Small heaps of our dinner meted out on broad sycamore leaves. Empty chairs set before candles and cups of wine. Next year, perhaps there will be photographs. Or perhaps it is better to remember what memory allows.
The heart in me moved to quiet sorrow – saw them there, dining with us – and contracted in longing, yet was entranced by the familiar movements of shades with familiar forms: the life in their transparent hands, their eyes, behind mine, both vivid and ephemeral.
A wraith of the immense helplessness I had felt immediately after my father's death descended, heavy and damp; recalled for an eternity that there is no way to get him – or them – back. No way to see and feel and touch them in flesh, ever again.
Except somehow he joined us; they joined us there at the table, and I felt the power of ritual upon my human mind. Something shifted in the air, in the room. Something was poignant and tangible there in the four empty chairs and the food portioned out between echoes from meals past.
Would it matter if the presences originated biologically from within us, the incarnate? Or if things objectively measurable and from 'out there' came to our table last night? Is any thought our own, or is every idea a spirit who appears and passes through us like a haunting, like a remembrance of the dead? Either way; we invite them. Even as doubt lingers and tugs impatiently, we invite them. We pour them a drink. And they arrive.