FAREWELL

The email arrived - Subject: Please Call Me

From a name

That barely rippled the surface of

Recollection.

Inside 3 lines -

One a phone number

Then a promise of a poem to follow

Then another a name.

The surface raised into waves and surfed into

recollection.

I knew what this was about.

Right above that email,

The one with the poem.

I read it - two times.

It was beautiful, haunting and a farewell.

It was not definitive,

I would have to call for that.

I read both emails again.

They could mean something different,

It could mean 'come,

visit our mutual friend

before, before... '

For a moment quite still

In action, thought and feeling.

I had things to do,

I had to be somewhere.

I put the number in my phone.

Driving to the barn I corralled the time

To arrange thoughts which were racing.

The emotions quietly waited.

Later, in exactly the right place to make this call,

Under a huge cottonwood

dropping leaves,

A bay horse on the end of a long rope

Eating dried grass barely green,

The leaves crunching beneath both of us

I called.

The details were sparse, relevant, and complete.

Driving back to the house,

A little door opened to memories.

And with them, emotions.

A trickle, a tiny spring reaching the surface.

Then the right song played, releasing

A flood into the desert of forgotten memories.

There was only one place to go.

In the fading evening light,

Outside in warm desert air, a breeze promising cool

I visited the stupa.

Walking clockwise 9 circles -

Three times for my loss and regret,

Three times for forgiveness,

Three times for gratitude.

One more step in the farewell.

Up the red dirt path

To a very low wooden bench beneath a pinon.

Turned my full focus to the man

Who that morning had been set free.

I didn't know his journey

Over the years since we last saw each other.

I most fervently wanted to know,

Wanted it to be true,

That he left with peace and lightness in his being.

And as I sat, my tears beyond my feelings and into his,

I felt it, I saw it.

The body shed of pain and grief,

The heart shed of disappointment and hurt.

His Spirit flew as it always had even beneath the human trauma.

I felt a little tug of envy. 'You're free! I want that!'

He smiled with all the love we had shared,

And my envy transformed into his joy.

He was whole, I was free too.

The gentle, sad goodbye from years ago was a small thing.

This farewell from one heart to another

Was complete, without the residue of 'what ifs'.

The email, the poem, the friend who reached out,

Across more than a decade

Through her heart and love for the man who just left

Had given me a gift I didn't know I needed.

Thank you - both.

November 5th 2023 (Photo: The Author)
(This is pretty raw, written the evening of the morning I heard the news )