Over One Year Beyond


Over one year beyond the tragic death of a loved one there has been a change in me - a subtle change, a slow and at times almost imperceptible change: from the overt sadness of despairing tears and that longing born of personal loss, to an inner almost contemplative sadness that in moments brings a certain ennui, and in other moments a feeling for both the beauty and the impermanence of life.

So there is a strange kind of peace, sometimes - as if all the trauma, all the remorse, all the guilt, all the sadness and grief have in some way by some means been alchemically transformed into that certain stillness belonging to the weary often slow wordless joy and sighing of old age. Each week, each day a new beginning, with few of those youthful worries as to what the next day, the future, holds. Thus there is a new and sometimes even satisfying perspective: almost but often not quite tranquil and almost but not quite the fusion of unhappiness and joy of the waiting for death wherein which waiting are, or can be, often sublime moments as one becomes more than one individual: as one becomes infused, fused, with the enchantment of life through a passing moment: the clouds flowing in a warm breeze below a sky of blue on a mid-June day as the birds around call, sing, and be only, precisely only, what they are; the bee, clover-finding, as the breeze bends the nearby stalks of grass grown fast in the past days of rain, Sun warmth; the brief words politely spoken in a very English way as the old lady rests on a bench pained by the pain in her hip while the storm clouds build to block away the Sun that followed the warm rain which washed, deeply washed, the lanes of her, our, village; the smile of a young woman briefly passed on one's way to work one early morning when wordless being descends, inscends, upon one to leave a knowing of being-not-alone.

So there is being - and a loneliness born from such being: an almost buried but never quite forgotten longing for a life shared when the smile, the touch, the warmth, the scent, the feel, the gentleness, the loveof a woman is known, again. But also that settling for, that knowing of, that acceptance of a life alone: too many, far too many, the painful memories; the many promises broken; the many, too many, hopes unfulfilled, often crushed, smothered, broken, by a harsh reality, by too many past relationships. No more then the early morning dash, cycling on snow covered ice, to see, to speak to, to be with if only for a moment, the woman one loves. No more, then, that joyful often nervous anticipation of that first meal, shared, that first walk when one's hand nervously seeks another and one smells, feels, for the first time her warm breath as lips touch as they touch to merge body-soul-desire-dreams-waiting into love; no more the tender sleep as one rests, satiated with life, as sweat dries as it dries on two bodies lately meshed as one... No, no more: too many words have been said; too many moments of unhappiness known; too many dream shared, decade following decade - to leave only  the memories fading as they fade from feeling, as the Sun of this life of mine fades as it slowly almost imperceptibly descends down beyond the hazy cloud of day at day's ending here, red against the old Apples trees in the old orchard: descending down there, here, as it always does at this particular time of year, being only, precisely only what it is while the chicken coop in the nearby field bleeds its old old wood. So I watch this Solstice Sun as midges spiral as they spiral and the birds in call and song begin to presage the night with such being, such life, as lives within, being only ever, only precisely ever, what they are, what they always are.

Perhaps I have strayed too far: too far from being the being who was, who should be, who should have been, me; too far through too many hopes, too much emotion, too many dreams and expectations; too much desire which sent me questing to build so many personae for myself that at times I seemed to leave the world behind. Too many lives, lived: or perhaps in truth too many abstractions by which I strived to shape, constrain, contain my life...

But now, now there is a reaching out - a great reaching out to the very life of Life: out toward the very being of the Cosmos embracing as this does and has done and will do all the myriad nexions on all the worlds world after world orbiting star after star, my problems, my life, but one pulse, one infinitesimal pulse on the complex matrix which is but one finite expression of the divine if often sad music of existence.

So there is rain to take me in, away from the warm if still damp garden bench of old English oak on which I have been sitting this past hour; rain, to take me in but only after I have heard again her voice among the millions...




DWM