While Walking

I love to take my dog Atticus out for a walk on these wonderful, late-summer nights when the moon is coming into fullness. I think about the people asleep in their houses, or staying up late; I look up at the sky with its sparse handful of stars and tonight remembered something my brother-in-law said to me last year, when our family had gathered for a reunion. His sister had died that year, and he said wistfully, while looking with me at the gorgeous night sky, "I wonder if that's where my sister went."

I thought of that tonight as I walked my dog; I looked at Jupiter shining like a small, far-off window full of light and wondered where my own sister went. She has been woven into every thread of my life so far--one of my very first words was "sister"--and now my journey proceeds without her. When something good happened with my writing, I was always so happy to tell her about it, knowing she would share my joy. She was the most unwavering support of my work that anyone could ever want, and so was my friend Maude, who died a year ago. It is hard to proceed without these people in my life. Mr. Strega, who lost both his parents when he was a very young man, reassures me that time does heal even these terrible wounds. But even when they heal, the fact will remain that I have lost my sister, my mother, and an important friend, and I will not see them again until I take my own, final path into the mystery that lies beyond this life.

So what to do with all this grief? Just pick up and keep going, keep writing. She would not want me to just lay my writing down forever, and so I chug along, even when grief is like a stone sitting directly on my heart. What these terrible losses tell me is that time is the greatest gift I could possibly have, and one which, at this point, I dare not squander.