Grief

"You know, when you're young, God sweeps you up.  He holds you there.  The real snag is to stay there and to know how to fall.  All those days when you can't hold on any longer.  When you tumble.  The test is being able to climb up again.  That's what I'm looking for.  But I wasn't getting up.  I wasn't able."
-Colum McCann, Let the Great World Turn

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May 15, 2010 -- St. James
She is familiar, now, to Father Benedict, the girl who comes into the sanctuary with her head covered.  With her head bowed.  Tall and thin, like a whisper in the early morning stillness.  She comes in with the still-pale dawn, or creeps in on the advent of night, when dusk has faded.  At times when the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy who keeps the grounds might not be found here, when he is elsewhere.  They come separately, for they have separate tasks to see to. 

Once, they had come in together, of a singular purpose.  She with a heavy, warm-limbed and wet-eyed boychild in her arms.  He with a blue-lipped, cold-damp and dead-eyed girlchild in his.  Once they had come in together, left together, suffered together, but even then they had held separate tasks to see to.

This Saturday morning is no different.  The shawl winds up and over her head, gentles the shape of her shoulders.  It is not needed here, but she wears it anyway.  That night she had not come humbly before God, had come with crown uncovered, had stared intently at the face of the man on the crucifix on the wall.  This morning she does not lift her eyes to meet His.

She wanders, first, to the alcove, where tiny lights flicker in amber and crimson cages, where the strongest few still dance, this early (this late).  From their brilliance she lights another flicker-flame, votive, a wordless epitaph (just Hope, and prayer [Dance, Remember, Rekindle] just sadness, sorrow).  She gives it voice, whispers something to His ears alone.  (For the nameless.)

Lights another. (For the innocent.)

And a third.  (For the ones left behind.)

It is a familiar walk, now, from the votives to the hard-backed pews, and she almost knows the space by heart.  Almost could find her way with her eyes shut, plucked out, darkened or made unseeing.  She knows the places where the finish went thin beneath her fingertips, how to settle herself where the prayer book, hymnal and bible were all within reach.  She knows this place, now, but it has been a long time since His home was her own.

Settling into her breast, the hollowed out ache must push aside the new and still unsettled presence.  It yields, still, easily.  All of that revelation, elevation, elation, adulation -- the Reverence, rekindled, untethered, Orphaned but owned and beating against her ribcage, burning from the inside out, yearning, seeking, struggling. Unrelenting.  It breathes in as she breathes out, anchors, argues, irritates and inspires.  But it is no mantle against weariness, worry, mourning, grief, sorrow, loneliness or longing.  It is no firmament to hold back the skies, no covenant, no surety.

It offers no guarantee against loss.  No assurances of fellowship.  (Don't just up and leave. [I wouldn't.])

When she prays, if she prays, it is for the boychild, lost in a world of strangers, adrift in his grief.  Or for the dark-haired, dark-eyed Singer, who carries too much on his broad shoulders.  She prays for those who have kept their Faith through the falling, found it in the shadows, picked themselves up and begun again anew.

And then Emily takes herself away from the sanctuary and out to the grounds, where the rain has tamped down the dirt over the girlchild's grave.  Allowed it to dampen and dry repeatedly, until it is a hard and solid-seeming casement, overlaid by the single bloom that she replaces every second or third day, whenever the petals begin to wilt, to brown, to darken.

She stands before this markerless grave, as she stood before a two-years old headstone in England just over a month ago.  Motionless and stoic, heedless of the driving rain or the damp cold, or the wind, or the relentless sun.  Fingers of one hand tangled in the silver chain at her neck, cowl pushed back just enough to bare the dark of her curls, skirt hem dancing about her knees, and when some wordless ritual is done, when some unseen thing of import has passed between her and the shadow she casts, then the Orphan turns.

Steps away.

Steps back into the Saturday morning, away from her grief, and is gone.