The Way Station – A Mourner’s Tale

I can remember hearing, “Life has a very brilliant and unique way of preparing you for death.” It’s not until after the funeral, the hugs, the stories, the tears and the family gathering fade to recent memory; it becomes crystal clear the intended audience of that statement was never those left to pick up the pieces of a broken heart.

The suitcase filled with treasured keepsakes and cracked photos of distant memories strains to stay closed, like a greedy miser desperately squeezing his white-knuckled hands around all his most coveted things. It is a futile attempt to bottle the feelings and experiences of a lucid dream from the past before waking. No matter the space inside, there is never enough room in that suitcase for a grieving heart.

The Measure of a Mile

The ride to the airport became a pilgrimage through the past, littered with familiar childhood haunts and threads from an old life. My heart cries with the naked, inconsolable grief of a wounded child, desperate to run back to the safety of warm memories, filled with those who have passed. It is my heart slowly drowning in a pool of tears.

“I just want to go home.”

It is a phrase which repeats over and over as the memories bounce and shift like a scene from a broken celluloid film projector. Once the airport comes into view, my nostalgia disappears, forcefully evicted from my focus like an unwanted squatter, and the harsh glare of reality crystallizes the understanding home is now a feeling to capture rather than a place to go.

Such a hard, cold reality.

As the hallowed gates of the TSA checkpoint inch ever closer, the odyssey becomes less pilgrimage and more the final walk from the Steven King Book, The Green Mile. A gale-force torrent of embittered travelers arguing, crying, screaming, laughing and playing weave a rich tapestry of textured discord. When the heart is tired, the harsh fabric morphs into a comfortable, numbing blanket of white sound. It’s a confusing paradox being crushed by humanity, yet bathed so thoroughly with the feelings of isolation and grief.

After receiving final judgment and a virtual strip search from the TSA clerk, the Promised Land beyond the pearly gates become a cathedral sanctified with the incense of stale doughnuts and heat lamp pizza. It is filled with bad food choices, prayers and empty promises from travelers desperate to get to destinations throughout the world. In the eye of this storm, it becomes a refuge of haunting memories which neither Edgar Allan Poe nor Stephen King could sufficiently capture. While isolated with thoughts, memories and conflicted emotions, it's a chance to re-live an entire life of pride and regret between the spaces of flight updates and gate changes blaring over loudspeakers.

Reflections and Vicissitudes

One significant, unexplained mystery the universe holds is how the airport terminal carries a sentence of solitary confinement for a traveler mourning in the midst of borderline anarchy. Once at the gate, there is nothing but time…

Father time – he is the ever the confused and relentless taskmaster.

He is the intemperate, reactionary toddler quick to steal away the people and things most significant to us in the cruelest, knee-jerk, and most uncompromising ways. The tick tock of toddler time’s clock reminds me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo shouting “MINE” as his grubby hands steal time at moments most precious. Father time is also the uncompromising, tin-eared warden, slowing things down to be certain a full measure of misery is served. There is no compromise to be had and no plea to be heard. The response is always the measured the tick of the clock.

A memory bubbles to the surface during this exile in my mind.

She had a unique way of capturing and distilling thoughts and feelings, and this memory contained some final thoughts from her about life and time. Within the span of six years, she lost her remaining family. First, it was her mother, then her youngest brother and finally her oldest brother – all during midlife. As she lived her life and waited for her moment, she encapsulated her thoughts and feelings so eloquently.

“You never want to be the last apple on the tree.”

I hope her homecoming was nothing less than a hero’s welcome. She was a hero in the eyes of the legions who loved her. Meanwhile, father time will watch over me to be sure I serve my full measure.

At the most recent Academy Awards ceremony, Meryl Streep’s speech attracted an absolute frenzy of attention for the overt political overtones. One sentence captured my attention. It was the line Meryl Steep attributed to Carrie Fisher, “When life breaks your heart, use the pieces to make art.”

It's not a masterpiece of literature, but sometimes allowing a lamenting inner child to finger paint with a rainbow of diction can create accidental abstract beauty.