Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Glendalough... never was grief like thine



I was happy I was asleep when the news was announced from the USA on May 1st... On Dublin time, I have early morning memories of being awakened at dawn by light drifting in, the caw of a faroff bird sounding forelorn that reminded me of the oak tree owl that hooted night after night just before my mother's heart attack. I turned over wanting more sleep in a haze of dreams and past memories. I don't know why I never checked my email that morning when I finally placed feet on the floor and chose to pray as the phone rang and I let it go to voicemail. I didn't hear the news until I stepped into a car and was told.

I said not a word about that day nearly ten years ago when somehow everything changed for me. A soul shattering silently when you are defined by a moment in time that you cannot explain. The echo was with me in a car ride to Glendalough. A most perfect place for a most unperfect bit of news as your mind travels back and you wrestle to stay in the present.

I went to a place of music whispering through the trees and skipping across water rippling in the near quiet. Voices of happy children looking for fairies in the hills. Walking past St. Kevin's Cell and hearing the lyrics pass through me still, "Here might I sing, no story so divine; never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine! This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise, I all my days could gladly spend." And I wondered, if He walked here with me now would He be filled with sorrow?

We can be so wonderful and so terrible both. Do the angels really envy us? I would think not. So in the midst of the colors of life in green and blue in this sacred place of old, I traced footsteps of times past and recollected my life in the presence of new friends. I left the memories on a trail up a hill in Glendalough and will let the divine spirits catch them and keep them for me, I have let them go.