Of Love and Loss

I recently came upon this during the depths of my darkness, mourning the men in my life who vanished. The ones who died, the ones I pushed away, the ones who left me. This is from Ladybug Mecca, formerly of Digable Planets, one of the coolest hip-hop acts to arise out of the salad days of the early 90s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1y8AiJX6xo&feature=related

She sings of her past, of missing her parents who perished too soon, yet she comes out of it strong and emblematic of her heritage and who she is. We are the sum of the collective parts of our past, painful as it is, and it constructs our unique identities. What I really like in this video is how she turns around her grief into a celebration, and feels the power of her departed mother on the other side of the wall. Because that's really where they are. A few years after my father's passing, I dreamt that he was not dead, but living in a different neighborhood. In a sense he is, he no longer occupies an earthly vessel of transport, but his physical being lies elsewhere. Not original ideas by any means, but the feeling of love is strong enough to transcend physical boundaries.