“Sweetheart, when you lose someone, you lose a little bit of yourself, too. And that missing piece? Sometimes you have to lose the rest of yourself to find it.”
Ally Carter, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
Photo – Ashes and Snow (Gregory Colbert)
For the dead, still close. And for the living… (thank you, Brian Cole)
A Meeting In A Part – by Wendell Berry
In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”
I had such a dream this week. She met me in a doorway, filling the space like a picture frame. Her presence took my breath, her gentle hold gathered me in comfort.
As if it were yesterday- she was the same in image and presence. For a moment I was filled with the familiar – deep love and possibility. Then only too soon our differences were realized. I welcomed her reminder that all is well both in my world as in hers.
These dreams/visits are gifts. They shed the burden of time leaving the dreamer and the dreamed held in a moment meant only for them. A moment free of grief’s heavy weight or the cautious stretch to ‘remember when’.
I had such a dream this week. It left me grateful for the gift of memories and of healing enabled by time.
For all who have known the loss of loved ones-may you find comfort in such dreams.
Thoughts on 9/11
Light near Ground Zero….
Almost like Jacob’s ladder. May the living and the dead know peace.
May our light keep shining…
(picture and reflection Mark Bozzuti-Jones)
Wherever you stand – be the soul of that place. RUMI
Since the recent Friday morning when I woke to news of another devastating tragedy in Colorado, I have been filled with prayers, touched by memories and searched for places of hope.
Prayers -for all people who spent what seemed like an eternity terrified for their safety and for their loved ones. For those who died and for those left behind. For the injured and all the caregivers. For a troubled and dangerous young man and a city and nation numbed by the harsh reality of our vulnerable and tenuous safety.
Memories– of all the times etched in our minds and hearts when our world shook from these same kind of tragic moments: the brutal death of John F. Kennedy, his brother, Bobby and Dr. Martin Luther King; the 1st attack of the Twin Towers in New York City, the explosion of NASA’s Challenger, the Oklahoma City bombing, the fatal shooting at Columbine High, the second and devastating attack on NY Twin Towers –911, the Amish school children and teachers who were met with the bullets of an angry man, the shooting at Virginia Tech, and now a terrifying shooting at a movie theater in Aurora. Even compiling this list is unnerving as it is certainly not complete but too long as it stands. A list filled memories which lead to the familiar question; ‘where we’re you when…”.
Searching for places of hope–we seek solace and we long for answers. Our minds need concrete logical explanations for things that only float in the gray. The quest for answers consumes our airways with repetitive ‘breaking news’, interviews and conjecture. This exhausting dissection may appeal to the over-curious and heighten anxiety for many others but what comfort does it bring to the heartbroken? Where do they turn in such a time of confusion and grief? Could we become ‘the places of hope’ where hope is absent? Could we gently hold faith for people overcome with mourning and shock — carry their prayer when they are lost for words and exhausted by sadness?
As directed in these words by Rumi, ‘to be the soul’ in such places may seem impossible but I believe we are already equipped with all we need for such a task. The soul is at the core of our being, binding us to one another. Guided by the heart of compassion, may we help light the way with hope and faith.
Carrie's Bench 
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