We were driving home from dinner last night, just me and R. I found myself…
I always thought, one day, I will figure it all out. The meaning of it all - of God, and you and me, and what is left when it is all gone. So, I searched. I pleaded in church pews and devoured books. I avoided the reality of evasive and unsatisfactory answers with the pure passage of mindless time, delving into pursuits that could fill the void of silence. One day, I thought, I will know God and what it all means. Then, I will have Become…me and what I am supposed to be.
But, I am beginning to believe that I may have been looking in all the wrong places. Last Thursday, I found myself dialing my mother, as I sat on the ground crying into the phone. I’m dealing with things now that I couldn’t last year, I said.
Like what, she asked.
I paused.
What has caused this feeling, of my soul lying outside my body? Of being torn apart, a pain that becomes painless?
It's just him, I said finally, it's just purely Ben - the essence of him and how much I love him and miss him. It is finally only about…him.
Last year on this day, I could touch him, and now I cannot.
And I continued crying.
Through the tears, I began to wonder if God is in the places I have been avoiding. Possibly my search has been far off point. For instance, I’ve never been a “toucher”…I tend to avoid showing my emotions or letting others in. I avoid touch, and being touched by anyone I could truly love,
and lose.
It’s the braille of their body that gets me. What you can read through each caress, the energy pulsating through them, and if connected by touch, then on through me. It is the love of you are here, but, one day, you may not be. And, if I truly come to know you, love all of you, then the pain would be the kind that eventually becomes painless.
But, what if it is not as easy as I once thought, to find God? To find meaning? Maybe it is not in a church pew, or a book, or even in the dirt of the Earth. Maybe it is in the energy of all of them, together, flowing through the touch of you and me. And, what if you never truly live unless you have said the words it is just him and someone has said the same about you? What if that tearing outward of the soul, the painless pain is so simply the core of God, and you and me, that we almost miss it for it can be as gentle and quiet as a soft caress? And, what if that painful love is what is left when it is all gone?
