How, During the Darkest Time in my Life, I Learned to Trust and Let Go

With help from the trees, a fountain, mud, and an angel

My marriage had ended the week before, and I was crying so much I’d begun to wonder if I’d dehydrate myself. Little did I know that this day, to paraphrase author Judith Viorst, was going to be the most “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” yet.

Today was the day I’d learn Maxie had died.

My friend had never even confided she was battling cancer; only her sister, husband, and children knew. So not only was I stunned silly, I was sick with guilt. Why hadn’t I sensed that something was wrong, very wrong?

Worse yet, what was up with Maxie? Why hadn’t she told us so we could help her?

Why deprive us of the chance to say goodbye?

It took me months to recognize the narcissistic hypocrisy seeding my thistly reaction. I withdraw when I’m ill — for reasons ranging from abhorring dealing with people when I feel like hell to not wanting a soul to see me when I look like it. Where’d I get off, not extending the same courtesy to my pal in a deathmatch with CANCER?

“She did it her way,” Maxie’s obituary concluded.

Amen, dear friend. You did. May the choir of angels greet you.

I love that line from the Catholic funeral mass’s In Paradisum. In the meantime, however, I needed a great big helping of heaven-on-earth.

Hello, eden — the park across the street.

eden has a lower case ‘e’ for two reasons:

1. Eden was made by God. eden’s rock walls, pebbled paths, and waterfalls were hardscaped; the lagoons and streams mouthed from the earth not by time and geologic forces but by excavators.

2. Still, the park was undeniably what mystics call a “thin place” — where the boundary between heaven and earth is, well, thinner.

Beings birthed by the Divine — ducks, geese, birds, squirrels, koi, turtles, and one lone white egret — thrived in eden. So too the trees, shrubbery, and an astonishing mishmash of wildflowers and perennials. I’d never seen such color, lushness, health.

I saw gardeners as well — but, I tell you, what maintained that place was its thinness.

Its spirit.

I paused within a favorite grove of Live Oak and, perched atop a low wall, told Maxie how much I loved her, how grateful I was for landing in 8th grade English and Drama with her. Then I recited my go-to verse for grief by Mary Oliver:

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help much.

I was sick unto death of Death. It still felt terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad to let my marriage and, now, Maxie go.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, And all manner of thing shall be well.

Lady Julian of Norwich

“Please send me a sign that Lady Julian wasn’t a whack job,” I begged the Divine. (The mystic’s “shewings” or revelations occurred during a life-threatening illness, as she received the Last Rites.) “I need some reassurance, okay?”

A twig snapped.

“There’s a rainbow,” a young woman with long, wavy, red hair called as she drew nearer.

I peered upward, through the sun-bathed trees, baffled.

The woman laughed, pointing across the lawn. “It’s in the fountain!”

I followed her gaze. All I saw were arcing, sparkling droplets against a cloudless sky.

“Keep looking,” the woman urged.

I stared and stared, then stared some more.

Did I blink…shift position…open spiritually? I don’t know but, suddenly, there it was. A ribbon of pastel colors in the cascade, as thick as if a child had colored them on construction paper.

You could say it was a trick of light.

You could say the red-haired woman wasn’t an angel.

Go right ahead and say that; you will never convince me. I’d asked for reassurance and received a rainbow. A long-hallowed symbol of Promise.

A multihued lifeline thrown from heaven, rescuing me from drowning in doubt and despair.

Perhaps we expect too much of winged happenings of light. We wait for the sea to part and miss the miracle of a bud unfurling. We wait for water to turn into wine and forget what an astonishment running water is — whether it’s in a brook, out of a faucet, or pouring from the sky. We wait in line for hours for the newest version of a laptop or smart phone but take for granted a bird on a power line. We camp out for a glimpse of a celebrity and miss the constellations in our hearts.

For whatever reason, I am reminded of a pilgrimage I made to the gardens of Versailles nearly ten years ago. There was so much gorgeousness that I took photos of even the mud. So what if all anyone saw was a mad American tourist? I saw Jackson Pollock paintings in charcoal, brown, white, grey, green, and black.

Muck commingles with miracles. You just have to look…then look harder, and trust.

All shall be well.

Not perfect. But well.