunate I’ve been to love and make memories with so many of those people who are gone from me now, but whose names I see scrawled on those pages. I don’t know how I got so lucky as to have been born on this planet at the same time as them. But, in the midst of stupefying odds, it was us, in all of our ordinariness, that got to be here together in this time.

It’s incredible to think that, had any one variable been ever so subtly different – had our parents met on a different day. Or in a different country. Had the universe cooled a fraction of a second sooner after The Big Bang. We wouldn’t exist as the particular constellation of atoms that we each are. And we wouldn’t have been together right now.

I don’t think it’s coincidence. The world is full of magical things and the strands where our lives are interwoven sometimes feel like small miracles. But those coincidences and chance meetings — the people we’re here with and the little things that happen every day of our lives — are just hints that the universe has much bigger plans for us than we ever could dream of for ourselves.

There is balance in that for me. That for all that I’ve felt has been taken away or lost, so much more is given. It says to me: You are participating in your life — you are not at its mercy.

I realize that I’m writing this on the night of the Autumn Equinox, which is one of only two days each year when the day and night are equal in length, each lasting 12 hours. I’ve always been a seeker of balance and harmony. And I think I like the Equinox for that reason — for the balance it brings. In some other way, I like the Equinox because it’s a celestial reminder of things I know, but need to know again. To honor the darkness. To welcome the light. To embrace the fleeting beauty of perfect balance, even if it tips off-kilter the very next day.

It’s like life starts all over again when the Equinox comes and the weather turns crisp in the fall. I love how beautifully the leaves grow old, so full of light and colour in their last days. It’s something special to me every year to see the early leaves beginning to drift from the trees. As if we should all be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh —to start again. A reminder that this is the cycle of all things.

Birth. Life. Death. Rebirth. This unstoppable succession of being. An unstoppable succession of love and life and memories and letting those we love go with the hope that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of them lives on. 

The 40 souls who signed their name in the guest book I found today are part of that unstoppable succession. Their names on those pages seem to say: I was here. And I loved you. You don’t understand it now, but you will. What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become even more precious.