Go as a river
In traditional time, one Sunday this month, one door closed.
No more dams, no more locks.
Just a river and its banks. Free.
— Nicole Miller
I am sitting in my kitchen, looking out the window.
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and yet the world is dark today and I am sad.
My friend died on Sunday
I have no words, and yet I am trying to make sense of it all here, through words.
She was a beautiful soul who had to fight many battles and along the way showed me how to live life, in all its glory but also in the dark, horrible corners. She always had words to what I could not grasp. She translated emotions so I could understand them. She was funny in a dark humour kind of way. She was also a witch, connected to what’s beneath and above. She was a goddess and a snake woman.
Sunday afternoon I passed her hospital and waved from afar, not knowing that it was at about that time that she left this world.
Sunday evening I could not fall asleep, tossing and turning until I started to have a strange cough and I knew she was there and I smiled through my tears.
She was tired, done with all the fighting.
She walked
through her life
tired
from the
mighty wings
upon her back
—Atticus
I will sit at the bottom of a big tree, my back to its bark and soak up the earth’s energy of which she will always be a part. I will listen to the birds as if they were talking about her, I will hold a branch as if it were her hand, I will soak up the forest smell knowing her scent is in it.
The forest surrounds, grown so tall that daylight is subtle and soft,
and the dark is never far.
In this place, past, present, and future are now. — Nicole Miller
I will sit at the riverbank and watch the water flow by. I will put a hand in to feel the cold displacement it creates. I am searching for you in the air, the rain, the river and seem to have lost you.
But there it is, as it has always been, home and belonging in the scent of smoke and earth that is you.
Heart and lungs full, yes. But we know life is in the exhale, not the inhale. Would you hold your breath if you thought it were your last? — Nicole Miller
If you are a drop of water, then you will evaporate halfway; but if you go as a river, you will surely reach the ocean. – Thich Nhat Hanh.
Go as a river my friend.
Beautiful like she was and touching as you are !