Almost nothing to say. It happened a few days ago after bad bulletin after bad bulletin. I can sensibly say God in his mercy put an end to the horrors of the last few weeks. On the other hand, this person so dear to me, who I honestly expected to live close to forever because of the manner in which she took care of herself, is someone I will not have the pleasure of kissing hello, embracing or laughing and crying with again. None of us ever expected this. She had a special bond with me, true. She had a special and unlikely bond with my mother, too, so it feels like I have lost my mother all over again, or lost my TWO mothers because I had come to see this friend as the earthly manifestation of my mother. Add that she called me 'Sister,' add that her very name means sister! Add that her name and mine are separated by the sound of one additional syllable although we were born decades and cultures apart....Oh, there is no defining how memory can never be separated nor way of explaining grief!
So, I say to myself "she is gone" and let it resonate in the deepest, most quiet places, sort of to train myself to get used to the idea. Just as swiftly as that thought forms, tho, I think "she is everywhere" because, suddenly, she is. The things she has said come floating back quietly or with a sudden thud. I see her in familiar places and can see her whole presence and its mannerisms in my mind's eye with a clarity I didn't know existed. I see her face in her children where, honestly, I never did before...and think 'was I absolutely blind????' I see her in all our mutual friends as I hear snippets of their lives with her that I otherwise would not have known. I see her in the love we all have for each other; in the simple, seamless CONNECTION that happens when good people have known each other for decades. We are blessed. And we have known it. In many was it is THE thing that has kept us working where we do for so long in this time when people just do not do that anymore. She was absolutely lovely in every possible way. Her simple goodness was apparent in the way she gave herself to all of us. And so, she is gone and, simultaneously, everywhere.
I usually memorialize my losses in some way. A particular totem, something solid in my house... a place to remember this person, another to remember another. The losses are becoming too great, and I like to think of the people all together now anyway. A too-recent year of loss
was spent singing a particular song, so much so that I began to call it my anthem. It brought unmeasurable comfort. Its refrain reflected on the ideas of the spiritual realm no longer being seen as 'apart.' SO... that's what I am gonna do. My litany of saints; my ever-growing list of loved ones lost... I am going to think of them together in the great where-ever, and no longer enshrined separately. And here ( meaning 'on earth') , I am just going to think of how it and we are all connected in this place where "everything is holy now." And I am going to say my favorite prayer again and again and again:
Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace (Amen)
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,
Through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.
~
