Shatter

By: mesanger

Jan 19 2023

Tags: , , , ,

Category: life, love

7 Comments

He was making a shelf, just cutting some glass along scored lines, the way he’d done so often, goggles in place, gloves, a protective board as he pushed on the glass that was to split in two – and then it shattered. I heard it from the other room, a massive tinkling sound. He called me to see, as it was astounding, so many little glittered cubes littered the floor of the garage. He didn’t realize that it was tempered glass, toughened glass, made to avoid harm when broken. It was supposed to shatter – safely — as it did.

I wish I were tempered, toughened, so as not to feel this heart of sharp shards, broken and heavy at the news of her sudden death. All about her had been mirth and melody. That time we pulled down an atlas from her parent’s shelves after midnight at her home and… how did we find so much to laugh about in 200 pages of maps? Her mother shushed us, and we laughed some more. Those times we sat in Central Park and watched the mimes, the pigeons, the kids in strollers, holding each other in a circle of confidence where no truth was forbidden. Face to face, hand in hand we had no secrets, but later with miles between us, she held back. The serious things had to be whispered into a warm ear, parting strands of hair to clear the way for words to pass straight to the heart. Those things would wait for a visit, where we would eat messy tacos and wipe each other’s chins.

Her heart so metaphorically magnificent, magnanimous, magnetic. Her heart so genuinely open I fell inside again and again and she’d fish me out with a giggle and invite me in once more. Her heart that inquired, softly, gently, getting past the masks – “tell me about your sadness.” Her heart that was home for so many. Her loving heart that shattered one day and left us in that terrible space to deal with the emptiness and the fullness, how? To have walked a path that intersected with hers for 35 years fills me with gratitude. I am full. To have lost her just days ago leaves me with a longing for that giggle, and for her to invite me in again. I am empty. Tell me what that last journey is like, friend. Whisper it in my ear. Safe travels.