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A Thousand Words

When I watched someone I love eat an ice cream cone recently, my heart broke into a thousand shards.  The way he relished his cone which I bought (I wanted to treat him to his first one of the season), did not trouble me in the way you may think.  But while I saw him bite off his cone in big inelegant clumps, eyes closed with pleasure, and chocolate on his chin, I witnessed his humanity in a way I had never seen it before.  And it broke my heart…

I think when we see someone we care about being human, vulnerable and utterly themselves, our soul reaches out to theirs in communion.  We want to touch them on the deepest level and hold on for dear life.   Yet at the same time, we are dowsed with sense of loss and longing too.  We know as beings on this dangerous tilting earth we could be torn from those we love at a moment’s notice or they from us, and it could all be gone – ice cream cones and friendships…love and hunger.

Moments like this are not to be dreaded however, they are to be embraced.  When we are lucky enough to see a beloved friend’s humanity, we have been given a gift of the divine.  It is a reminder that our experiences and our relationships are ephemeral – they will not last.  I was reminded of that last July when my younger brother died.  It seemed like just yesterday afternoon when he and I trawled an old bookshop together where he found an ancient atlas that he sheepishly carried out in his arms like a big lit birthday cake.  My memory of him that day formed a picture through the windshield of my car as I watched his grin over the dusty old book.  It only lasted a moment and but when I think of it now, my “picture” had a thousand words…

How many pictures can we paint this summer with those we love so much?  How many ice cream cones can we bear?

~

If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show the you I’ve come to know.

If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I’d spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away

~Bread

 

 

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