September 5: Headline, Artifacts of Love, Linda Gregg, "Everyday Rice," Confessions of Saint Marty

Taken earlier when Ives and the priest had first arrived, the photograph showed the grandmother wrapping her arms around Mr. Ives, their expressions sorrowful, intensely sympathetic, perhaps even understanding.  The headline above the photograph:  "Forgiveness?"

Ives tries to salvage something out of the wreckage of his son's death.  Rather than existing in a constant state of disbelief and fury, he chooses to walk a different path:  forgiveness.  It's not an easy choice for him.  It's a path still littered with crushing grief and doubt in God.  But Ives tries to create something beautiful out of the debris of his love for Robert.

Each person's life is full of ruins and artifacts of love.  Like a child, every love grows and matures and changes.  For example, the passion I first felt when I met my wife has grown into something stronger, steadier.  There have been lots of storms along the way.  Mental illness.  Addiction.  Separation.  There have also been lots of golden times, as well.  Pregnancies.  Births.  Trips.  Birthdays.  Anniversaries.  That's all part of the deal.

My daughter is starting high school on Tuesday.  Pretty soon, she will have to think about what she wants to be when she grows up.  When she was in elementary school, she wanted to illustrate children's books.  I'm pretty sure her aspirations have changed.  She's a normal high school freshman.  Translation, she has no idea what she wants to be.

I remember her first day of preschool.  When she climbed the steps of the bus, she looked like a jittery rabbit in an open field.  When she got home, she climbed onto my chest and slept for two hours as Frosty the Snowman played over and over on the DVD player.  I held her and said to myself that I would never let anything hurt her.  Ever.

Of course, that's an impossible promise to keep.  If you have love in your life, you will also have hurt and pain.  The stronger the love, the deeper the hurt.  My daughter really loved my sister, Sally.  The day my sister died, my daughter fell apart in my arms.  I couldn't protect her from the ruins.  Now, she's rebuilding her life around the crater of my sister's absence.

That's what we all do.  We love.  We lose.  We love again.  Over and over.  Layer upon layer.  It's the archaeology of life.

Saint Marty hopes that he doesn't have many more ancient pyramids to uncover any time soon.

Everyday Rice

by:  Linda Gregg

Some kinds of love
leave only wreckage behind, as war does.
The world creates itself out of the debris.
Greece at its finest left ruins
and the clanging silence.  The world keeps
the damage along with the patches of light
between these overlapping branches of aspen.
Akhmatova used Dostoyevsky's description
of Kirilov after he hanged himself,
dangling near the cupboard.
There is the smell of narcissus blooming
as I walk across the cabin to rinse the rice
five or six times before making it into dinner.

Confessions of Saint Marty