Found
I found myself standing on my back porch. I was feeling the sun, the breeze, the sounds of the forest. In the distance I picked up the sounds of children playing somewhere through the woods. There is a tree that has fallen, probably a year ago, maybe more… I thought about how long it had lived and remembered that the trees when dying send out a burst through the mycelial network… It is assumed to be passing knowledge to all the other trees in the network. I felt sad for a moment thinking for that magnificent tree that grew for probably 100 years or more, dying and sending all it learned – the past – where sadness lives. Focus shifted to ferns blowing in the breeze down below the 5 foot drop of my side deck, my eyes crawled across the ground to plants who’s names Shona would certainly know.
Shona would tell me stories about these plants, I thought to myself. It wasn’t painful to think her name… simple hope along the road home has restored that. Just the knowing that she could tell me the history, sunlight, life, food it needs – why it grows where it grows. I saw a tree that had 2 distinctively different types of leaves, and because of Shona I know one of them is a parasite or a symbiotic plant – I am not sure which. She would know. There is a plant tied to a palm tree close to the deck. Something I am sure my landlord Olga did to make it grow up the palm, to make it more beautiful. Shona would know what it was called, I thought – I am so curious I wish she was here to let me ask questions about it. The thought to myself, no… if she was here I would just want to hold her hand in the silence.
What is Real
After about 30 minutes, something occurred to me. I hadn’t once thought of the past or the future. I hadn’t once thought of the pain of the last 2 months, the pressure of the next two weeks as we prepare the pitch of our lives. I hadn’t missed Shona, just wished she could see this beauty, and tell me things about it that only she could – in the way that only she could. There was no sadness, no pain, no suffering, no sorrow… I was just present and thinking of her.
Weight
This didn’t end the second I thought it… My heart felt… heavy. I thought of the term “Heavy Heart” for a moment and wondered why that feeling was there. I wasn’t dwelling on the past or fearing the future, no sorrow, no sadness. Something was just, there, in my chest, welling up. So I asked it “Why are you so heavy”… My heart responded easily “This is what Shona does”. A sudden realization that she sits on that porch and she isn’t dwelling on the past in agony or fearing for the future with anxiety – that’s just me projecting it on to her for all these years and trying to fix it. The result is destroying her peace.
I am not looking back still… not with panic or regret. Just the weight of “getting it”… FINALLY getting it.
Peace… without someone trying to “fix it” because… why in the world would I want them to? The knowledge I have spent years trying to fix a place she goes to feel peace. The years I spent upsetting that peace. The opportunities I missed to go sit with her on a porch and not need to talk, not need to fill the silence, not needing to make sure she is okay… Not feeling abandoned. Just sit. In peace… in quiet. Listen to the birds and the breeze, the smell of old wood and life all around us.
Love
I could have just felt her soul flowing through mine the way it does. The purity of the love I feel right in this moment, even 30 miles away. That love of twin souls combining into one for lifetimes, and never wanting to let go. Silent love that doesn’t need to be said out loud. The way I love her now while I am on my way home. Silently… sometimes I say it out loud “I love you Shona”, somewhere I know in her soul there is a flutter when I say it, think it, know it. We are connected in that way. We will always be.
In my love letter from Odr to Freyja I wrote about this peace, under a tree, a white wolf named the Nordic word for “the quiet one” Kyrr… I wrote about that peace before I ever really knew it… ever really felt it… ever really… loved it.
Peace
Understanding… Peace… real peace. Its so funny how often I have said being Buddhist is about living in the present moment. It’s ironic it too me 40 years of being one to find out there is a deeper living in the moment than I have ever been capable of before. When I do get home, no matter how long that takes, I can’t wait to sit – with the love of all my lives – on a back porch… and just watch the world in all of its beauty, as it talks to me about life and love. Because I have missed so much of it… without truly knowing peace.
Are we separated? No… not in the way married people separate. We are apart. The reason for that is that there are certain kinds of healing that can only happen in a peaceful place like this. Journeys you can only take alone. We are separate, but these bodies have always been separate. Our souls will never be. I wrote a song about that – “it’s the bodies pain that you should blame, pain in this life can’t extinguish this eternal flame”. In some ways we are growing closer than we have ever been, as I walk home in peace.
I love you my Shona… I say once more into the wind… I love you with all of my soul.
TheGrayJedi 