Letter: Look Up

We were wearily trudging back to our vehicle parked somewhere ahead – too far, to hear the grandkids moaning – after an afternoon hike to the beach.

We had enjoyed attempting to bomb a piece of driftwood into oblivion; clambered about among the rocks; pretended to fend off bears, snakes, and other non-existent figments of grandpa’s imagination.

What a delightful adventure.

But finally, unanimously, it was time to go home.

The night my wife died, just over three months ago, her homegoing was not unanimous.

Fifty years married, somehow even trudging along the trail carrying together the burden of cancer, I never, ever, really considered we might be reaching the end of that journey.

What a delightful adventure that half-century had been.

I did not want it to end.

Something happened on that return trail with the grandsons that happens often now in my life alone without my traveling companion.

There was the usual grumbling and complaining.  It was quite warm, even under the forest canopy.  ‘Are we there yet?’ was heard more often.  Distance increased between young hikers as weariness set in and the littlest lagged behind.  Joggers passed us going to where we had been, and then passed us again returning to where we all, eventually, were going.

Then I stopped. 

The grandsons gathered around. 

“What is it grandpa?”

“Look up,” I replied.

So, there we stood, the boys not so transfixed probably in their gaze as mine but I was mesmerized. 

The forest shadows made all the trees and the ferns and the moss indistinct, but caught in that partial darkness were the fine fingers of leaves spotlighted by the sun.  Just them.  Nothing else.  Attached somewhere but appearing as if suspended in space were these delicate displays of beauty as we looked up.

The Hebrew term for ‘look up’ means to ‘peer into the distance.’

And that’s more of what I do now, even as others, in a hurry to get wherever they’re going, pass me by.

Though also weary, I’m pausing more often, looking up, peering into the distance.