My husband picked me up from work today. As I walked down the steps into the parking lot to see the silhouette of his masculine form waiting in the car, a smile broke across my face and eager anticipation carried the staccato of my heels at a faster pace, ever-propelled towards him. As if on sensory overload, I could feel the palpable energy of his presence as he fired up the car engine - his gaze meeting mine from a distance, his echoing smile answering the sparkle in my eyes and the pink of my cheeks with the same wordless, but powerful sentiment. I slipped into the passenger seat, my heart flip-flopping in my chest. Our eyes met and held in the close proximity and awareness of being - just the two of us in a stolen moment that was ours alone. The glint from the setting sun caught the light from the changing green and blue hues of his irises, magnifying the red of his lashes and the set of his expression as the pleasure of being together suspended the moment just that much longer before he flipped the car into drive, and his right hand closed over mine. His words thereafter confirmed that he felt the same way. Oh, how I love him. Oh, how I am loved and cherished. We held hands for the duration of the ride home, his thumb circling the tops of my fingers in a rhythmic pattern of tenderness, comfort, contentment and affection.
I drank in the scenery and gorgeousness that is the area in which we live - from the descent into unassuming meadows and the curve of a road opening up to vivid views of God's glory - to the sweep and rise of the gnarled branches of oak and manzanita hailing servitude to a setting sun and full moon. Those orbs, of themselves, seemed to grace the firmament with an omnipotence and indolent ignorance for the landscape below; waging competitive warfare for dominion over the waning blue of a sleepy sky, teasing and taunting the wisps of gold and dusky clouds idling by as if trying on costumes for a dress rehearsal of sorts, in an attempt to claim the lead role for a Holst overture.
It was upon this machination of time, music, and romantic resonance that my sense of consuming joy and unabashed happiness hurtled full-tilt into an entirely unexpected desolation and darkness that was steeped in pain and drenched in loss. My heart froze and stopped short, a dichotomy of grim equanimity unwillingly meeting together in a space and time that refused to be released until a full awareness and cognizance of the moment was processed and complete. My heart hurt and my body felt like it was being torn apart.
My cousin had her beautiful baby girl yesterday; the precious cries and miracle of this newborn arrived in early afternoon - this baby's birth, a significance and incomparable joy after the wrenching but sweet return of her older brother who left earth to rest in heaven after a mere seven months on earth. Oh, Caleb. You live inside my soul. I have also keenly felt the loneliness and intensity of an Aunt who is watching her husband fade away; and has done so valiantly and dearly, month after month, for a solid few years. My Uncle was and is still a magnificent man trapped in a declining body. My Uncle was and is grace and generosity personified. Truthfully, my Uncle Is, and shall be. And will remain so. At the same time, I hear the similar echoes of wavering bravery in my mother's voice as she, too, moves from wife to care-taker. Jim, the Love of her Life's spirit, day by day, edges closer to what they have termed with honesty, candor, mutual conversation and expressions of honor, "graduation." Of all of these, I find myself stumbling into uncharted territory as to how to address the juxtaposition of this joy I feel against the magnitude of loss that could very well be mine, yours, or anyone's, at any time. Every day.
Seized by such thought, ache, and awareness, my palm stilled my husband's touch and my hand moved over his, my fingers taking over, claiming their turn in tracing the roughness of his knuckles and the texture and lines of his skin. A lump caught in my throat as I absorbed the sensations of touch. Unwillingly, I felt myself pulled into emotions and thoughts I haven't wanted to address. Unwillingly, I faced the fear and the ache and the questions of why. Why does such heartbreak happen to beautiful people the way it does? How can I live with joy when I don't know that I could bear such pain? Do any of us really appreciate what we have? And most of all - why can't we store memories of sensation and touch?
Why can't memories of touch be tangible? Why can't the warmth and flow of tactile reminiscence be as easily conjured as those evoked by familiar music, scents, words, or similar experiences? Why does the physical have to pass away? Why?
I warned my coworker today that I had a blog coming on. We had two patients this afternoon who experienced such violence in their relatively opposite young and respectively old life-spans, that their bodies and minds were stripped of the capability to even become what could have been their destiny. And yet, listening to the exchange of their souls, the significance of their mutual compassion and sharing gave me pause to reconsider and evaluate degrees of importance and assessments of living. Even my husband spoke of how he wished he could reach some kind of recognition and leave more of a legacy.
Legacy. Living. Leading. Isn't it all of naught except for loving and learning?
As of now I feel mournful but blessed; I feel ungrateful while at the same time thankful. I feel an increased sense of purpose in continuing to champion all that is good and joyful - in continuing to champion compassion, love, service, and marriage. I feel humbled by choices and circumstances. I feel the fragility of each day as much as I do the power that can be unleashed by choice, responsibility, ownership, and the risk to change outlook and speak only of goodness and abundance into our lives. I feel retrospective and drawn into the deep ocean of spiritual matter, eternal principles, and the well of want in accepting worthiness - to live, to love and be loved, and to matter.
Today, I feel. Today, I am soaking up touch. And tomorrow I will too; for today and tomorrow are really but one, each important of their own accord but meaningless without each other, and only of true consequence if we but would see past the barriers of ticking clocks, beginnings and endings. Time is everything and it is nothing; what we do with it is the most important. Do we live today for relationships and goals, mindful of mortal expiration dates? Or do we live today with our eyes on tomorrow and our hearts seeing, seeking, and feeling love eternally? Will we live in love, carried by hope and sustained by grace? For always? Yes.
- Becca
- Living Joy - This Carman Girl
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