“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation” The Alchemist
February 2020 I planned a trip to Anguilla BWI. I wanted to return to the island Donna and I loved. We visited many times and found it to be a great place for us to find calm. I planned to stay at our favorite place The Rendezvous Bay Hotel. In and of itself it has a rich and beautiful history that can be seen in the life and story of Jeremiah Gumbs. Such an amazing man who we met on a couple of our visits.
No surprise the trip was canceled. Thank you pandemic. I rescheduled and went first week December 2021 just prior to Omicron cluster. Leaving the house is fraught with its own ghosts. I feel I am leaving Donna behind. To venture out without her is abandonment. A denial of her being part of what we loved. A part of me. Added fraught along with traveling in the time of COVID. A royal pain in the ass.
Once I was settled in I became unsettled. The warmth, the ocean, the sky, and sunsets were not moments of calm but hard reflections on the locus of life and self-worth. Hardly a moment of me seeking The Philosopher's Stone. More in line with looking back looking, forward, and seeing where I stand today is unfilled as my expiration date looms large.
The beach was littered with shells and stones. Carried by the tide from the floor of bay. All were smoothed and shaped. Some eroded with holes and gaps deeply rendered by the sandy bottom and the colliding with other objects. I gathered a few and considered their journey to the beach and my journey to beach. There is a shared Venn with those objects and my state of being.
These found objects washed up sitting in the warm sunlight being caressed gently by the waves on bay at the end of a journey. The smoothed surfaces and eroded edges speaks to their beginnings, journey, and ending. I slowly turned each one over in my hand. Pushing the sand from them and running my thumb over the smoothness. Here now in my hand I saw my journey.
The shells and stones were whole at one time. Complete in their beauty and shape. They had purpose a reason to be where they were in the ocean. They held agency and gave agency. They existed as a whole in and of themselves without need to be connected nor engaged. They were complete and self actualized.
They moved through time or time moved over them slowly smoothing the bright edges and creases. Time has that effect on all living things. It can smooth and wear us down. It can produce sharpe cutting edges that harm others or ourselves. Time is the master of our erosion.
All the while as time continues its journey and work we continue to be who we are. We continue to connect and be part of all that is around us not just the moment but the past and the future. All the while hoping that we have served others as they have served us. To be what we believe they have seen in us. A fervent wish is that I have become all that Donna saw in me and believed in me.
I know Donna loved me into being. She saw me as more than I saw myself. I tried to be that person who's reflection I saw in her eyes and the smile on her face. Not sure I succeeded though I felt her validation daily. After her death, without that reflection, I grew more weary of me, of who I am, and was though I did not give up on being what she saw. I tried to with others through my writings on grief, sharing with the grief community, volunteer work, and friends.
Those shells I held all smoothed from time I could not help but see them at the end of their time. Sitting on the sandy bright brilliant sunlit beach at the end of their journey. I saw my own metaphor in my hand smoothed and worn. Ready to be washed onto the sandy beach.
That beach is my today. It's where I am now worn, smoothed, and eroded. As I move closer to the beach I need to dial back my wanting to be seen and heard. I need to just be me in my isolation. My shell is my safe place. "The Venn Of Isolation, Loneliness, and Me"
Confession time. Well kind of, I know with all the grim endless looping in my head I can miss the moments of wonder and magic in random acts of connection. And we all know connection is at the heart of our humanity.
I met a lovely couple on this beach. Or they met me cuz I was not really in a head space to be all "How to Win Friends and Influence People" frame. Yet he stepped up said hi introduced me to his wife and it began, that connection and humanity. They opened up and shared. I opened up and shared. (Well y'all know I am needy.) This was not casual but, a bit of higher power stepping in with not so fast giving up, you still have work to do moment.
We broke bread a few times. Laughed. Swam. The singular most telling moment of this connection was being handed a book. His favorite book, read many times, and I was told it may hold knowledge for me. It was "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. There was and is much knowledge in it for me. I know everyone in the universe has read this already. Slow child I am
Please don't give up on me Donna. Still trying to be who you loved into being. You're in my heart.
"Well, that's good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say." The Alchemist