The Laughing Wolf

Rain

When you take your hat off, it is only the rain on your face.

Loss is a hard thing, as it should be. Yet, it is harder on many levels than most may think, for it tests us in the sincerity of our beliefs. We oft claim to want the best for those we love, but all too often our thoughts are not of them, but of ourselves. How often have you prayed for someone to live, to get better, or for something similar, not for them but out of fear of loss for yourself?

Loss is hard, it hurts, and we do not want to lose those around us about whom we care. Selfish, but true. We do not want them to go, no matter how great that which awaits, because it leaves us hurt and cold. Bereft of their physical presence.

Loss is hard, and we cry not for their pain and suffering, but for our own. Tears so oft are selfish in that regard. We cry for ourselves, our loss, our pain.

Loss is hard, but it is far better than retreat into the cold. Been there, done that, closed my circle of friends. No emotion, just calculation and a loneliness that never ends.

Letting others in is hard, for you know it will end and that loss will come again. Yet hard as that loss is, the light the love brings in is so much more.

In the afternoon, I sat on a log in a field, and said goodbye. For this one, I had warning and knew time was short. Alyeska the wolf has been on each day a blessing for a few weeks now, with cancer moving fast. Now his time was nigh, and I came to say goodbye old friend. Tis it truly better to know the date and time? With Mom, the cancer ate her slow, and we had time for long goodbyes; and, for her to waste into something I could lift and hold like a child, as bedding and clothes were changed. With Dad, cancer and emphysema took him, but the end was rapid with but a short time for goodbyes. WIth R, as with too many others, there was no time, no warning, no goodbye.

The last few years have tested my ability to handle change, my refusal to go back out into the cold on many levels. Such fear is not rational, for I can never be that again. Yet, I fear going towards it for that way is the easy path of true death. Death of the soul. I really should not fear that I could go that way, but by my standards I have not been tracking well of late on some levels. Emotional levels. R knew it and helped, though we never put it into so many words. Loss, pain, hardship, like madness, take a toll; please have exact change. Emotions run more than they should, and where and in ways they should not.

So I found myself in a field with the cold rain coming down, sitting on a log thinking these things, facing them. I will to will thy will and let that which is right be. It is about them, all of them, yet it is also about me. Not all such feelings are selfish and wrong, just painful and hard. Goodbye old friends.

I took off my hat, looked out and up, and welcomed the tears coming down from the sky. After all, when you take off your hat, it is only the rain on your face.

LW