It really was just like any other day of the week: a morning of dense virga ‘bove it’s shore. The fog taking its dreamy-sweet time; doing its lazy dance as it rolled in over the waves: contemplating its coup- leaving us quiet and paralyzed by its mystic beauty.
I’ve learned, in all the days sewn with intention next to my sister that the fog holds power; a magic to make forms shift; minds change; and hearts turn. And it was on that day the fog chose to take my sister; my love; my mirrored image; and in its dank power, turned her. Turned her against the ages–a century of being–spent watching waves splash ‘gainst the rocks while sands grow smaller from broken stories of a bolder time. As I stood firmly-rooted beside her-I heard a crying whisper; rustling, struggling to tell me something: a longing dwelling deep from within, tolling out an ache to be heard. My sister, connected, our roots running deep while entwined from the decades of life moving over us, around us and through us, whimpered so lightly… I could barely hear her above the waves and then, like an axe to our core, she told me: “I am tired Sister, I am weathered, and it is my wish to go. It is my wish to bow to our Mother Earth and leave this world with the gentle winds to guide me……” and with that, she rested her laurels on the salty-sands and wept. Wept for the children she saw lose a kite to the wind-whipped sky; wept for the lovers which passed us by, holding hands and returning with arms folded coldly; wept for her last kiss blown to the moon and wept because she would be leaving what she knew while still knowing nothing of what was to be.
I will never forget that fateful day when my sister drew her last breath. I could feel her essence drain from our soul; waves ebbing and stealing sand from beneath my very life: Though she and I were connected for more than a century in joy, in peace, in hope: I could feel her dead wood painfully casting off the side of me like the dissipation of a perfect dream.
I stood alone for another score before the day arrived when a young family came to cut her dead wood from me. Rattling me; shaking her loose from me as if she was a cancer to be cut, not realizing they were cutting away that part of my soul which defined my reasons for existence. They built a fire with her to sing their songs of another’s story; to laugh and tell the wonders of their day playing in the backyards of the starfish, warming their chilled knees with her inspired blazes. And it was in her hypnotic smoke–from her crowning embers before she became glistening ash–I heard her melodic whisper one more time; playing the part of the reed for the wind’s song, she sang to me in the ocean’s breeze with her unmistakable kindness and wisdom: “We do not really die Sister… But rather, we change; we bend; our spirits reinvent us for brighter days and we are never that far away from each other.” Her limbs’ symphony of smoke, wafting though my branches warming me as she did for so many years by gifting me with a knowing: the knowing of undying love and the treasured understanding of eternity. It was then I heard my own voice for the first time: “We all become old-growth with years, meant to be split; admired; and then reduced to our ash. Because it is only then the winds can come and blow us places, un-tethered, untold, yet to be lived. We can lie in the crevice of ancients to be rediscovered; we can blow across hearts and smooth-out the rough edges caused by time; we will be born again. Yes, I will see you again my Sister. This is my promise.”
I thank the fog, for rolling in and softening the truth of mortality while enhancing the beauty of moving forward. We are the embers warming one another; we are the branches which sturdy a swing for a child’s laughter; and we are as simple as the weathered tree, which remains stoically; gently; loyally, waiting for the return of another’s story to share.
Life takes on forms which are never seen. Forms take on life while in between:
We rustle;
We hustle; We muscle our way to new starts and grow new dreams.
We shoot like stars;
And like fast cars, Race our way through life;
Burying the strife That once damaged us, Throwing us far beneath the bus.
And when we bounce up to our feet? We realize;
Sterilize;
Then galvanize…
A life made sweet.