She sat in the quiet and collected herself, or was she collected by it. Swallowed up by reflection. And the rain pummeled the tin for hours on end and if she didn’t know better she thought it might never end.
But she peered ahead and she knew from reports, that hours from now it would all be dry. And the sky would find peace and quiet again from the raging rains of biblical proportions. But until then the quiet is so loud while the clouds open up and release their crocodile tears.
She held her own back because it would sound redundant and too cliche to let them roll down the cheek while they fall from the sky. This is heaven’s day to rain down. Hers will wait.
Nestled in the quiet, the disappointment and the dreams she released seem to act out and cry for attention like a parlor clown. Needy and demanding.
It occurred to her the other day that each day feels borrowed, like a library book which will need to be released back. That ever since she stepped into that place, on the generously other side of the half-century mark, there is no time like the present for all of it. The days become numbered, fragile and fewer. Marking them important, marking them royalty, holiday, worthy of celebration. Just for being. Each is exceptional, worthy. It was always that way, only now it truly is. She decrees it as law, for her life.
So she resolves to speak love more, forgive more swiftly and loudly, to create more art for the one single solitary sole that may be in the path of it, and to laugh.
Like the raindrops lodged in the screen so tight, she holds on to her saline tears and waits for release. Because today there is joy in the drenching wet grey world, and there is hope, though hiding out somewhere. Perhaps in the white and weary sky.
Because the weather wants to mirror her mood, or is she simply reflecting external conditions.
And she knows at the end of the winter there will be a spring and at the end of the sadness there will be joy. She knows well from the past and the present tells too. There are visible signs in the vine, it will bloom.
On the to do list there, written in stone, the mundane, though joy-giving things are outlined to be done. There is folding and washing, sweeping and such. There is walking and splashing with dogs in the rain. There is shaking the remnants of last nights bad dream. And peeking round corners for surprises from Him. There are phone calls and letters to a girl in Peru, and making the trip home from school seem special indeed. Homemade soup is always comforting on days filled with rain. And by evening they all will come home once again.
There are poems to be written and prayers to be prayed.
And she knows from reports that the rain will soon end and the quiet loud will become quiet again.Recede with the waters that look like a flood.
It wouldn’t be pollyanna at all if she said, the sun waits to shine at the end of this day.
(author’s note: this was the end of the post until the phone rang. This is my revised ending.)
And a phone can ring in the middle of a life and speak words that a mother could just die from, the shared grief shatters the soul like the rain on the tin.
We lost a young friend the age of my son just hours ago. And so fragile and breakable is indeed life and our hearts.
Lord, mend and heal and quiet the loud cries of your people. Now we do join the tears of the heavens with our very own.
Joining Jen and Heather and Emily Wierenga.
elizabeth w. marshall 