The Snow Gypsy

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

“Grief is living with someone who’s not there, who’s gone out of your life for one reason or another.”

There are Gypsy men fighting alongside us, and they have a different view of death than the rest of us. Their attitude is a calm acceptance. They say simply, “We all must die—no one knows the hour or the trouble and pains we may have to bear before our days are ended. Give thanks to God that we are alive this day and free to breathe the sweet air and hear the brown bird in the tree.”

“You’re thinking you might not find him.” He took her hand in his. “You know, Rose, everything that is lost will be found.”

“Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. That kind of fear kills you without you realizing. Like bleeding inside.”

“‘All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’”

Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. That kind of fear kills you without you realizing. Like bleeding inside.

Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. That kind of fear kills you without you realizing. Like bleeding inside.

All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. How could she believe that? How could anyone believe it, faced with the imminent death of someone they loved? Because every individual being, from a flower to a child, is of concern to the creator of life. Those words, penned nearly a thousand years ago, had been a touchstone for Rose since her student days. The note at the front of the book said that Julian of Norwich had not always been a nun, that there were hints in her writing of an earlier life as a wife and mother, and that she had possibly lost her family in the plague epidemic that had swept through England the year before she had taken her vows. If that was true, how could she have gone on believing?

“Do you still love him?” “I . . .” Rose hesitated. “I don’t know. I love the person I thought he was—that’s not the same, is it?” She scraped off another fragment of lichen. “The Gypsies I knew in England used to say that not to forgive someone is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.” “That’s how I felt about . . .” Lola clamped her mouth shut. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, call him “my father.” “How could you possibly have forgiven what he did?”