The first big storm of winter cancelled all the
flights. Like refugees, we lined up for word of any
way out. I felt you struggling 140 miles away. In your
grief, you’d been alone too long. I had to get to you.
By the time I reached the counter, no more rental
cars. I called around and found a service to drive
me through the drifting dark. You’d left the lights
on but he couldn’t get up our driveway. He left
me near our dented mailbox. I had snow in my
shoes and you looked worn. I kissed your neck
and we held for a long time. I watched you as we
went to sleep and fell into a dream. We were on a
raft, being carried by a slow flood. As the sun came
out, we were left on higher ground. Suddenly, the
raft turned into Buckingham Pond where we fell
in love over twenty years ago. We were younger
and you had your head on my lap. This was when
the sun lit your eyes and lips and hair and I said,
“I’ve never been in love like this.” This wasn’t a
memory but time travel during a storm back to
that moment that changed our lives. Then I woke
and you were sleeping next to me, bruised by the
flood, but still beautiful. I lightly touched your
arm, wanting only to be close to you.
~Mark Nepo
a more tender time and space lends itself to you now……remember your gracious heart, your timeless memories, and your heart that is always free…
inquiry for today~ how will your soften your wild heart, your deepest love?
Heartbreak, we hope, is something we hope we can avoid; something to guard
against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to
find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the
manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses
that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning
of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being
on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find
along the way.
Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no
alternative path. It is a deeper introduction to what we love and have loved, an
inescapable and often beautiful question, something or someone who has been with
us all along, asking us to be ready to let go of the way we are holding things and
preparation perhaps, for the last letting go of all.
~David Whyte