On a recent trip to the West Coast, it was almost as if the sea were sighing.
In every reach of the broken waves and the lacey foam rushing up the sand, I sensed a heaviness. For me, that rhythm of weight epitomized what I perceived as Nature’s sighs, as if the earth, the ocean, the sky, were exhaling some burden of impending change.
Sometimes the natural world, in all its creative wonder, expresses a revelation of sorts.
Sometimes beauty is revealed in loss.
I understood that message shortly after leaving the ocean for the desert, when at my 93-year-old mother’s bedside, her hand in mine, she exhaled her last earthly breath into eternity.
Who knows the exact timing of one’s departure in this world, but God alone? Science, the medical community, family, and friends, might all postulate the “when” of things, but really, the natural course of an earthly cessation, even for the aged, is often beyond human comprehension.
I am moved by the poetic sentiments of Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul ll). Note his perception of the uplifting stir in the air and his sense of maternal love at his mother’s gravesite:
Over this your white grave
Over this your white grave/
the flowers of life in white —/
so many years without you —/
how many have passed out of sight?/Over this your white grave/
covered for years, there is a stir/
in the air, something uplifting/
and, like death, beyond comprehension./Over this your white grave/
oh, mother, can such loving cease?/
for all his filial adoration/
a prayer:/
Give her eternal peace —/—Karol Wojtyla, Cracow, spring 1939
Beauty in birth.
Beauty in death.
Even beyond the circumstances of departure, be it expected or unexpected, natural or unnatural, beatific or horrific, there is a sovereignty in the passage from this life.
The earthly journey surrenders to what has always been, in a return to origin, a return to genesis. Alpha and Omega. Divine Love. The holy mystery is right there in the halls of the final heartbeat as it is in the very first heartbeat.
Those previous sighs of change and loss I experienced at the ocean had seemingly been swept together, as in a holy breath of Presence, as in the victorious welcoming of my mother’s soul—heaven bound.
From my beating heart to yours,
Thanks for stopping by. ♥
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Into Loving Eternity . . . .
Doris “Penny” Pettibone August 2, 1930-May 24, 2024