"They Don't Leave Us" by Lorraine Martin Bennett

 – waiting for a breeze, a storm, a sudden gale

Departed souls of those we cherish return to us in simple ways.

Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web, and broadcast journalist who grew up in Murphy, North Carolina. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, she began her career on the Atlanta Journal, writing features and covering news. She became the first woman to head a domestic bureau at the Los Angeles Times. She joined a fledgling CNN, completing her career at CNN International. She still practices her craft by copy editing and occasionally writing stories for the Clay County Progress weekly. Her first novel, a psychological thriller titled Cat on a Black Moon, is due to be published later this year.

Author’s talk

Lorraine Martin Bennett

So many changes have disrupted my life during the past three years. Major transitions are hard in most cases, but some are life-shattering. In the space of two months, I lost both my mother and my husband. In a two-year span, I lost several members of my extended family as well. This turmoil set me reflecting on what I want to put aside, give away, store, share, or leave behind to cherished friends and relatives.

I do not believe downsizing is ever easy. Each item we treasured is a storehouse of memories –where or how it originated, whether it is worth maintaining in our lives, or if it evokes longing we can no longer bear. 

Growing up in what might best be termed a mountain clan, I thought my kin would be everlasting. Of course, that is never the case. We scattered, drifted apart, and now we are beginning to leave.

As these guiding lights of my past depart one by one, I find they are endowing a rich legacy I discover everywhere – in flowers, trees, blue skies, changing seasons, towering stacks of clouds, mountain ranges. 

During my own personal transition, I am learning how real value exists not in items bought or totems accumulated over time, but in the kinship my memories attach to the natural world. 

That is the feeling I was trying to convey in this essay. — Lorraine Martin Bennett