Sunshine and scribbles: Forsythia.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Forsythia.

Would there be someplace for the dying to go, just before they die? While they pause, waiting to let go?

Do you know you’re so close?

Are you listening, feeling younger hands touch you, hearing our voices say it’s all okay? Or are you waiting for Someone stronger to beckon.

I hope you’re someplace light now, as you wait, and I hope you’re looking on. Maybe it’s like sitting in a quiet room with slides of your life like an old movie reel, clicking on. Watching all the days you’ve lived, play out just as you lived them; the babies you’ve kissed, the walks you’ve taken, the summers you’ve spent in your garden. And grandpa, loving you so quietly like he did. All the Sunday afternoons you spent, the loaves of bread you made, the letters you wrote and trips you took. Your favorite songs, and all the trees you saw grow so tall. I hope you’re seeing all this, as you wait, re-living, almost, all the sweet parts of the life you lived so fully. Your life. Ninety-three years of it. I don’t quite know how to size it, to understand what it means to live that long. The things you’ve seen, the people you’ve said goodbye to.

I think we’re saying goodbye to you now.

Do you believe in heaven? I mean really believe that it’s there? Do you know how to be intangible? We were once, you know. And there’s one last journey for you; a great divide to cross. I think you’ll remember soon that you somehow know the way. You've crossed it once before. Now you’re almost there again. When you’re ready, it’s time.

All my life, I’ve thought of soul as being shiny matter, otherworldly and divine. But body is just as much. It has to be. And the two are so bound they almost cling to each other at the end. Only, it’s not really the end. It’s just the very surface of the very beginning. So much lies beyond.

“Where soul meets body” and says goodbye. The place of that moment of parting from the companion that has been yours since the moment you were born; the house to your sweet, sweet soul.

It’s a marriage of sorts, really; your body and soul. A sealing. Yours from the very beginning, created to match. One goes first, while the other stays a while. Then the other stays, resting and cold, and the one goes on. Only, it can’t possibly be easy, saying goodbye. Parting never was.

But there’s something of promise. Of being made whole. Reunited and perfect. With smooth skin, and deep brown eyes and a voice that doesn’t shake.

For now, you just be. Grandpa’s been waiting a while, and so many others before you. (You have so much of them in you.) And it goes on and on. One wide circle of souls and bodies and heaven and Arms.

I’m seeing it now.

We can be together forever someday.