It had been one year since she left us.
My wife of 50 years, the love and treasure of my life, the mother of our children and grandchildren, was gone.
Cancer won.
We all lost.
In her memory then I climbed.
There are two ways up that mountain, one with a view, and one (I was to learn otherwise) without.
Since it was a crystal clear day, I chose the route with the far-reaching scenes of the valley way below, the distant snowcapped mountain much, much higher and far, far away.
At the top I sat for a long time and thought about our last days together.
I had read to her again from our favorite romance novels, something we had done a half-century before.
It made her laugh – and laughing mattered much in those final precious times as I sat very close to her as she laid on the couch – when extemporaneously I would insert in the text my own flowery description of what, if I had written the love story, I would have seen.
“Butterflies flitted about,” was the give-away. That’s when she knew I had departed from the script and the smiles began.
And that’s what I discovered when I went back the next day to that same mountain and climbed again.
A butterfly.
Covered with the forest’s tears, the four leaves of the plant formed a butterfly in repose, resting, weighted down, as if awaiting the warming of the day to release it from its burden to give its wings freedom once again to soar.
There were more tears underfoot as I took the trail quite evidently far less traveled that second day when I went back.
The whole mountain was encased with fog. No far reaching vistas, no splendor or majesty.
Or so I thought.
Placing one foot carefully in front of the other – both because of the steepness of the deer-like trail, and so as to not disturb what I saw at my feet – I reclimbed the mountain but this time through the unearthly silence of the deep woods, my labored breathing the only sound.
The whole forest was crying. Tears from the fog lay everywhere on everything.
There is such beauty in a forest’s tears.
There in the woods deep, the trees weep, and standing quietly you can almost hear their tears fall.
So indicative of the path ahead is the day I went back.
Slower steps.
Watch for beauty.
It’s often right there in front of you.
The day I went back I discovered the way forward.
