Looking back from 110 years… Encomium

The final Write Into Light assignment from Martha Beck’s class was fascinating. And it turns out that I was writing about my husband… that I hadn’t even met.

Here’s the gist:

You’re 110 years old and reflecting on life with gratitude for the pleasures, blessings and lessons along the way. 

There’s a catch though.  Half of them are actual events that happened in your life before the class and the other half are those that will come between current age and 110…. in 500 words or less. 

You begin with a list of happy memories from the past and then add future events to the mix in as much detail as you can muster.

Then you write.  Then you edit to 500 words that embrace the whole mix of it. 

This is what emerged for me.

Encomium For My Life                                         Brigette Nelson  8/4/18

My granddaughter is worried when I ask her to bring me a pen and that blank journal on the shelf. We’ve spent the morning with me telling tales of the men I’ve loved, from high school to the one she knows as Papa.  She was slightly scandalized by my tales of too public PDA in Italy and skinny dipping in our neighbor’s pool.  She was especially curious about how this old woman found love in her fifties and how we stayed so crazy about each other.  She remembers us dancing in the kitchen and holding hands sitting on the patio watching the stars. I tell her that we got over ourselves and just decided to love each other.  I sense her restlessness and remember my own.

From the window of my cozy room, I can see the Sonoran Desert and the trail leading to my beloved mountains where I found my version of God- in a thousand sunrises and thunderstorms.  My grandkids laugh at the little altars of stones, feathers and random flotsam and jetsam that I collected-my version of Rosary.  My daughter keeps the shells and shark’s teeth that we picked up in Rocky Point and along the 30A corridor.  They’re mixed in with all the arrowheads and rocks that my Dad and I found along the way.

Listening to the music from downstairs- from Broadway to Jimmy Buffet- I smile at memories of my daughter and our 3- day theatre binges in New York City and happy Thanksgivings by the ocean.  I miss that old beach house on 30A where you proposed.  It was the perfect place because you knew how much it meant to me.  My sister and I bought it after our parents died and scattered their ashes along the shores.  We got married there- me barefoot and you wading into the surf.  We both cried- all those years of learning to love each other from Paris cafes to labyrinths in France to our own Arizona backyard.  Trusting again.

I think of my parents, who would drive 3 hours with my sister and me for French pastry and who loved old Willie Nelson.  It wasn’t until I had lost a child and had one of my own that I understood their mix of fear and longing for something different.  How hard it was to stay together for more than 60 years-  How I longed find the faith to be seen in that way too.

I hear them gathering below- my son-in-law shucking oysters and my daughter opening the wine- all singing old Zac Brown.  I want my granddaughter to know how much she is already loved and how to find her footing again.   I smile and write these words- a toast for our last supper together when they bring my tray up later.

Dear One,

There was always only Love-

Even when it was hard and you

Couldn’t feel your way.

It was always enough

To walk through this grand adventure

With all of you.