On this side of the veil between worlds, it’s an ordinary day - the sky is cloudy, the air breezy, some sun peeks through once in a while, but later today, another rain storm on its way. 
     
     Bodi and I walked this morning when the day was still early, the town still hushed. At the boat launch, a few mallard ducks slept on the dock that lifted and fell gently on small waves. The usual mint and bugleweed and goldenrod was still flowering even though we’re heading into Fall. I stopped at the little dam to take pictures of the scarlet cardinal flower and the jewelweed at the edge of the spillover stream. Many mushrooms stood in the pine needles, pushing their way up through dry soil. 

     I stopped at the lake then, and watched dark clouds move slowly over the hills. I thought about the world, and about things that change, things we lose, and I thought about you - on this, another anniversary of your leaving day. Nine years later, you being gone is a truth I’ve gotten used to, and yet is still hard to believe. 

     I know you’re out there somewhere - little bits of you, still part of what I breathe in everyday. I still glance at your photo on my little altar when I do my morning routine of stretches, some yoga, a few prayers. But I have to say I don’t think of you as much as I used to. Life keeps trundling along. Lately, I’ve been clearing some things out of this house where I’ve lived for 18 years, and I’ve started going through some of your boxes. They’ve sat in my garage for all these years since you left. It was too much, for a while, to dive into them and sort things out. But it feels like time. 

     In reading some of your letters to your sister and brothers and your mom, I see how much you loved the world - how much you celebrated and worried over the small joys and troubles of any ordinary day. You were alert, engaged, committed to the trek through living and loving. But you, too, had to let go. You were willing to suffer through your own trials and those of the people you loved, for we are never really single, never really protected from that marvelous and grueling co-participation in life’s demands and love’s requirements. 

     Having been vulnerable enough to love, to trust, to be revealed, to take each other into our bones and skin and heart so that we become each other’s context, each other’s home, we still have to let go. Our bodies don’t understand - the emptiness doesn’t make sense. It would be as if the ground beneath our feet suddenly disappeared - or the sky suddenly split - or the polar ice we had known forever as permanent were to melt - which, it turns out, it has. 

     Still - what can we do but keep walking? Taking steps, trusting that there will be something under our feet. Something under my feet, even though you’re not here. 
 
     I’ll be going down to Louisiana soon, to be on home-ground, to let my bones warm, and to see familiar faces that look so like yours. Visiting there, seeing family, is just one more way I’m still loving you. One more way I’m loving the world, even though you’re gone. I think you’d know what I mean. I’m pretty sure you’re loving the world too, right along with us all.