Moments like These

We all have those moments, don’t we.

Those times where we let ourselves go to those places that we usually avoid.

To those very tender corners of our hearts where we fear that if we dance too close we will fall off the edge of sanity and not be able to get back up. Maybe even be crushed into a thousand pieces.

As I write these words that is exactly what I’m doing. In fact, I am listening to music that I used to listen to with my kids when they were younger. With all of them, though in particular with Hannah, my oldest, who died in October of 2015.

I’m sitting next to a lamp on my porch here in the jungle as the insects sing by the tens of thousands, typing out whatever words want to come out. The music plays on my cellphone as it lies on a stool next to me. I find myself sinking deep into the lyrics and the beautiful, haunting melodies. It is as if a heavy weight of thick emotion has been chained to my heart, dragging it down, down, down. But with such grace, such compassion, such tenderness, such meaning.

Here’s the thing. I’ve never had the kind of connection with anyone else like I did with her. Not on Earth anyway. It just was. And it was beautiful. And I’m not sure I realized it until she was gone.

And now, in those moments when I want to truly share my heart, when I feel that familiar ache to reach out to another soul, just to be heard, to share, to join, I realize that she would be the one. That no one else can seem to fill that void or meet that need. She would be the one I would call to connect, to feel loved, to feel held.

So I’m doing it anyway, calling out to her. Smiling and crying, my heart reaches out. I feel her with me, within me, near me, around me. Part of me. I always will. That’s just the way it is.

No, I do not have her hand to hold or her hair to touch or her eyes to gaze into. But I do have her heart. That never left.

And that same heart is one with mine.

This I have discovered.

In moments like these.