After your death

Dear Stefan,

Everyday since Stephanie told me the news, I’ve driven to the sea, walked to the edge of the waves, and watched the horizon. I’m watching for how the colors shift suddenly, how white caps rise from nowhere, how diamonds dance. I’m watching, and thinking of you — and feeling the brace of it all; the brine, the beauty, the power, and how it shifts so abruptly with a single bank of clouds or a strong wind or a sudden spring rain.

Of course, it is an immense gift to be here, to be standing here, to have a whole world to wander wildly through. It is an immense privilege to have this body and breath, and it is astounding that we can forget, even for a moment, the miracle it is to inhabit this earth. It is astounding that we can forget to look at what is right in front of us – before the bank of clouds returns to dim the sky.

And it seems to me that you never forgot that – that you were always looking closely at what was right in front of you — the sea, the field, your children. It seems to me you stood at the shore of the world, and knew the miracle before you.

And as for me, I want to thank you for giving me something that is hard to come by, even in a lifetime of living.

I want to thank you for giving me the gift of belonging. Because In your eyes I felt as miraculous as any other part of the natural world – I felt I belonged as much as the sea and the field. As much as the cat curled in the sun, or the grasses in the garden.

I think you did that for nearly everyone you met. You made us all feel as if we really belonged. You looked into our eyes as you would the horizon – as if we were holy ground, just waiting to be noticed.

I will miss you. You have been there for us at the center of it all — in silence, in consideration, in quiet strength at every clamoring and every clang of the family bell. For me, you will always belong to the sea, and the field, and to your family who loved you beyond all words.

You will always belong to the world.

And as for the world, it belongs to those of us who show up to its shore with reverence and wholeheartedness – to those who remember the fleeting miracle of it all.