Deluge

Awakened at 4 a.m. by singing water. Steady rain trickling outside my bedroom window. Blessed rain flushing the summer layer of grief-struck grit and wildfire ash onto streets, into gutters, onward to streams and rivers, away to that place where Time goes to die. Gentle rain that falls on the just and the unjust, and people like me who are simply awake too early with a lot on their mind and no regard for virtue.

Yesterday afternoon my daughter drove me home early from a family overnighter with our grandsons at the Johnny Gunter place. I wanted to attend a memorial service for a friend I had known since kindergarten. She and I were kindred spirits. We rode the grade school bus together. Got good grades. Had tortuous paths that eventually led to graduate school. She loved that I called her my blue-collar Ph.D. buddy from east Springfield. Twenty years ago we reconnected through a series of small miracles. I needed help finding my way out of a dark trench I had dug as a place to shelter from a series of life missiles being lobbed in my direction. Some deep intuition told her that my writing was a way for me to remain okay. She cajoled, encouraged, held me accountable. I am filled with gratitude for her foresight and tenacity on my behalf.

We stayed in touch, and over the last year had some embarrassingly long phone conversations. My phone grew so weary during one marathon session that it died in mid-sentence. She told me things had been rough. I knew she had nearly died in a health incident two years back. More recently there had been a rocky exit from a career teaching job at the local community college where she had helped thousands of women regain their dignity and their lives. Other scars were deeper still. Much deeper. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, on justice and injustice.

Yesterday afternoon the rain had not yet fallen on anyone at the memorial service. The storm was only a thin duck-wing overcast spreading toward town from the west, carrying humid air that might have stuck to my skin had it not been moved by small breezes. The church was spacious, the service not heavily attended. Everyone was masked. I felt safe in Covid terms but unsettled at the prospect of speaking. I spoke anyway, described our relationship and what she meant to me as succinctly as I could.

After everyone had spoken, her younger brother took the mic. He was a pastor at the church and had organized the service. The truth began to descend in a small spatter of drops that gradually built into a downpour of disclosure. In an extraordinary act of bravery, he flushed away the accumulated dust covering his sister's years-long addiction to alcohol. My brilliant beautiful intuitive compassionate friend had died from addiction.

When the storm of revelation ended, everyone in that cavernous room ceased to breathe. Then the air became bright and clear. People seemed to glow in the new light. All who had come to grieve and revere my friend inhaled the cleanliness. They reached out to hold this grief-stricken man who had told us the truth and now stood at the mic like a spent cloud. He had done this for us. He had done this for himself. Confessionals are sometimes complex.

On this mercifully soaking morning, dishrag dawn seeps in. Newly-washed trees wave silhouette leaves in currents of air swirling in cool eddies around my legs. But the truth is not all rain-scrubbed and clean. Downstream, the water runs gritty and turbulent. My friend is gone. I now know that her meme-ish repetition that looked on the surface like a threatening deluge of early dementia was more likely because of intoxication. I will never know the truth about the deepest scars she shared. Rain falls on the known and the unknown. Together they form a mystery.

My friend, I will not pass judgment on you. But I will struggle to reconcile your duality. You were a laughing compassionate larger-than-life storm that washed and healed our wounds. You were water to our drought-stricken roots. You gave us what we needed, on-demand, just-in-time. But your ferocious giving was aided and abetted by something that eventually put an early end to the unique force of your life. Now you are a wisp, winging east over the mountains. In the growing daylight you left behind, the just and the unjust and the deserving and the unworthy must move ahead. You did this for us. You did this for you. Martyrdom can sometimes be complex.

At least I had the chance to tell you that I loved you.

And for you, my lovely one, a Haiku to help you on your journey:

Yours was eclipse light,

an intensity bent hard

around black shadows.