Death and dying memories we all share: who knows where the time goes?

[caption id="attachment_7911" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The light goes out, the memories linger"][/caption]

NATCHITOCHES, LA - Carol Forsloff- Pearl Crayton died in Natchitoches not long ago.  Pat McKee, with Alzheimer's disease, left for a nursing home.  Folks transition everywhere,  as we wonder when they do,  "Who knows where the time goes?"






Pearl Crayton was one of the South's best writers and like many people of talent not known as well in Natchitoches, Louisiana as she was in other places for her stories, poetry, essays and compilations of strong literary worth.  Pat was a teacher everyone knew.  They transitioned like people treasured in their lives in towns across the world, then barely remembered as days grow into years.

Pearl's literary collections may one day be a part of some fine library in Natchitoches, where they certainly belong, even as they
sit on shelves of connoisseurs of good prose.

I had seen Pearl not long before she died, walking down a side street in Natchitoches on the edge of the Historic District.  Her walk was slower than before.  I noticed that and promised myself I would see her tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and went and came and went again, but Pearl wasn't in those days that passed.  And I now face the death of one of Louisiana's most genuine representations of the South and one of my good friends.

Pearl Crayton was one of those writers who bloomed early, whose stories were part of compilations of authors from the south.  She taught writer's workshops at Melrose Plantation, wrote for newspapers in California and raised her brood of children virtually by herself.  Pearl was born in the bosom of Louisiana; her family formed its history from slavery to
the present times.  She died in the heart of the place she was born, in a whisper I did not hear.

I heard the whisper of Pat McKee over time, months before she left Natchitoches.  She taught at the local high school.  Everyone knew her in town.  A quiet woman, caring for her family and the children of others as they grew, Pat was always
helping others.   As Alzheimer's disease takes memory bit by bit, and relationships fade as it does, I barely saw her.  She lives in a nursing home now where life ends bit by bit.  As her face once revealed her smile so loving and so fine, I wonder once again, that same refrain about the passing of time.

Who knows where the time goes?  I thought of Pearl and Pat  on Sunday remembering Pearl's last reminder.
"Carol, you need to go to church."  Because for Pearl, then in her 70's, church was central to her life.  She didn't understand the Quaker way where people often worship in their homes.  The stories from her pen had long since passed, her mind and body growing fragile by the day.  For Pat, church meant each Sunday, integrated with her life.  It was the piece of love for God unspoken but reflected in her style.

Who knows where the time goes?  I thought of Pearl and Pat,  as I wondered about tomorrow and what that day might bring.  Who would I see and think to myself "I'll visit," but the time moves on too fast to catch the things important, lasting, good we need remember now, today, in moments we can treasure.

Those things we value, like Pearl Crayton and Pat McKee, lost forever to a world where writers  and women of gentle
affection, bloom and fade, then pass away and become forgotten as the time goes on. 

There's an eternal lesson in the song written bySandy Denny, who died at the age of 31, and sung by Eva Cassidy, who
died at 33, telling us how time moves on so fast it sometimes leaves the things we love to memories even as our own time dwindles down.

Someone died in my town; someone died in yours.  And someone left my town and yours in ways that bring a hurt that lingers on and on.

I will remember someone  tomorrow.  Perhaps you will as well.  That's because when the time goes it isn't something we can find again.