The quiet hours can be overwhelming. When one finds the way outdoors, at times when no other human guests are likely to be encountered, there is no shortage of wonders to be found in such silent vistas. Nor is there any way around confronting the unadorned absences of those who should be here with us.
There’s nothing quite like watching the sun emerge above a sea of clouds, or disappear underneath the horizon at sundown, to underscore the thin and immeasurable wordless space between heaven and earth.
I’ve been alone to see such moments–before dawn and after dusk–in some of the planet’s most densely-populated cities, and some of its emptiest places.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve been able to regularly appear on these pages. I’m still not able to explain what’s caused me to be-for far longer than I could have imagined-uncharacteristically hushed about major portions of my last several years.
But such enforced silenced swaths have left me enough space to share my very present past, packed today with the quiet hours in which I still celebrate the July marriage that brought me everywhere I’ve been since leaving home for school. Not only to the earthbound places my husband and I were lucky enough to share, but all the places to which his loss indirectly has brought me.
On each such anniversary, I’m astounded anew that he hasn’t aged alongside me. It stunned me when, during one of these quiet hours, I first realized I’d not only caught up with, but already somehow lived beyond the age he’d reached at his death. It was more crushing when I realized one of our children had lived more than half a young lifetime without him.
But in quiet hours at timeless vistas and ancient places, I can sometimes spare my aggrieved self the focus on earthly years. I allow myself to see the enduring forever.
Even when the colors fizzle, or are overwhelmed by fog, there are treasures in the near-silent spaces of the endless quiet hours.
Happy Anniversary.
Love in the Spaces 