Beauty of a Full Moon

A hurricane passed through the night my second husband, Stephen, physically left his body. Dan asked me, having come with friends to empty the room in the Veterans’ Hospital of personal things—“Did I want someone to come home with me?” I answered, “No.” The quiet of being alone sounded right.

Under the palms surrounding our Florida apartment, I sat for moments with my Taos drum beside the small brook, my fingers softly adding its voice to the night sounds.

Inside, a package from a woman in Pennsylvania who’d come to Stephen’s workshop waited to be opened. As I spread the pages of the book it contained at random, my gaze picked out one line: A storm comes when a great soul passes. Stephen’s departure was more than my intimate, palpable grief; it was a door opening to a higher level of consciousness that I felt asked to step through.

My realization is, “Truth may come in our vulnerable moments, offering a goal for us to grow toward, slowly or quickly, guiding us to new strength and understanding.”