Essential

I remember sitting by Karen's bed 3 years ago, looking out at the lake just outside her window. The ducks were gliding across the surface, the wind was blowing leaves out into the atmosphere, where they touched down so lightly on the water, it hardly made a dent. They spun, circling each other, bumping into each other. The changing of seasons, preparation of winter.

Karen was just weeks away from death, and as she slept, I thought about all that she was leaving behind. Not just family and friends, the obvious things. She wouldn't see that lake every morning, the ducks on the water. She wouldn't smell the unique autumn smell of leaves on the wind, wood smoke, or the stunningly fresh scent of Nebraska air. I felt sad for her. I couldn't imagine losing these things. Leaving this world and all that's in it, leaving it all behind. I'd never thought about those things before.

"I'm really going to miss you," she said one day. I choked up and returned the feeling. She was going to miss ME? I never thought of the one leaving as being the one who was losing. But it makes sense. We don't know what's next. We have ideas, we have images and hopes, but we don't know anything for sure.

So it got me thinking about my life and what is important to me. In the last few years, it became increasingly urgent to me to live my life the way I truly believe it ought to be lived. I've had enough losses, said enough goodbyes, that I cherish the goodness and refuse to take things for granted.

What is essential to me is to live honestly. I want truth. I want to be in relationships where people are honest with me. When I love someone, I tell them. Why not? If I love them, I consider them lovable, and so they would most likely want to know. Who doesen't want to know that they are lovable??

Another thing that is essential is deep, spiritual, intimate connections with other human beings. I can't live without that. I can't live too long on the surface of things, I get weary of pretentiousness or false talk. Tell me who you are, what you love, what breaks your heart, what stirs your passion and gives you hope. Tell me what gives you joy so deep that your eyes leak. I want to know. I want to see God in your eyes.

Music is essential. Music embraces my every day. I need it. I listen to feed my soul, to give me hope, to remind me of why I get up in the morning. I love honesty in music. The "broken hallelujahs" as well as the praise for the morning. Intertwined with that is poetry and literature. Words that get into the soul and illuminates it. Connects us to God. Reminds us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

And of course, my family. My husband, my best friend, my soul-mate in the true sense of the world. My play-mate. The one who makes me laugh, who holds me when I cry, who understands what moves me in a concert without me having to tell him. The one who saved my life with his love, and saves it every day.

My daughter. The child who I helped get to create. The one I fed with my own body. Who gave me hope in hard times just by moving her foot across the inside of my womb occasionally, and then was that still small being that I could care for when the world around me was going crazy. The one who has grown into a passionate, enthusiastic, compassionate, giving, loving, beautiful human being. Who gives me joy.

Creation. I need food for my soul, and I need to live in a place where there is a constant feast for my eyes. I love Nebraska. I love the fact that there's so much space that I can "stretch my eyes," that I can smell, see, and touch such vast beauty, sheltered by the dome of the endless blue sky. That the horizon keeps going. It's like God brought me here to show me that there is no limit to my growth, the possibilities of life and love, and when I arrived, and ever since, God keeps saying, "Welcome home, darlin'! Welcome home."

It is essential that I be myself, that I have ways, like writing, to express myself, to dance with words, to see the beauty, expose it, and celebrate it. I have come to midlife not with crisis, but a strong sense of who I am, what I want from life, and what I will not tolerate. Love is essential. Spirit is essential. Mercy, compassion, open horizons. All of that and more is essential for life. And I now have the courage to claim it.