A Loon Cries By Fr. Thomas Johnson-Medland Cherry Hill, New Jers ‘There are times in our lives that we wander away from ourselves. Some piece of our whole drifts off, and we don’t feel complete; we don’t feel ourselves. This happened to me after we lost Zoe. Zoe was the little girl that we had tried to have for seven years Our love for each other, Glinda and myself, had decided to replicate itself into the form of achild. But, for seven years of our nine year marriage, our bodies would not cooperate with our hearts. Desire does not always produce results. T remember how suddenly I felt my soul leave my body. We had finally gotten pregnant with the help of fertility doctors. We were in the office — the second trimester — for an ultrasound. The technician grimaced when she saw the image. She insisted nothing was wrong, but my soul knew. It only takes one second for the soul to leave the body. A flicker on the screen, a tightening of the face and it drains right out. From the head, through the heart, out of the feet, onto the highly polished gray- flecked white linoleum floor. The pathways of ecstasy become vacant, the heart becomes hollow and the mind, numbed, becomes empty. Gone are hope, joy, elation. It only takes one second for the soul to leave the body. We leit the oifice, knowing things were serious, but not sure 30 what that meant. We had to go for another ultrasound — a higher level reading. “Cystic hygroma. Open spine. Multiple tumors, Incompatible with life,” this is all heard that day. ‘We went on to have a D and C (dilatation and curettage) after Zoe had died. The hospital staff treated us like dirt — they thought we were having an elective abortion. We ‘were not. We sobbed and sobbed from that first ultrasound through much of the next year Since we both worked at a home for abused children, we felt angry with God. That we should care for other people's abused children and not be able to give birth to our own, seemed a curse. This loss and anger opened a feeling deep in me that f will never forget. We did not want to have her sucked out of the womb into disparate death. So the cry came over the mountain, and it spoke of war and bloodshed. We had set ourselves to killing God, We ‘wanted to route Him out, for He had shammed us, toyed with all that we had done that had been good. everywhere, and The tolls could not be meas accurately. How much damage had we done? How many limbs had He lost? Mist settled into our days, and the battling ceased to the haunting sie ur website a eu berenoementnag com sound of the loons on the water. We had only one casualty. When she left, she took our souls, She held them like parcels or books under her arms as she swam in the vast and forever-blue sea. She has sent back pieces of them. She pulls off something from here, something from there, and floats it in on the surface of the cold, churning waves. Tt will come in as a petal or a moss. It will come in as a tear or the sound, of the pipes over the highlands. Was there not some deep settling as I crossed the path exposed by the tide, to touch the heather atthe castle ruin? Was there not a settling of green, and brown, and purple bells? A settling of pounding waves and cool mist breezes? She has not left us, yet she left us. Not only did the opening manifest itself in tears, but my heart ‘was itself opened, my emotion was given a deeper place in me, and my word-power changed. Ileft myself for a while, but discovered a grieving — one that I had never Known The cycle of suffering and healing went on for sometime — clearly for a year — but then, even after. The awareness of this shift enabled me to recognize how true my first words had been. It only takes a second for the soul to leave the body. [had indeed left, b was beginning to return been away for awhile, out Bereavement Magasin ain the fields, I have pulled up lots of good stuf by the roots, and I have put them in my basket 0 shoulder. Ihave been away 1 myself, collecting new foods, new stuff for the journey. Having ust gotten back, I now know that I was gone. Tam happy to be back, because now I can begin again to bake the bread, and light the candles, to draw the bath and to work the poems, to be about the things I laid aside so 1 could gather new foods and bring in new stuff. This feeling is as refreshing and surzounding as the two feet of snow drifting this way and that, outside of my home, outside of me. ‘The healing had begun to make itself known to me witich was an odd realization. It was clear that things were going on and transpiring inside of me that Ihad ‘no control over. In therapeutic language, "Trust the Process” began to make sense. After Ibegan to settle into this new person that returned, I took a job with a hospice. It was then that Iwas able to blend the grieving — one with the man Thad been and would become. That friend (the grieving one) came so close he became me. The merger became clear when I was able to write with much more vivid emotion. I was sure I had been wed to my suffering and healing when I was able to release my pain in color — full words that were no longer grasping and clutching to anger. ‘The emotion was free to pass through me and not get caught. Tknew it had happened when T te, A Loom Cries. T knew then that I was infinitely grateful not only for the process, but for having put forth the effort to allow that process to have words. If had not written through the pain, I would never have seen the beauty of > growth in my own heart. ’ A Loon Cries There is a deep sadness, like a cello in the heart that plays, and plays, and plays itself out. Acriver of tears and woes without end, There \s a note of sadness even in the most Joyous moment, Iris all that distance, idness of movilhg away — of separation, Itis the recognition of contraction, of making the invisible visible, Aloon cries and wails its call of love Iris the s across the surface of the waters our heads to the side open in the top of our hearts, and we somehow coc