The Principle of Moments

My love is a-miles in the waiting
The eyes that just stare, and the glance at the clock
And the secret that burns, and the pain that grows dark
And it's you once again
Leading me on - leading me down the road
Driving beyond - driving me down the road

My love is exceedingly vivid
Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles
Distance and longing, my thoughts do provide
Should I rest for a while at the side
Your love is cradled in knowing
Eyes in the mirror, still expecting they'll come
Sensing too well when the journey is done
There is no turning back . . .  Robert Plant




The past weeks have been moments lit in flashes, like the strobe of lightning; instead of dynamic memories,  I see in my mind frozen images of life, struggle, death.  Then the ambulance, the hospital, the mortuary, sitting in a stifling sales room populated with stubs of coffins, crypts and truly hideous neon cremation urns.  A fan unsteadily oscillated in the corner while I filled out death certificates, applications, writing checks, paying in coin, tears and heartreak to bring Bill home.  The stale bureaucracy of death:  obituaries, letters, emails, sympathy cards opened, and then tied up with a ribbon and put away.  A dark green gift bag is delivered to me with a plastic box; inside of that 7.6 pounds of gray sand.  My son observes as we come into the world so we go out.


I sit at his desk, and idly open drawers; there are files and projects and notes for clients, work that will never be finished, a life ended.  A lot of this has to be shredded or destroyed; I slide the drawer closed.  I can't do this today, just like I can't sort over shoes, overcoats and photos, tools, guns or telescopes.  A picture of Bill as a young man, lying on his back under huge bundles of cable,calibrating a cyclotron; another photo of a long forgotten Christmas with his children, small happy kids with gap toothed grins and hands full of toys.  Pictures of Bill with dogs long gone.   I like the fancy that they were waiting for him with wagging tails and balls to throw, but this is probably more to make me feel better.


I have never subscribed to woo-woo, but when I came home that afternoon, as  I broke down and leaned against the refrigerator, pressing my forehead into the metal door,  I felt a sense of peace, coolness, wash over me.  I had felt this before, when my Dad died.  I was flying home, and  as the plane lifted into a darkening sky and the tears were burning my eyes, suddenly there was a wave of quiet release and suddenly I felt that somehow, everything would be all right, that the world would return to order and calm. 


Tonight, I drove down Rainbow Valley Road, the Estrella Mountains crouching against the skyglow of Phoenix on my left; turned onto Riggs Road, navigated past where the blacktop explodes into rutted gravel, found the cattle grate that signals the entrance to the North Maricopa Mountain Wilderness.  This was where we took our last camping trip and where we think Bill got that fatal mosquito bite.  I stopped, got out and lay flat on the desert pavement.  The air was still and quiet; the moon had set, and the stars were wheeling overhead in an incredibly dark sky.  Are you there?  There is nothing but the night, and the silence pressing in on me.  No feeling came, other than the sense of the firm earth underneath me, the softness of the air against my skin, the dark vault of heaven arching above.  But that will have to be enough.  Somehow, everything will be, will have to be all right.