Silence and a Tiny Peace

"They are dead to me," my mind whispers as I sit in my favorite chair looking out through every window on leaves and bits of sky. I think of a time I killed a cat with a shovel -- it had been hit by a car and too many things were outside lying on the pavement that should have been safely tucked away under fur and skin. It was night. I had the shovel with me, returning from gardening with a friend. It was a quick, merciful ending. And yet I feel anguish and guilt.

When I close my eyes I can still see the car round the corner in the dark, and the impact, the tiny body arcing, the massive blind machine moving on oblivious. Against the painful lump in my throat I weigh the moment after the fall of the shovel blade when there was only silence and a tiny peace.

For a few days now there have been moments when I haven't remembered that I am now an orphan. Laughing with friends, working on projects, I live into the moment and dream into the future. At other times I look at my hands and am shocked to find them large-veined and wrinkled, the hands of an aging woman. In those moments the grieving child looks out, puzzled, into my life. My own palms hold her broken heart, my own vibrating lullaby stills her fears.

"Dead," insists my knowledgeable wisdom, and the shovel blade comes down with a clank, cleaving the central chord, the tie that binds. And even the little kid sees how my true history is emerging now that the falsehoods have been severed from it. Love drove me, my own love, invisible because not mirrored. It is a huge-hearted thing, this love. It cherishes and supports, nourishes, sustains, reaches with understanding across almost any barrier. Almost.

There are some collisions that cannot be survived. There are some endings that are written into every possible future. Alone on the pavement in the night this is what I know.

Sitting in my favorite chair looking out at green, I remember once again and weep.