Last week, I went to my son’s grave with the pumpkin I bring him every Halloween. As I do each time I come to him there, I stand quietly and read the inscription it took me a year to find for the stunning piece of Westerly granite that stands guard over what is left of his body.
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, will direct your course.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
At age 45, I’d never imagined a task that involved searching for an epitaph for my youngest child’s gravestone. But that’s what I was faced with thirty-three years ago. I wanted it to be just right-- right to memorialize Geoff’s loving, generous and inclusive spirit, right with inspiration that might touch the hearts and souls of those who read it. And right in that it could ring again that raw bell of deep loss as well as challenge me and others to see the beautiful and crazy impermanence of living caught within the paradox of his dying.
The painstakingly hand-carved inscription always calms me, settles me into a place of balance and acceptance, just as I had hoped it would all those years ago. Gibran’s words (although I now think of them as Geoff’s message to me) feel like the perfect message for this week, these last few days of anguished, anxious waiting for the answers November 3 will bring.
Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay. I know how much you miss me and didn’t want me to die. I know you can’t see much clearly right now, but just hold on to your love for me and mine for you, and the blurriness will uncloud, a path will open and you will find another direction.
“Pick anything you want to believe,” a friend said to me at the reception after Geoff’s memorial service.
For right now, I’m going to believe in Gibran’s words, in Geoff’s message from whatever slice of the cosmos he resides in now, so far from our troubled world. And share them with you, my friends, for these last grueling days before we know the next gauntlet that will be thrown down to us.
It’s hard to have faith in much as we struggle with the what-ifs and if-onlies of this unique patch of history we inhabit, but right now I‘m deciding to take Geoff’s promise in deep once again.
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, will direct your course.
Be well, take walks, eat chocolate, hug the ones you love-- and try to remember this.
With love,
Sharon