Words in the Dark

Some of you in the gun blogging community likely heard that our friend Ken Ostos lost his wife Samara last week after a brief and valiant fight after a medical emergency.  I don't have words that begin to display the love and courage he displayed during that, our having talked frequently as I had a similar stint in ICU 3 years ago, but I hope these words will offer him some comfort today.

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I wish my mom had lived long enough to see me in the captain’s seat. She knew early on that I loved planes, trains, and automobiles, much due to my beloved Uncle Rich, a Boeing engineer. Being childless by fate, he and my aunt welcomed my brother and me into their home as if we were a part of it.

We all know that every life must end, some tragically young, to war or a senseless accident, or to disease, but nothing in us wishes to accept it. For the true majestic, incandescent blindness of love is its willful refusal to fully acknowledge that at some time death will take someone from our lives.

I look at a photo of my mom on the table, taken so many years ago when she was alive but fading when Dad would return to our home from the hospital where she was, and he'd collapse on the sofa from worry and exhaustion. Losing my mother seemed impossible.  She was never as alive as in those last years when she fought so hard to stay that way.  Still, death came too soon for her age and for mine.

Yet she is still with me daily. Whenever you've been touched by love, be it of a parent, or child as I have, or a spouse, even after they've been taken from you, a heart print lingers so that you're constantly reminded of the feeling of being cared for, knowing that, to someone, you mattered. For now, know that others out there, strangers perhaps, but strangers with heart, pray for your family. Every hour, every day, is grace. Savor that, for it's not simply who you've lost that counts; it's what you do with the legacy of love they gave you.

One of my favorite places in the world is the rocky coast of Northern Ireland.  Being there reminds me of those days of childhood; the rush of the water affirms what draws me to search and discover. It takes me back to the taste of salt on my lips, that of rain or tears that only the years remember. The water rushes, then waits, as I do, moving in, retreating, watching, and still waiting. Remembering everything past, hoping for everything good in the future, in a bone-deep calm that belies the deep ache in my muscles as I climb up ancient stone steps that lead to cliffs hundreds of feet above.

At the top, there was a view, an expanse that was as untouched and unchanged as what drove me here in the first place. Steeling myself against the wind and looking down the distance, I wondered for a moment if I'd made the right decision to come up here.  Like anything, you do your best with what you have and hope you make the right decisions. Sometimes the decisions seem to happen by themselves as if found at the end of an invisible chain, sometimes they are long drawn out thoughts, held in the hand and dreamt of in the night before taking human form.

I wasn't alone—although the rest of the group took the bus back the short distance, there were a handful of us, strangers but kindred spirits, not speaking, simply looking outward. The others didn't dare the height, the edge, not with the wind that day, but I did, not feeling the fear until afterward, only feeling alive, on the wind, the smell, and the taste of the longing to simply be here.

I think about that place while home tonight as I sort through more artifacts of time I stole from the past that now sits on a shelf, flirting with the ancients, rugged rocks, the smell of peat and coal, a land brushed with snow, burnished with the traces of those who went before—traces that say, "Remember me, remember this, for in it you will find yourself and leave a piece of your heart behind."

On top of a sea-green cliff in Ireland, I will one day throw out one of those rocks to watch it splash down into the sea far below as I watch above from a strong yet fragile, light shell that houses this old soul. The rock will fly through the hindrance of the deepest sleep through the stiff fabric of the wind into the warm sea.

It's only a rock, only a bit of artifact of the past that holds in it, not the prolonged burden of time that too many embrace as they age, but the bright colored fluent movement of youth, the dancing heels of those days of risk and glory.  Perhaps the days of my youth are gone, as will be the rock, yet the feel of its absoluteness will remain in my hands long after the wind goes silent.

My mom was someone I always thought would be there, until one day, she wasn't. None of us have any guarantees. We're not promised a life without loss or pain, simply a way to cope if we're strong enough to give it up to something greater than ourselves.

But revisiting it is hard. It's like opening up a long-closed door. You must lean on the door, sometimes with your total weight, as it's been shut so long.  Then, slowly and with the painful rendering of wood held shut for months or years, it pushes open, and the light that falls from the lighted hallway shifts and moves into the long-held darkness. You look in carefully, hearing only the wind of your grief from outside of yourself, afraid to move further, head slanted towards the door as if you wish to see but are afraid to. You'll stand there, sometimes for hours, breathing slowly, hand on the doorknob and foot poised to step back or forward until your eyes fall upon what's in the room, and what is there is sadly empty of sentience. It does not contain the answers you want, reasons, or explanations. But sometimes, if you step into the comforting dark, you can at least find peace. 

 Brigid