Today (Tuesday, Dec. 5) is the three-month anniversary of dear Janet’s death. The day snuck up on me a bit, but when I realized it I changed my plans and visited two favorite spots where I have previously sprinkled some of her ashes. It became a tender day.
 
I messaged a friend…

…and sat for a while on the bank of the pond, where I began to write…

Somewhere the sun is shining.
Somewhere the air is warm and lovely.
But in my grief, my heart and body can barely acknowledge these.
Yet, I know it is Gift. Pure gift. Pure comfort, like a soft bed and pillow on which to pour out my tears and sorrow.
Life is returning to this pond, which was bone dry 12 months ago after our long drought.
Here, life returns. Life replenishes, recreates, recycles, regenerates. Ducks and coots, fish and frogs, all back.
Even Janet’s ashes here may nurture new life. May they do that, please? She would want that.
Two dragonflies, Karey’s favorite, just flitted by.
Now Barber’s Angus Dei is playing in my earphones with its haunting, soothing vocalized chords.
A perfect wisp of cooling breeze now at my back and over the water.
Not only does life return here, but beauty returns with it. An orchestra of beauty. Beauty that insistently beckons and invites the mourner with darkened vision: “Behold the beauty of the world, behold the hand of the Lord. I have not changed. Your beautiful, beautiful love together with Janet has ended its earthly physical connection (though even that love continues in a different form). But beauty itself has not ended, nor even changed. Behold it, as you are able. I invite you to behold, and to rest. Even as the trees reflect off the shimmering waters, enhancing their gentle show of loveliness. Rest. Take comfort. Be at peace.”
 
…I received these words as I sat on the bank of the pond, and they meant a great deal to me. I truly felt refreshed and comforted. Then, as I began to pack up, John Rutter’s “For the Beauty of the Earth” began to play…

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our joyful hymn of praise

…For the joy of human love
Brother, sister, parent, child
Friends on earth and friends above
For all gentle thoughts and mild
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our joyful hymn of praise

For each perfect gift of Thine
To our race so freely given
Graces human and divine
Flow’rs of earth and buds of heav’n
‘Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our joyful hymn; our hymn of praise

 
Truly it all felt like Gift; like the Lord mercifully met me in my place of grief and ministered to me with comfort and beauty… the kind of beauty that says “Yes, this is the way the world works and always has worked. No life on earth is forever, human or otherwise. And yet, and yet, all of it… birth, life, death, and regeneration… all of it works together to create a beautiful tapestry.”
 
This was better than visiting a cemetery with its mostly man-made beauty. This truly was “the beauty of the earth,” an earth in which my beloved’s ashes continue to reside. Those ashes feed life; life I can see and appreciate. I might not claim that I “felt her presence,” but I did feel she and I were both there, in the same place; in very different forms, but each of us a part of the whole, her contributing to the beauty and me the beholder of it, bearing witness to it… to the glory of God, and as God’s gift of comfort for me on a tender day.

Cory
December 2023