elephant

Lori quoted Dr. Seuss sometimes:

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”

I can see her saying it and hear her.

This is a message from her.

She is stating that she tells the truth and the truth is that the virtue of faithfulness exists, that faithfulness can be found and is possible and is good.

I am not having a seance.

I am sitting in the dark and gazing into an electronic screen, not a crystal ball, and reading messages from my memory, not from The Other Side.

I don’t remember how many times Lori said the Seuss quote, but more than once, and I can’t recall what the context was, even once, but I know how she looked and how she sounded when she said it and I can see her saying it and hear her.

It is the kind of recollection that sneaks up on me and makes me cry.

This crying would happen in what I call seizures of grief. Grief seizures that belong to the shock of the loss and remind me of my loss and scare me. I read C.S. Lewis’ book about his grief and he said it is much like fear and I thought, no, grief IS fear, isn’t it?

We fear that which would make us grieve.

We fear the loss of our well being and the loss of what we treasure and we fear pain and the grief seizures are painful. What is called the grief process is a period of great pain that unsettles us with the loss of our world and with the reality of death as an Absolute condition of life and conclusion of life.

I recall Lori looking me in the eyes with her sincerity and saying it with her profound inner child:

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”

As if, How dare I even question her sincerity?

The faithfulness of the elephant is an Absolute.

Yeah, it made me cry, but the pain has changed, because the memory is a joy, and the message is true. The message that we loved, that love exists, love can be found and is good.

The message that the truth of our love is Absolute.

So of course I cry for the loss of love but — this is going to sound wrong — but, the Absoluteness of love maybe narcotizes the pain away — with joy?

Yesterday there was a sudden cloudburst that drenched the city in an instant. Did you get caught in that? — people asked for the rest of the day — or told a story about being caught in it — it was a super-soaker of a storm and I heard there was a rainbow. 

I am inside when that storm hits. I quickly shut the windows before too much water comes in and see how, despite the rain, bright it is outside. 

White midsummer sun shines through the clear curtains of water like through glass.

And I thought I could use that to describe what it’s now like when I cry.