LOSSES AND GAINS

I will mark this week with the presence of three tiny new holes in my belly and one giant one in my heart.

Poet. He must have known it would be impossible for me to be absent from him these past fifteen days, or maybe it would be impossible for him. And so, we laid down in the back of the jeep, me nestled into the softness of his chest, matching my breath with his until the last one came.

The irony of his departure, the timing of it, wasn’t lost in the scurry of packing bags and boarding planes. He left first to set me free to do what is necessary to save myself just as his brother, Graham, did once before.

I have written of this unburdening season, when what we define as our “everythings” are stripped away. I have said that life’s gifts are something borrowed. I still believe that’s true.

And yet it seems the giving is perpetual, never ending, infinite.

This is the life I’ve come to know, the existence I crave—

To believe with every loss that something extraordinary, even supernatural, is gained.

At the end Poet’s nurse listened for his heart then whispered into my grief, “He’s chasing butterflies.”

I have repeated these words many times throughout these last several difficult days, sometimes to myself and often to nurses and technicians I meet.

From one challenge to the next I proclaim, “I’m just chasing butterflies,” and then I lean in all the way.  

More of this story at: The Unburdening