Adrift

Death, in its varied fearsome manifestations, shrouded my eyes from the sun. It made me ponder if the Fates are prone to revel in irony.
Hard to tell with the Fates.

I felt myself drifting into melancholy as the weekend approached.
The calendar date roused slumbering sorrows. It was a birth date. But, sadly, it was more than that. My heart was celebrating the birthday of a once-grand passion (the grandest?)…all the while aware that the selfsame date denotes the subsequent bitter death of that very passion.

My poor heart began the day smiling through tears.

Lost in bittersweet melancholy, I administered to my morning obligations. Mopsy staggered...late...to the breakfast bowl. I knew immediately. I knew her body had forsaken her. I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t prepared. This could not be the day, the date and time, for her to leave. It could not be…No! NO! It must not be!

But…it was.

I spent the day awash in tears. Mopsy clung to me. She was restless, no doubt feeling discomfort as her organs inexorably faltered, then failed. She would stagger to me, and I would hold her in my arms or my lap. When she found it difficult to breathe, she would let me know she wanted to return to the cool floor. I would lift her to the ground, and she would press her body against my feet, seeking respite and solace. We were virtually inseparable this day and the next.

My sorrow grew deeper. Pain bled from every pore.

I was witness to the departure of a pure soul. Say what you will about animals, when they love, they love absolutely. Would that we humans loved the same! Wave on wave…grief overwhelmed.

Too many hearts that once loved me have disappeared, one by one, over the course of these past two years. I relived each loss again…and wept…my tears spattering about Mopsy's mortal coil. She paid no heed. Her eyes betrayed that she was beyond noticing. Strange how Mopsy’s last days mirrored and echoed my Mother’s demise. We aged mammals tend to expire in similar ways, with similar symptoms and familiar consequences. I grieved for both souls...not for any flaws or failings, but for the beauties lost.

Mopsy survived the night, but woke locked in Death’s remorseless embrace. We spent our last few hours together, Mopsy, Death and I…and I pondered, sorrowfully pondered, the deaths of marriages, passions, parents and pets. Too many loves and lives have perished,
lately, leaving me an orphan.

I’m adrift in a sea of melancholy.

* * *

We are tethered to the earth, to our very lives, by the love of others, the presence and influence of others. One hopes the tethers are fine-spun gossamer. Would that we were all bound by beauty, love and tenderness!

Sometimes, though, the tethers chafe and cut…their coarse natures hurt and strangle. I’ve been tethered in many ways, by many souls. I’ve no complaints. After all, I chose my tethers. I was a slave to love…a slave to duty…and I paid the price.

One by one, heartache after heartache, death after death, my tethers have been torn loose or tossed aside. I am cast adrift in a sea of melancholy. Death, in its fearsome manifestations, shrouds my eyes from the sun.

I am free.

* * *

At A Window
By Carl Sandburg

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

* * *