Valleys of Death – Missing Girls

Greetings Dear Reader,

For those of you who do not know me personally there are islands of loss in my life.  I mentioned the first; the loss of my Grandfather.  The two others that are the most significant are both in Georgia as well.  It is one of the reasons that instead of visiting the state I usually take it on as a leaden shawl.  Just being in the south feels burdensome to me.  The climate, the food, and even the plant life seem armed against me at all times.  Add to that the emotional firestorm that lives inside me when I am here and it is only my faith that sustains me. 

After the loss of my Grandfather I spent a great deal of time in the Valley of Death.  Encounters with my biological father and the pressures of the women who ruled my young life were whittling away at my spirit in ways I did not understand.  Two decades apart two other women entered the scene.  Both arrived already walking in their own Valleys of Death. 

The first was my sister Sarah.  She was a focus of joy and the possible as my mum carried her.  Her death just before birth was the first I had heard of such things outside of dramatic movies.  I was a teen and mired in my own storms.  The damage this did to my family was not clear to me for many years.

The second was my daughter Rachel.  She too walked the Valley before she got the chance to really live.  That loss continues to echo almost daily within me.  I see her specter in my Sons and they too carry this loss and its resultant losses even in manhood.

Both of girls stand sentry over my life.  The losses are never truly resolved.  That lack of resolution has caused to make some very poor and very fine choices.  Such is the way of deep abiding pain from sources without answers.  Returning to Georgia always makes these wounds fester.  I am never sure why and this is the first time I have truly faced the feelings evoked by such things.

March and April are the months in which these girls were born and lost.  Spring brimming with life in the south is a Valley of Death for me.  I love these girls dearly.  I believe firmly that God knows what he is doing in such matters.  I am thankful that they were spared from the malignancies and my poor choices that have marked the ensuing years. 

I also have moments where I wish I could share things with them.  I wonder what they would be doing and how their lives would have unfolded.  I am thankful they were not party to my failures but would have loved them to see the beauty and wonder of the world.  They cannot come to me but I will go to them.  Hope and faith sustain me as I journey on but right now, in this Valley of Death that I visit they are here with me but so elusive.  How I deal with death says much about my faith and how I deal with life.  I love my Sister and my Daughter.  Today and for the death march that is spring I also feel their loss more deeply than usual.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.- Emily Dickinson

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a home owner. He brings new and old things out of his treasure store."