I ran across this entry recently, and even though today is not Min’s leaving day anniversary, it reminded me of how much, and long, those tenderest feelings surface with just the slightest invitation – grief, and beauty, intertwined…..

9/4/a.m.
A short walk, but some good things spotted: a pileated woodpecker overhead, and a loon on its way to the lake. Gentle and warming air, crickets throbbing. The waters calm, a thin mist skating toward the sun. A found pear, dropped from a neighbor’s tree, only slightly bruised, and delicious.

At home, some sunflowers have been felled by squirrels who are after seed. The scented gladiolas are delicate; moon-colored petals shifting in a small breeze.

And….its your day again. Your leaving day. All I want to do is lie in the sunny window, listen to grasshoppers throb, watch the pale sky, and rest, and wait. For you. Or for whatever is left of you – the wispy breath of the mystery of your having been, and having gone.

I don’t know what I’d call this drift of feelings – sadness – or loneliness – or a delicate anger (if such a thing exists). But it feels quiet, and patient. Blessed, and mystified. A wordless emptiness: maybe the silence a bee must feel when the nectar has been sucked right out of the flower it’s working on, and the bee is full. It has to move on. But, Oh, for that instant it was fully alive, drinking the juice right up, and it was enough. It was so very, very good.

Maybe it’s surrender, that quiet emptiness – not like giving up, but giving in. Giving over. To a terrible truth and its beautiful grace.

Well….I’m going to do it, lie here in the sun, in the wild silence, and wait. And be. Now, Bodi sleeps downstairs. The house is quiet. Grasshoppers sing and scritch their end-of-summer song all around the house.