I was enthralled by her retelling. Her hand holding her daughter’s. Her husband took his life. She did not know why.
I listened and agreed, there is yet, no reason why. They’d unraveled, retold, no answers. Nothing to have known.
The pauses are long sometimes. Have they more to say? Are there replies that might heal? We pause.
The room is still; but, not uneasy.
She reaches into her purse, I figure to fill empty space, maybe look for Kleenex or phone.
Instead, she finds a book and she reads to us about grief and the only thing that has brought comfort, she adds.
“Grief” she read aloud, is hard and it is unpredictable and onerous in its coming, occasional going and coming again.
Still, if there is the opportunity to notice beauty, then there are moments that feel less like grief.
Oh, I thought, the noticing makes the difference…yes, me too.
I lead the meetings and I’m awkward at times and I’m sad later, not during,
having heard their stories.
I take them with me home.
But, I listened as she read from little green book and my eyes welled up as she offered hope to the ones who were there to make her hopeful, help her make sense of her senseless.
So, I cried a little in the presence of her bravery on that, her first time at support group.
I woke at 5 the next morning, thinking of beauty, I drifted and slept for a little longer, more pleasant.
Ventured down the hall, good morning pats on heads of dogs and then walked outside with them onto grass barely daylight lit.
Tennis ball tosses, one or two and then I look down on shadowy ground obscure.
One, I see and reach down to collect it, then two, three blue feathers at my slippered feet. Not too many know, my place of settling, everything an arrangement of three.
And I’m thinking still, two nights later about the complexity of pattern, of life, of grief, of brave recitation and of my mind
that woke with thoughts of beauty and followed to find it there.
Thinking now of all of the all togethers of beautiful noticing.
God is everywhere.
Don’t forget to notice.
All together beautiful.
Lisa Anne Tindal 