Yesterday, it was a beautiful sunny day, dry, cool early September morning here in Virginia, and I took myself for a walk.
I was in the midst of pondering a big question, and as I often do, I prayed, meditating on the mysteries of the almighty.
And just like that, I had my answer, as a gentle breeze kissed my cheek.
I recalled the words of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, “As a lump of salt thrown in water dissolves and cannot be taken out again, though whenever we taste the water afterward it is salty. Even so, beloved, the separated self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness from whence it came, infinite and immortal.”
And I imagined I tasted a little bit of her in that breeze, and I heard her voice. I called Anita “my beautiful princess” and she called me her “handsome prince” in a certain way, and I recalled a time, many decades ago, when she was laying sick and downhearted in bed, and I told her stories to cheer her up, and that’s where that came from, and that’s when I secretly decided to devote my life to her, and that whole life that we lived, beginning, middle and end, was just like one of those stories. No, really. Exactly like one of those stories, our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, and some parts of the stories I told her came true, just like I told her they would, because believe it, my friend, faith can move mountains, and some parts came true, but not in the way either of us expected, but always mixed, and like any good story, it makes you think.
And I’ll love her forever, and I won’t ever forget, not ever.