Memories

"Winter didn't die, she was murdered and you are the culprit."


"Thirty days alone with the Savior, and an angel, and the devil, rapture and smoke- and I'm careful just not to say that I miss you, 'cause sometimes I guess I still miss myself."

This song, Pretty Girl From Locust, reminds me of the camping trip Beks and I went on last summer.

Something about the tinkering piano notes and the lulting guitar riffs cement the memories I have of those sleepy, early campground mornings.  It captures the quiet nature of the mountains, and glass-top lakes.

The lyrics are just haunting and mournful enough to tinge the memories with a pretty sort of sadness.  Which is what that trip truly meant to us- a pretty sort of sorrow.

So much happened that week-  I think there was a loss of life that greatly impacted us on that trip.

There was a loss of time- and a loss of connection to the outside world- that, when one is so unaccustomed to it, can bring insanity ever that much closer, making you feel even more vulnerable than you already are.

For me, there was a loss of denial about my mom's cancer- those walls I had spent seven years building were vigorously torn down within seven short days and I was left to pick up the ugly pieces and start over.  There was also a loss of distance for me- like the story of the prodigal son, I returned to my roots after a lifetime of being away and I had to face the god-awful person I had become, so far away from the beauty and love of the place that I had grown up in.

I had grown calloused, bitter, resentful and hardened to life at its' basest nature- like cement walls dividing a field, I had become a cold, hard exterior dividing my soul from my memories.

For both of us, I think, there was a loss of delusion, imagination and pretend.  As coping mechanisms for the normal drudgeries and complications of life, Becca and I had come up with this comforting, beautiful, but tragically made-up alternate version of reality.

It was a place we both loved beyond life, but as we braved the wilderness of the mountain, we had to realize it was stunting the growth, progression and natural beauty of our real lives.  That was scary and overwhelmingly hard to process when living in a tent in the middle of a forest hundreds of miles away from home with no, and I mean no connection to the outside world.

There was also a loss, almost, of determination as we realized we were in no way in control of our futures.

I felt like giving up entirely.  I think it's safe to say she did, too.

All of these losses were only solidified when the week was over and on the drive home we witnessed a sad scene- a terrible accident had occured between a motorcyclist and an SUV, and there was the motorcyclist, before any ambulance had arrived to cover him with a blanket and whisk him away, dead on the side of the road.

Neither of us have talked about that since.

It was a cold reminder after an insanely emotional week that life is incredibly short, and you never know when yours will end.

Now that almost a full year has gone by, and the wounds have mostly healed, and the processing has finally started to cease, I can confidently say that all of these little deaths add up to only make life more meaningful.

And even though, in some ways, it was the toughest week of my life, it was also the greatest.  Because of all that we overcame, all the new experiences we had, all of the tragedy that forced us to communicate and bond and rely on each other for survival, we became so much stronger as individuals and as friends, sisters.

Not to mention we did have some crazy good fun on that trip.

I'll never forget the yoga by the lake, the early morning fishing, the endless singing of "Just Around The Riverbend" whenever in the canoe, the splashing fights, the hiking, the endless eating, the day we spent driving all over the surrounding fields and towns and mountains, listening to the Beatles nonstop for six hours, exploring ghost towns and laughing.

The jokes, the notes, the pictures, the campfires, the dreaming.

Secret ceremonies by the lake at midnight- praying and holding hands and giving everything to God, together.

And so you see, now, what I mean by a pretty sort of sorrow.

Sometimes sorrow is God's most potent way of reading into our worlds, crushing everything with His hands, and then sending His Holy Spirit into the rubble to glue everything back together into something more beautiful than you could ever imagine.

And that, my lovers, is the most meaningful part of it all.