IN THE MOURNING

                The sun came up today.  It rose above from the horizon into a band of clouds, cresting again and splintered upon the crown of a barn behind our home scattering light in fractal rays from sky to earth.  I went outside to witness, and my youngest son joined.  He played with “his kitty” which acts more like a dog than cat, following and playing with my son where ever he goes.  All the world around us was Light.

                It was a stark contrast to the thoughts that ended my evening, learning of the loss experienced by a friend.  Someone dear to her took their own life, and she was at a loss for words, thoughts, and reached out searching for anything for perspective.  After learning of her loss, I watched the sun set with colors more muted than most nights. The night was clear, and a sliver moon shone above as I left the field without an answer. 

                I left in darkness.  I thought of my own known losses by the same means.  I have lost more Marines to suicide than I did in war: good men, great men, who burned too fast and one day became empty when there was nothing more to fuel their light.  I have thought and danced with the final flicker, but never pinched my fingers to its flame, putting it forever out. 

                My flame stayed lit. 

                Life has many mysteries; its end, perhaps its greatest.  I don’t know why we are given the joys that we are, our hardships the same.  I don’t know why we cry in both extremes, are moved in our souls like cycles of days and seasons: light and dark, our winters, springs, summers, and colors of our falls.  I know little of this life.  I have lived but thirty-five years in its experience.  I may be granted many more, or leave this world today.  I do not know, and that too, is one of life’s mysteries.

                To say I don’t know why some are drawn into a darkness they do not perceive that they can overcome, that there is no escape but one from the condition they conceive, would be untrue.  I believe I have an idea.  We never know the shadows in the souls and worlds of others, how far they cast, how dark they show, whether there is truth or only phantom to their form.  Some have demons in their histories, others fears of a future seen as fate.  Whether they are real and true to us, they are true to the ones that know them, and there are times such may blind us to the beauty and wonder in our present when intertwined with pain.

                Of those I knew who extinguished their own flame, I still love them.  They did more in their lives than they could ever see.  If they had, their fate would be different, but it is not.  I hurt that they did not see the full blessing that was them, the light others witnessed even when enveloped in their own darkness.  That is what hurts me, not their end.  I remember their life, not their end.  I remember the light that they gave and the good that they lived: the so often selflessness they showed that went unanswered—not by neglect, but in failing to see with their same eyes—in their own time of darkness. 

                I believe their souls are sound.  Maybe I break with some religions, but I do not believe God damns souls so deeply sad.  If in their departing, we still feel love—and we ourselves are creations in God’s image—God’s love holds too. 

                I don’t believe in damning, condemning what is already done.  There is nothing we can do.  But we can decide how to proceed, what we will take, and leave behind, from the happening.  Hurt has a reason.  Pain has a purpose.  We must accept, endure, and grow from it as it shows; but there is more to life still. 

                LOVE.  Love is light, and it returns to us each dawn when we make it through our night.  This is what I witnessed in my mourning sky. 

                When I think of the departed, I do not think of the end.  I remember their life.  I remember their light, the love they lived and shone on the world, and when I do, light returns to where a darkness held before.