Beautiful Thing
One, true, beautiful thing. That was my thought last night as I endured another session of trying to stabilize a life destabilized by the death of my wife. There’s no doubt the loss of the beautiful thing and the void it created is the cause of the turbulence that has so unsettled every corner of my world. But I had a second thought, and it took me back to a lesson I learned as a youth.
It was the summer of 1957. We lived in the base housing at the Marine Depot in 29 Palms California. I could walk to the base pool, and walk I did, every day, to meet with my friends to swim and rough-house. It was the latter where I learned my lesson. Periodically, you could get pushed underwater in a scrum of boys. It induced a mild form of panic until the magic day I realized if I relaxed, held my breath, and sank to the bottom I could swim free, to breathe, again.
So, last night I relaxed, swam to the bottom, so to speak, and mulled over the idea of the beautiful thing and the void her loss left behind. As I looked at it and touched the emptiness and wondered how it would ever be filled, I realized this was not the only beautiful thing in my life. We had a life full of friends and family, we had children, and they had children. And like the branches of the trees I love, a void is often a chance for those other beautiful things, those branches, to spread out and fill the space left behind, and all I need do is let it happen. And as that thought warmed me, I knew I had time to swim to the surface and breathe again. And with that, the storm quieted, peace came to the valley, and I went to sleep.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale