Old Times

I sure miss my parents and my brother sometimes. For a moment, a split second, it feels as if they had died just yesterday, or indeed as if I could go home and they would be there, the windows lit from within, the porch light shining, the TV casting colors and shadows on the ceiling and walls, food waiting in the kitchen, the fireplace burning. I would shake the rain off my coat and enter the side door and there, in the next room, would be my father in his chair, my mother on the sofa, while my brother would be back down the hall in his room, listening to music. Weren't they all there just a moment ago? And yet they have been gone for 15, 20 and 30 years. How can it be? How can it be? This was my family, my parents and my brother, the last great people in the world.