I guess one could say that the whole love room experience was a kind of luminous denial.
My mind could understand the unavoidable trajectory of a limited, physical life, and its end. But my emotions, and my body, didn’t believe it at all.

I had an anatomy teacher once who told us that we were all made of stardust – that we have taken in the universe – and become it. I think the love room is like that too – what we’ve participated in, what we’ve loved, becomes part of our flesh, blood, mind, heart, maybe even spirit.

So how in the world are we supposed to believe that someone who’s gone is really – gone? And what are memories, anyway? Aren’t they just the left over stuff of what we’ve lived in, and through and with? And what’s the thin line between denial and hope?
The following are a couple of little letters from Year 3 –

5/10/13
At the pond, geese still nest despite rising waters.This morning, the mother lifts up, fluffs feathers, resettles. The male hunches nearby, will help her out once the chicks arrive. She’ll be hungry, though, by the time the eggs are done, and busy, shepherding babies all over their new world. And then a long flight home.

Everything pulls away, finishes, flies off. But here I am, not quite leaving so many things, including you.

I am still the student of the mysterious fact of love, of living and not living, of what to do with care when the one I cared for so fiercely is gone. How does one ever learn this impossible thing?

5/11/13
Walking this morning in a hard rain, and getting soaked. In the woods, I lean against a little tree for a moment, sniff its wet bark. It has no leaves, no branches, only one thin, tall trunk, stretching up.

This tree still has a love room with the sky. The habit of love, of reaching out, lingers long, I guess.