Letting Go

Today would have been our 45th wedding anniversary. I washed my hair and sat in the recliner and stilled my mind. I realized the tears were right behind my eyelids and this is what came to me. I care nothing for looking at pictures of how it was when Bob was alive. But within there is this whole sense memory, as actors say, of how it felt. It feels different now. Richer and deeper and more complete. The false faces have long since fallen off, leaving us eternally in love. Gone are the days of the chemo room and the night fears and the hours of fatigue. Rushing in are bits and pieces of the light returning.

This light is focused on myself. It wants to heal and hold me in its embrace. It doesn’t have human arms or words; it must steal into the brokenness and hold it. All I have to do is know I am fragile and strong at the same time. It has always been that way. We are all that way. No one has it made or can avoid the inevitable. Life is inevitable and so is death.

The tears cannot be kept back. Falling into my lap. Cascading from my fingertips. Washing over my silence. Tending the cracked earth of my emotional desert. What will bloom is because of death touching life and making it live on a higher level. No one wants to go there. No one wants to descend before they ascend and then return to descend again and again.

Life is hard. Death is hard. Love is the gift. If you are touched by the hand of sorrow and draw back, you are just being human. Once you move forward and let it be yours, it lets go. It lets go.

5 Comments

  1. Near a lake beside the long valley,I saw a sparrow called sorrow.’Teacher of teachers!Master of masters’ ,I said,’You have honoured me by your presence.’ ‘I have kept you for the world’,he said,’that is why.’ ‘Tell me master, how to escape you, go beyond you’ , I said. ‘Fool’ , he said, ‘You are adding sin to sin’ ‘Still, I will tell you’ , he said- ‘ When you meet me, embrace me.’ ‘Nothing short of that. Forget your other pursuits and embrace me . Go deep into me . Deeper- and still deeper. ‘ ,he said. ‘You know I am another name for ecstasy. You know I am the one you had been looking for all these lives. ‘ Then I lost sight of the bird.

    Reply

  2. I’m re-reading your beautiful Notes. They touch me so deeply. This particular one was written in December of 2010, our first Christmas without Joe. Your Notes are a gift to the world. Love them and you…

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Vicki Woodyard Cancel reply