As I started my fire yesterday, my eyes paused on the paper I was about to stuff into the stove: the envelope of a friend’s Christmas card. He had died shortly after Christmas. I thought for a moment: that hand, just weeks ago, could write me a card and send it in the mail; and now he could not.
Today there has been a blizzard and I could not go to work due to the condition of the roads. I walked down into town off the mountain, and I passed a neighbor’s daughter; she was clearing the snow from her driveway. I spoke with her awhile and found out that her mother’s boyfriend, R.J., had died earlier this winter. He used to come unbidden and clear the snow from my own driveway; I paid him back this fall in apple butter. His enthusiasm for the stuff pleased me all fall.
He helped build my garden too, bringing in topsoil with his excavator. But he cannot do such things now. It’s a mystery to me, an indigestible mystery.
3 Comments
My thoughts are long today too, John. My sympathies.
We only get answers after it is too late to do anything with them.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in
your heart and try to love the questions
themselves.
Rainer Maria Rilke