Points of Light

Love is as varied as the points of light in the night sky. There is no question that I could never see any others than hers. Her light was just too bright. A moth to a flame, or circling round the sun was I. I would do it again in a nanosecond if she would reappear.

Now that my sight has adjusted, and though the pull at my heartstrings is still as strong, I am noticing other objects that are worthy of adoration. The smile on my infant great-niece’s face, the love I feel for my friend who is still in the throes of caring for his ill wife. The little boy across the street, so proud of his ghostly outfit on this Hallowed Eve. Shouting boo at me from across our one-block street. I am awestruck at the beauty of the red blush of the setting sun and can’t help but cherish the contents of each niche inside the cavernous Cathedral on the Upper West Side.

Love extends past my sense of sight to the actions I am taking now that I am less wed to the job and live in a much more empty nest. The wind whistling past my ears as I descend the incline on two wheels under the canopy of trees riding on a bed of freshly fallen fall leaves. The angle of the shot on a green felt table and the satisfying “thunk” that the ball makes as it drops in the pocket as the cue ball sails around the table and ends more or less where I had willed it to go.

I am still a bit gun shy, shell shocked, PTSDed when it comes to people and have successfully been keeping my distance from the boy-girl definition of love, but I have deep feelings of love and gratitude for my friendship with my teachers of yoga and meditation and my friends who I now have half-decades of history with as we journey on our separate paths.

The depth of my love for her and the intensity of her absence has given rise to the vividness of the different shapes and shades of love that I have awakened to, and for that I am forever grateful.