We are just sojourners.

As always at this time of year many memories come flooding in. And I know, all too well, that they do fade over time even as I grope for more clarity. They lose much of their urgency and potency. This is a blessing I believe, bestowed on us mortals, so that all our days are not darkened by grief and other past matters.

 

For this I am grateful. But, as always, there is a consequence. If I want to recall the sound of Magucha’s voice and her sometimes (deliberately) mangled English – what we all knew as “Magucha speak”; if I want to recall the sound of her infectious laugh; if I want to recall the feeling of her “pata” (Portuguese for “paw”) - what she called her little hand - as it sought mine while we walked side by side, or resting on my knee while driving. I can’t. Those memories are lost to me now. 

 

But then, and maybe this is a good thing, I now can’t recall the sound of her angry voice either! Magucha had a quick fire Portuguese (Latin) temperament and was not easily crossed. And she didn’t mind who knew it!!

 

Also it matters not who we are, what we do or where we live, we are all, I do believe, just sojourners in this place. Or, if you prefer, wayfarers, on our journey through life.  

 

We meet wonderful people, as sojourners or wayfarers, and maybe fall in love and marry, as I did – rather, as we did - Magucha and I. For in us all there is a hunger for love, there is also pity in love, there is a power in love but also in a strange way, a kind of fear. To love someone needs courage. What will love bring? That is the unknown and the unknowable. Life is a grand adventure for the heart (always thought of as the seat of Love and many other emotions) but the end and what that entails is the mystery. I, however, also believe that love is eternal and is beyond knowing.

 

Behind all this philosophical conjecture the perennial, perplexing, questions remain – what is it that is present when someone or something is alive but absent when that same person or something dies? And why? What is the purpose of Life? We will never know of course, as it is beyond our understanding but, and I repeat but, I cannot believe that Life (however defined) appeared, ab initio, from stardust.

 

If, as is postulated, Life – or the bacteria from which Life, as we know it, is believed to have evolved – was deposited, carried by stardust, on the newly formed planet Earth over 3 billion years ago, the question remains, where did THAT bacteria come from?

 

I think I have always been an optimistic person and never been cast down for too long. Always have I tried to greet what Life has dealt me with a “what now?” rather that a  “why me?” It seems to work. For me at least. But sometimes it is hard. 

 

I have dreams and I can dream, can’t I, that in the “undiscovered country” to which we will all eventually travel, I will, again, see those whom I have loved? 

 

So, as always, it is poetry that I turn to for solace or, maybe, a better way to express the way I feel. Therefore, with no excuse or apology I offer the following by Max Ehrmann.  He, I do believe, must have experienced deep grief to write something as poignant as this:-

The Dead Wife

 

O thou whose lips I’ve pressed in hush of night,

Whose tiny hand has trembled in my own

Beneath the talking boughs the wind has blown,

Hid snuggly from the evening’s starry light –

O thou, my all, why hast thou quit my sight?

Thy straggling curls will no more touch my cheek,

Thy voice and smile are gone where’er I seek

With my watchful eyes and my strong passion’s might.

If all my soul’s deep grief thou now dost see,

If thou dost know the lonely inward tears

My heart hath shed along the saddened years,

Break through thy silent doors to life and me,

Who hourly watch and wait with trembling fears,

Lest in the realm of death I know not thee.