A BELIEVABLE WOMAN, TRAVELING THROUGH

On the big screen, a believable woman is running through woods with a panic, looking behind, terrified, stumbling and skidding, injured, into the mossy ground.  Each viewer has a different nightmare idea of what is chasing her.  As she watches her fate approach, the audience is right there with her.  Blood pressures rise.  Perhaps our escaping woman is too tired to resist any longer, and she will accept whatever is to be.  You may be shouting for her to get her rear in gear, get up and fight.  Everyone watching has an idea of how they would battle something menacing that has them on a run for dear life. 

For movies that begin with the chase, the rest of the story will probably be delivered in flashback, showing the audience the lead up to the chase.  What was her morning like?  Was there a warning, something skulking from her past that was bound to catch up with her?  Was she blithely moving through a well-constructed life, unawares?

Recently, scenes from my own movie kept me company as I drove down the back roads of Skagit County in northwestern Washington.  It was like this -- I'm not going anywhere, or looking for anything in particular.  Perhaps something to photograph that reflects my mood will roll into my field of vision. It's been more than eight years since I was scared into walking briskly and finally running through the woods in my own life and mind.  Right before that, I was marinating in something I knew, something I completely understood.  Then, I was running. 

In Skagit, I can't take my eyes off the hills to the north where steam is lifting from the hillsides and the earth looks young and emerging.  It's a bit like seeing myself in a third grade choir rehearsal, belting out This Land is Your Land.   Closer in, there are fields just after a harvest, telling their story.  Hoards of anglers in wading boots have parked trucks up and down both sides of the road near a well-known secret fishing creek as it tap dances toward Padilla Bay. I can barely get my car down the middle of the road.  That's okay.  There is no on-coming traffic and no one is waiting for me anywhere.  I can smell the fish, the corn, the salt air coming off the bay.  If I earned a nickel for every rough-legged hawk I see, peering into the disrupted earth from draping wires, I could pay for the gas I am consuming, and then some.  

The only thing  is, I am not quite sure I can label what I am doing as running. 

I'm not sure if I can legitimately label anything I am doing these days as running, come to think of it.   I'm not settled down.  I don't have a long-range plan.  I'm no zombie, but I'm not in AARP Magazine either, featuring older people who start over and make a killing in the gourmet cookie market.  What am I doing with my life if I'm not any of those things?

I think I am that woman who is stumbled, injured and starting to think:  Everything I have known up until this chase is officially over.  If I surrender to loneliness, worthlessness, nothingness -- or whatever is chasing me -- then that will be my last, free-will choice.  From that point forward, I'll be waiting for it all to end according to powers outside of my control.  That wouldn't be so bad, would it?  To just drift off to a kind of sleepwalking life and never wake up? 

I pull my car over to take a photo.  I take stock of my self, think about my situation and  begin to recover my wits.  I do feel like the escaping woman in my imaginary horror flick.  The scary thing that is chasing me is a die-hard idea that there is a way back.  The thing that is chasing me is the cruel notion that there is something I can do that is going to reverse every loss and restore my cozy little brightly lit happy place, forever.  Once I realize that my stalker is actually my own thought process, I have more choices.  All I have to do to survive this chase is rise, get up, stand up. 

And then I'll have to do it all over again, tomorrow.

Such is widowhood.  Such is surviving great loss.  It's a stalker movie, running daily.

To everyone who has lost a life partner, a way of life, an abiding love:  There is beauty in the world that only your eyes can find.  There are people in the world who need to know they are not alone.  Whoever you are now, as injured and bereft as you may be, the way through the woods is going to show itself.  It really will be there for you every day, and all you have to do is get up and look around. 

Ahh, but I call it through the woods, not out of the woods for a reason.  

Wanting completely out of the woods of grief and loss is the same as being chased, to be always looking back.  It's a form of panic and terror, to think you can get something back that is well and truly lost.  Better to travel through these woods, without regard for how long or the possibility of the sunny somewhere that may or may not await you.  Keep your eyes peeled.  And as you see beauty -- and you will -- share it.  It might help someone to remember there is still beauty in the world, no matter what has been lost forever.  Traveling instead of surrendering is not a substitute for something lost, and it is not the lost thing, itself.  It's an alternative to giving up and leading a sleepwalking life.  It is nothing more complicated than that. And, lucky you and lucky me --  it's a daily choice.

The way this movie ends:  Today is the whole thing, it's all you or I get.  Record it.  Share it.  But first, you have to rise. 

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