I was lying on the couch with Helene this afternoon, when I was hit with an overwhelming feeling. She’s leaving tonight to spend the next few days with her mother, who is going in for her second major surgery in less than a year.
We have watched Helene’s mom go from an active, vibrant women who lived for operas, plays and her volunteer work at the museum to a women who lives in the shadows of her former self.
I won’t go into all the gory, sordid details, but over and over again I am constantly being given reminders lately of life’s absolute impermanence. Death’s cold breath has been giving me metaphysical goose bumps on the back of my neck.
About a year ago, I saw this movie on TV that took the footage of the moon missions in the 60’s and 70’s and added current commentary by the astronauts. It was fascinating to hear the reflections of old men as they watched their younger selves dance on the moon.
One of them said that being up there was like holding on to life by a string over the abyss of space. The dance on the moon was a dance with death, as they literally were kept alive by a small tube tied to a tin can. And yet, he said, it was the most alive he has ever felt, looking at the earth from a little rock in the vacuum of space.
Lying with Helene on that couch I felt the warm of her skin on mine and the rise and fall of her chest. I could almost hear the blood moving through her veins. Normally, this kind of physical awareness excite me. But I felt a calm stillness. A completeness in her arms.
I looked at her and felt as if I was looking into the face of the whole world from a little rock in the vacuum of space. I was brought down on my emotional knees by the shear beauty and total impermanence of it all. Of her, of her mother, of me, of my mother, of our love, of our lives, of your life, of this whole spinning blue ball in space.
I kissed her. We got up. She packed a small suitcase. She left.
I was hit with this overwhelming feeling today,
like breathing in a cold winter night,
like the warmth in my chest after a sip of single malt scotch,
like falling up into the vast expanse of a western sky,
like the simple sadness of a child,
like the death of an old, old friend,
like the shock of a scorpion sting,
like the closed fisted tension of my lover’s body just before she opens to release,
like an exposed palm with extended fingers spinning round and round in vast emptiness.
Like dancing on the moon.
Ever have that feeling?
Happy Birthday, Love!!
