The Mighty Viking

For two weeks now, my heart has sat idle, numb, stunned, boggling without comprehension at the swirling maelstrom of tears that flowed out of the hole your life‘s departure left in me.  How can it be that you‘ve gone?

You always were such a happy, mischievous wanderer.  

But how is it now, that you can find a place to wander, where I cannot search and find you?

Your whole life was spent finding places I‘d never been, physically and metaphorically.  Your laughter at each new trick, each new hiding spot, every road you‘d disappear down, waiting to be found, still rings in my ears.  Even when your body failed you, you found a way to stretch my horizons in search of you, to fix what you could not, to understand the language you didn‘t know yourself, to bring you in again in a safe place.

How can it be that you‘ve wandered too far for me to find you?

My heart has been stopped now, for nearly two weeks.  But today, it hurts.  

It has healed some from the shock, and re-awakened with an awful hurt.  And the tears that flow through the wound drip down my face, down this cliff with the rain, and into the Sea below.

And so, as I have in the past, I look beyond where they flow into the Sea for an answer.

It was in the Sea, and under the Sea, that I learned to search for the unfathomable.  Here on the shore, where the sand turns to foam and the foam to green waves and spray, and where beyond lies dark, brooding storm-swells, I am awakened from my languish by the sting of the wind-driven rain, and by that peculiar combined scent of life and death that a sailor knows best.

I know this Sea.  

I know that beneath it, wind and rain don‘t matter much.  And so maybe I‘ll stand here all day, letting the wind and rain wash my wounds, watching them return quietly to their own Father, looking and listening for signs of your passing.

I know you.  

I know that when I find you, you‘ll dash off with your arms swept back, with a squeal of laughter trying to make one last escape.  We‘ll laugh together as I snatch you up and we tumble in a heap, at yet another great game.  And you will be safe again in my arms, my son.

But I don‘t know the Sea into which you‘ve gone.  Not yet.  It is not for we with bodies to know it yet.  

And so today, and until that time comes for me to slip away from this body and enter that Sea, my heart hurts.  

Until I know you‘re safe, it will hurt.