I hoped to dream of my grandfather last night. I wanted to meet him in an open field where the sun reached as tenderly to me as it did him, and the grass beneath our bare feet, and the mountain’s face observing placidly in the distance.
I hoped for a proverb, or a psalm, or just a word from his mouth. I shut my eyes hoping to see him there – his stature tall and casting a long shadow over the Earth. I hoped to hear his voice – clear as the crisp, blue air. I wanted to sit with him and hear his relaxed breath moving in and out of his body. I long for the peace I knew with Tata. It was unequivocal and unquestioned. Any time spent in his company meant that the ground was beneath me – firm and safe. I did not know fear in his presence.
It is clear that I miss him. But I do wonder what he would say if he was here – watching me do all of this recollection and reminiscing on days past. We did not often speak of the future, him an old man and me a child, but I have this feeling that he would urge me forward, quietly but firmly saying: finish the book. Write it – and put it away. Go live another story. Let something else touch you as deeply as our short time together. He might even say that my best days are in front of me. And that the memories of a child cannot sustain a life. He might utter words from the great poet:
The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold…
by Rainer Marie Rilke, “You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing“
And he might continue, urging… offer yourself to your brethren. Turn towards them, look them in the eyes, hold them in their wholeness, and rejoice with them.
Stay open to their lives, their stories, and be moved. Lift yourself from your place of comfort and walk far from it. Find yourself at the edge of this Earth.
Break open as often and as fully as you can. Your heart was never really just yours. Its very first moments were entangled and enmeshed in the womb. Don’t let your heart beat alone. It was never meant to. Show yourself to as many as you can. Be vulnerable. Be brave. Be hurt.
Go plant other seeds. See them grow. Allow what will not take to your soil. Tend to your people. Love them. Know them. Ensure that they know what the warmth of the sun feels like. Bring them water. Speak with them. And let them go. Again and again this will be asked of you. Let them go.
And in the absence, know that the peace we once felt is just as irrevocable, unequivocal, and unquestioned as it was then. True peace sits beneath all – fear not the stillness and the dark. For the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing1.
1 Wait Without Hope, by T.S. Eliot