Quoth the Raven

Friday's blog post about Spider was going to be the last one. I thought I was done. But that's how grief is. You think you're finished. You have moments when you don't mind she's gone at all. And then the hot stabs.

It's a peculiarity of human nature that explains why strong saints have doubts and godly men fall into adultery. We are a succession of moments. C.S. Lewis spoke of "undulation"---"the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks." As a corollary, Francis Schaeffer said, "This morning's faith will never do for noon." No one lives purely and simply in "Grief." There are ups and downs and all manner of in-betweens.

My mistake was going to the park the other night. It's the only park that didn't crimp her style. When she ran, it made the next fastest dog in town look like he was standing still; you wanted a stopwatch in your hand. You wanted to applaud. She would start from my side, then make a giant circle cutting off away from me and then circling back 'round in my direction, making like she would clip me on the return---then mischievously smiling as she narrowly missed.

I don't know what drove Poe to insanity but I think it was the "Nevermore." Spider sailing the perimeter of the SPS park, nearly taking leave of terra firma---nevermore. Spider in her glory "feeling his pleasure"---nevermore. Spider collecting her approving post-flight hug---nevermore.

This will all be useful, I thought to myself as I walked on, if it results in me henceforth living with the people in my life in such a way that I will not groan that I had missed the opportunities to love, and that they had been finite after all.

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