Maybe we are just all walking each other home… (An idea put forward by Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher).
My family is 7-days deep into a dreadful trauma and tragedy.
10 months ago, my exquisite 27-year old niece married the most wonderful man.
Their young lives were so full of promise.
Their love was palpable.
Their warmth.
Their shared values.
We were all so excited for them.
And then, last Sunday, the world turned black.
A trainer of pilots, the plane in which he was teaching plummeted to the ground.
The best of 2022 became the worst of 2023.
As I write this, she is beside his grave. 7 days ago he was with us.
I don’t know how he slipped through our fingers: slipped through hers. It was too quick. It was over before it had truly begun.
And now we are reeling; she is reeling.
I watch this bride-turned-widow shout words and shout questions.
“I’m a widow. My husband is dead. Why did this happen?”.
Trying to feel.
Only feeling.
Feeling nothing.
Rinse and repeat. Interminable.
The hell of grief.
The suffocating, unbearable hell of being left behind.
Of the worst abandonment.
I want to rescue her. Save her. Help her.
This is arrogance.
Nothing can spare her her pain, and her path ahead.
No word, no deed, no person.
All we can do for her is hold space, be close, and never forget. Bare loving witness to her journey, and provide refreshment where possible. All we can do is walk her home, and we must and will.
And then my thoughts turn to him.
My mind has been in many crevices and alleyways this week.
But today I’m most haunted by the idea that he was living out his last days, right amongst us, finishing his life. And none of us knew…
We didn’t know we were walking him home.
We were anticipating his life.
The sun was setting on him.
Did he know?
What if we’d known? Would we have held him differently?
It’s not about me. The agony and anguish belong entirely to his young wife. Her parents. And, my God, his doting, devoted parents.
But my mind’s eye loops through my last interactions with him.
Him recommending a particular book to me.
Banter with his wife about an upcoming trip they were taking, and various differences of opinion.
A beautiful photo I snapped of them, wrapped up in each other and smiling ear-to-ear, on my couch.
My husband over-salting the braai-meat we were feeding them, and much jest around that.
And always the obnoxious aunty-esque question about their family-planning intentions, and when we get babies. I so wanted their babies. And provision of some unsolicited advice cos “I’m a shrink and I know”.
I think he knew he was loved.
I think we felt like family. And I’m so pleased.
We don’t really know why the plane crashed, and that will all emerge in time. What does it matter…
But his aircraft no doubt lost engines, and we, on the ground lost engines too.
I realise, again, that despite passions, ambitions, dis-ease, anxieties, needs, wants and pursuits, we really ARE just walking each other home.
And how lovely if, between figuring out how to carry our own loads (a daily struggle), we can lighten the loads of the people around us, and provide comfort, consolation and encouragement on their journey.
I think maybe we did a touch of this for my nephew.
I KNOW my niece and her family excelled at it.
This is everything.
It’s aspirational; of course. How often we get caught up in minutia; tunnel vision straight into our own experience and the weight of what we carry.
It seems to me today that the quality of our lives exist almost wholly in our ability to love and connect with the people we hold dear, while we walk each other home.
