TO EVERYTHING A SEASON

This one's for the Bore Patch family. I can't offer much more than a prayer, and some words.

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON. . .That phrase is oft associated with song lyrics but it's actually from the Bible.

To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I think of those verses now, as those we know deal with the frailty of the human body, never the spirit, in those they hold dear. For the true majestic, incandescent blindness of love is its willful refusal to fully acknowledge that at some time death may take someone from our lives here.

I remember a moment three summers ago, when I was staying out West after my Dad had suffered a mild stroke, walking into the home of my childhood, carrying groceries and seeing my Dad so still on the couch, it appeared he wasn't breathing. For just an instant, everything went into high relief, like a scene in a 3-D movie, the Safeway bag dead weight in my arm, the sun glinting off my old piano against the wall, Dad's slippers on the floor. My whole life suspended, bathed in bright June sunlight. In the short terrible space between that moment and the next, when he opened his eyes and smiled, I got a glimpse of grief as it would look in this new incarnation. And perhaps, for those of us who have had that glimpse, it is partly the encroaching darkness that makes the light so vivid.

Artists in the 17th century understood this so well, depicting it in paintings of fruit and fox hunts and wildlife, a ripe red apple next to a fox so carefully wrought that a single drop of blood can be seen along a fine whisker. In studies of faces that bloom in layers of ancient varnish, the curve of a a child's cheek revealed gradually, the glint of light on a coat of arms or the promising, secret gleam in a woman's eye that belie the fact that the persons in these visages are hundreds of years gone. For that moment, in those paintings they are still with us.

I look photos of my Mom, one, my favorite taken when she was a young woman in Montana. Another, taken a few years ago, when she was alive but fading, when Dad would come home to that same house, with shadowed corners and open windows, in the town where I grew up, and he'd collapse on the sofa from worry and exhaustion. Losing my mother seemed impossible, she was never so alive as in those last years when she fought so hard to stay that way, still death came too soon for her life, and for ours. Yet she is still with me daily. Whenever you've been touched by love, be it of a parent, spouse or friend, even after they're been taken from you , a heart-print lingers, so that you're always reminded of the feeling of being cared for, knowing that, to someone, you mattered.

For now, my Dad is here on this earth and though there are days his head is foggy, his heart is not, he's slow in body, but not in laughter. We don't know what the days will bring, so we cherish each one. Concentrate on the good days; for those conversations together, for quiet mornings, memories of reading or hunting, wrestling with a computer or an "easy to assemble" home project. Every hour, every day is grace. I am going to savor that, for it's not what you have lost that counts, its what you do with what you have left. There will be time for mourning later. Much, much later.

Myself, I focus on not what has been taken away, what might be taken away, but what has been given me. Not a focus on love that is not physically present, but the love that surrounds. The smell of freshly tilled earth. Gentle breezes and tailwinds, Crickets chirping as I put an old plane into the hangar. The laughter of friends, family and a treasured daughter. A comfy, snug home on the plains and a warm furry heart by my side. Concentrating on the good things, so while I still am, I can still hope. And so shall you.