Completing Life's Circle .....

Following is an excerpt from the conclusion in my book "Going Through The Change". I'm dedicating this to my friend, David, who needs more than anything to know there are those who understand ....

Then fast forwarding almost three years later, I came to look at this wondrous circle more completely than ever before in my life, when due to a sudden and tragic automobile accident, I lost my brother who was only forty-nine years old. My calculated immediate reaction was one of disbelief. After all, our family had just celebrated en mass for the Fourth of July holiday. Everyone was alive and well, enjoying one of those rare days when almost all of us save my son and my brother’s daughter were together. The day was a typical hot and sunny one, but the heat failed to wilt our spirits. The small children enjoyed a special treat of escorted pony rides on my grandson, Hunter’s, newly acquired miniature horse named Peanut. Peanut’s disposition had remained patient despite all the added attention, making it was a day for the storybooks, perfect in every way.

My brother, Jim, however known to his sisters and parents as Buddy, excitedly spoke of his upcoming fly-fishing trip to Colorado, where he would commune with nature by means of backpacking and camping with a close friend and fellow fisherman also named Jim, whose life was taken in the same accident. He along with the other Jim had made this same exodus a number of times before accompanied with yet another of their original tight knit group named, Tom. Over the years, that group grew to include others including a co-worker named Pat, who became a rock for all of us immediately following my brother’s death. These fishermen loved to experience the grandeur of God’s earth, they loved the sport they mastered and they loved spending quality time with one another. They had been en route to Colorado only about an hour from my brother’s home when a semi truck rear-ended a pedestrian truck traveling in front of him causing his eighteen-wheeler to spin out of control, cross the median and broadside the SUV carrying the two Jims who were traveling in the opposite direction. In an instant both were gone.

I was reminded a couple days later by my sister-in-law, Karen, an amazing woman of faith, compassion and understanding whose strength enabled us all to meet a week’s worth of incredible demands, God holds fishermen in high regard as is evidenced by their frequent appearance throughout the Bible. Fish are creatures, who like our consciousness, reside just below the surface of visibility, and their bounty offers life-giving sustenance.

Therefore the opportunity of going fishing has always held a special significance for me in terms of a chance to spend time with those I love, whether my parents, my children or with Mike, who was my boyfriend at that time. It’s also an occasion to free myself of the burdens of a so-called civilized existence found in telephones, bill paying or endless responsibilities around the house. It is the gift of the catch and pride of getting back to basics. It is experiencing poetry in a physical and tangible manner, and it is a reminder to cherish those rare moments when we feel closest to our Creator.

I am grateful my brother was a fisherman, one who so loved the sport he tied his own baits and fashioned his own rods during laboriously long hours out of bamboo shipped from a remote corner of China. Each a work of art, they are signed and dated by the artist himself. They prevailed through the accident as testaments to a man who lived his life fully every single day, never putting anything off during the course of his unique and special journey, and remain as treasures to those who loved him most. In fact, his daughter Anna had her bridal bouquet fashioned around a portion of the broken down rod that had accompanied her father on that final trip home to meet his maker.

During the weeks immediately following his death, while sitting down with Karen pouring through album after album of pictures, with me sharing my memories of our childhood and her sharing memories of Bud’s adult life, I was comforted by a few simple truths …. namely he was such a good man who loved his family, worked hard at his job, took time to enjoy life and touched all who came to know him in countless memorable ways. He was to quote Karen, “So happy.” His was a life to both admire and emulate, and despite all the pain my family and I have had to endure at his loss, we are all better for having had him in our lives for nearly fifty years. As we turned out his ashes in the cool, translucent waters of the White River in northern Arkansas, I was comforted knowing we shall all meet again one day on the shores where creation was born many centuries ago.

Following my initial disbelief, when his loss became all too real, I asked myself on one of my long morning walks, “Why do we do it? Why do we bring children into this world knowing they will one day die, or that they will bury us, their parents, their sisters and brothers? Why would we intentionally place someone we love at such great risk for incredible pain?”

Then it came to me. We do so because being surrounded by the ones we love is what makes life worth living. I was also reminded that by shutting out the pain, we are also shutting out joy and thereby denying ourselves our own birth rite. If we are here on this earth for the purpose of learning and sharing, then it stands to reason we must also be content in our lives so that we may actually experience the blessings God intends.

I was told often within the first few weeks of experiencing our loss, “Time will make it easier,” and I know now this was true. This is not to say his loss will not always be profoundly felt each and every day of our lives, but with a faith based on God’s grand design, which doesn’t allow me to question His wisdom, I continue to search for the Light and the reasons to go on living a productive and meaningful life.

Not long after her father’s death, his daughter Anna found a rosary her father had purchased for her at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. back in 1991. In the box he had left a note she had discovered only then, which read, “All comes together for the purpose of good.”

At the time, I didn’t know its origin, whether from his own reckoning or a quote he’d read sometime that managed to stay with him throughout the years. I have since discovered – although paraphrased – it is from the Bible, Romans 8:28. Its discovery gave comfort where it was needed most, to his grieving nineteen-year-old daughter, and I was reminded once more of the blessings still to be had in even the darkest of moments.

In Eastern cultures I have read people are taught to approach each new day as if it were their last. Some might think what a grim and negative point-of-view, but I choose to think of it in terms of how differently each of us might spend our time if we could see and feel it drawing to an end. I believe we would be less caught up in the things that are based in ego and material goods and more time in the lasting impressions we leave behind. I believe we would take the time to tell our loved ones how much they actually mean to us knowing there might not be a tomorrow, and I believe we would experience honest emotion free of the fear of how we might appear to others, and also finally free from resisting the power we might be surrendering in having done so.

This is our legacy, the house we build not out of wooden beams, bricks and mortar, but rather the house we build for our souls, which will be filled with only light and goodness, and where our needs will be small and simple, however met in abundance.

I have learned a lot about strength in the last nine years. It is not the kind of strength that would push others away so that I might insulate myself from pain, but rather the brand of might that can only be found in drawing people close, in giving and sharing, in laughing and rejoicing. It is a recipe that feeds the heart as well as the soul, and one whose only ingredient is LOVE.