When a Beautiful Spirit Rides the Light

Photo copyright Aji, 2014; all rights reserved.

Early this morning, I was wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Sub-zero actual temperatures, frozen lines, seemingly endless inconvenience, all aggravating and aggravated by my apparent new normal, which is a significant hike in degree, intensity, and permanence of pain. Did I have cause? Of course. But it was still self-pity.

And then I learned that a friend from an online community, a beautiful soul if ever there was one, has entered hospice.

I've been so wrapped up in the busyness of our own lives, in my own pain, that I didn't even know she was sick. 

Had I bothered to poke my head out of my shell long enough to participate in another online community, I would have had some warning. My absence is all on me.

But this is not about me, except by way of offering a heartfelt apology for my own negligence, my carelessness, my thoughtlessness.

We met online, but somehow I always thought that someday I'd have the chance to hug her slender shoulders in person. She looked so delicate, but in my experience of her, she's always been so strong. She exudes gentleness and love — and a fierceness that manifests in her staunch support of her loved ones, a will of solid iron that I so admire.

We learned that we shared a history, or rather, an aspect of our respective histories, that I think neither of us especially cared to recall, much less to dwell on it, but it was another link of common cause between us. She also shared with me, and with the other members of our online community, the painful dance of her beloved niece with the cancer that would take that young woman's life at far too young an age. We were privileged to witness it, and to witness our friend's great love for and unwavering support of her niece through a time when there was no escape from pain and when it was clear that there would be no fairy-tale ending, and even to offer a tiny token to help her provide a distraction from the unrelenting physical distress.

For a while, we both were consumed with other things, but we reconnected again a couple of years later in that second online community. It was there that I learned that she and her husband celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary earlier this year — complete with before and after photos of her beautiful, beautiful face. 

This is a woman who prayed for my horse when he was dying.

He survived.

And J, I want you to know that I went out and spoke with that horse a little while ago. I asked him to send you some of his strength to buttress your own, now weakened by illness. I asked him, and the beloved warrior whose spirit he sometimes carries on his back, to guide you, to help you to the place you want to be now. I asked him to carry some of his strength to your loved ones, as well.

I don't know what the future, however long that is in this context, holds for you. I want to believe, desperately, that it is too soon, that it is not your time, that there is a miracle in the offing, just waiting to descend like the light in the winter sky. 

I know that's not realistic, and that you may not want it anyway. So all I will ask of Spirit, and of our spirit horse for whom you once prayed, is that whatever you, in the depths of your heart and soul, most want to happen is the gift that you are given. 

And so Wings and I send our prayers to Spirit, our strength to you and your family, our deepest thanks to you for your appearance in our lives, and our great love to you, all on the back of a horse named Ice riding the day's golden winter light.