I Love You
She was tiny. She had a large collie when Bruce met her while in Pennsylvania to find us a home. I stayed in Oklahoma packing, taking care of dogs and paperwork. We had done this before, when we moved from Maine to Oklahoma. She thought it would be good to have neighbors again, the house had sat empty for a couple of years.
By the time we settled things, made the two-day drive with 2 dogs, the collie had died. Pictures of her horses hung on the walls and soon she had a second-hand Great Pyrenees to train, to walk, to brush, to love, to visit residents at the nursing home. She walked Bindy down the driveway on nice days to get the mail. If we were at our mailboxes at the same time, we'd walk the distance between, stand in the road and talk. She often brought us cakes and other goodies.
Sue came and sat with me the day Bruce died. Two months later, when Great Dane Zara died, she found someone to help me lift her into the car. Through the weeks that turned to years, we telephoned to check on one another. I would call to say, “go look at that sky!” or when I heard the first spring peepers. We shared our melancholy through the seasons, tears showed up randomly for us both. We laughed about odd things. There was a piano in the room with her computer. Her husband loved to hear her play. She gave it up when she became a widow. When I took the trash down this morning, I was not expecting to see a light on in Sue's front room. In the mornings she sat with her tea reading a book at the dining table. I would surprise her sometimes with soup or stew on days I cooked. Sue returned my containers filled with cookies. She called me when the tv did not turn on, when she needed help with her printer. We found peace in the mindlessness of mowing grass on our lawn tractors. She loved her family. On Sunday's she went to her son's home for coffee and on Saturday she shopped in another town to visit with her daughter. We talked about the beauty of snow, and discussed who would plow it for us. We wondered at the silence of this place that we both loved. How gently snow could fall, how wind, snow or fog could sweep away the view. It was a comfort knowing she was there, just across the road. I was going to visit her Easter Sunday with her favorite dark chocolate and paper flowers, but her car was not there. Tonight, when I phoned, and heard "This number has been disconnected. No further information is available." I knew she was gone.
After Bruce died, she typed for me this excerpt from “The Smoke Jumper” by Nicholas Evans (pgs 312-313). It had touched her heart after her husband died.
“If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you."
PHOTO: LJ Austin 2019
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