An Echo

I was cleaning the last of this seasons vegetables from my little prison garden today. With a small state issued rag I was drying a heap of tomatoes, some adolescent carrots, and a few undersized cucumbers, when a wave of sadness wash over me.

It's a wave that crests at least once day and has left a permanent watermark. There's a sense of home to be found in such a familiar place—but this time it was different.

I felt the familiar gravity of nostalgia and regret open up, like clockwork, to tug at my heart...but this time I felt grateful. I felt so incredibly blessed for this never ending sadness. It felt good in the way that listening to a sad song feels oddly comforting. I payed attention to this feeling, in a hope that trace the roots of this warm comfortable feeling of hurt—and I found it.

My heart swelled with that familiar pain and I realized that it springs from the loss of the most beautiful and pure thing that I had ever known; Monica's Love (and everything that unfolded from it; my son, her daughter, our family). And this pain, this sadness, this eternal emptiness, is just the feeling that her absence left behind. This void is the echo of her Love—her all encompassing, unconditional, Love.

I feel so blessed to still be able to touch her love, even if it's only through the gravity I feel in my chest and the sadness that washes over me when another wave knocks me off my feet. Today I was able to see this hurt for what it is; my daily communion with love—with her—my chance to remember what I was once so incredibly lucky to have. Even if it sometimes feels like it's gone forever—it’s not—somehow, her love found a way to ripple through time and reach me here, now....and forever.

How could I experience anything so profoundly beautiful and not feel sadness at the separation? How lucky I am to have experienced something so profound to elicit such eternal and frequent remembrance as the touch of True Love…

We should all be so lucky to have such a worthy reason to feel heartbroken.

If you have a real reason to feel sadness then be grateful for its cause, for when the pain leaves, when the void collapses, then, whatever it was that is worth missing, is truly over…