11/17/10
Most of the time I write for, and/or about Charley… about his journey and about the people both immediate and peripheral to his murder. But today for one brief moment, I need to focus a little closer to my life.
In the last few weeks I have been under such tight schedules that one literally had to schedule in breathing time. Productions at work, school projects and classes… work on this blog and research for Charley. Still in the throes of study and finals, I am hard-pressed to claim even this moment as right to squander. I have given children away this year in marriage and in love, lost friends and colleagues to greener pastures or grayer dispositions… seen gaps increase and decrease between where I am and where I am meant to be. While I accept that this is a 9 year, now fast approaching its end and understand that all things that have terminated have and will morph into voids as a way to propagate the fertility of new beginnings… I simply felt the need today to pause and mourn the loss.
One leaf… one thought… one leaf… one person… one leaf… one experience… one leaf… one adventure… one leaf… one loss at a time…gone.
This year has been plagued by separations, disappointments, opportunities and colossus change- but it has also generated incalculable potential for rebirth. Each day a battlefield of unending challenges and retreats, has buried parts of me as it has allowed other parts to blossom. Bridges that had been built to stand the test of time, have fallen prey to unauthorized decay and yet I divine that the path on the other side must still be reached by digging deep for new foundations and reconstructing new ones. For even when you lose something which is better given away than kept, there is a keen sense of loss that that still registers across the heart. Each damp wind, like a new experience tests our resolve. Should we cling to that which has brought us this far… or do we adjust to the seasons in our lives with grace and humility? Do we allow the approaching winter winds to teach us to stand stark and alone for a time, that we might retreat to our core and center ourselves? To build from within and brace against the cold so that later when the warmth of opportunity returns we might find a new sense of appreciation and gratitude for the time to mend, heal and solidify the image of self?
And do we really have option to do otherwise?
Like the small maple tree that stands outside my office window, now barren but for 7 turning leaves that cling desperately to its young mast… I too must learn to stretch my fledgling limbs to the autumn sky and graciously allow those leaves meant for greater deeds than I can provide vehicle for… those leaves who still cling to me, or those leaves to which I still cling… to separate and fall away as providence demands and embrace the new blush of another impending season.
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