"Come up to meet you
Tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
And tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start
Running in circles
Coming up tails
Heads on a silence apart
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
And tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start."
The Scientist: Coldplay
Never before has life felt so finite. Death is everywhere. It's heavy and real and thick and it's hard to breathe.
People I love are face to face with it, battling it, wondering why it's found them so much sooner than they thought it would. It always does…find us sooner than we thought it would.
People I've never met and will never meet are shaking their fists at it while they stand knee deep in it. Some grit their teeth, determined to keep it at bay another minute. Some arm themselves and for a moment, enjoy a false sense of power. It will not take them, they reason... they'll control death. Still others lie down and wait for it, not as much afraid any more as they are tired of the fight.
I'm so small. I don't think I've ever felt so small and inconsequential. Love conquers all, they say. No…it doesn't. It doesn't conquer tumors or cancer or flood waters. If love were a conqueror, I'd overpower the pain and devastation and sickness and fear with it. If love were a conqueror, I'd take hold of time and go back to the start.
"I love you, Daddy," I say. "It's nothing. I'm sure of it." I love him so much that I have never wanted to believe anything more, despite what logic tells me. His pain is ferocious and it leaves him tired. He doesn't know that I know how much he hurts.
"Don't tell Sherri," he has directed my brothers and sisters. I'm the far away child and for my family, that's always meant I should be insulated from such things. Thankfully I have one sister who disobeys.
Every day I tell myself that my Daddy knows I adore him and for fear of upsetting him, I fight the urge to call him hour after hour to remind him. For as long as I can remember, I have known full well that if my Daddy didn't hang the moon, he was at least a major part in the execution of the event. When I was a child, Daddy was strong and bigger than life and the strictest man I knew. There were few tender moments back then, before he grew older and softer, but I remember every one and I hold them close.
How blessed I have been to be my Daddy's girl. If love conquered all, then my love would make it all go away. My tears would heal him. My conversations with God would be heard and we could go back to the start.
My friend, his beautiful hair coming out in handfuls I'm told, shaking his fist at God. He's angry and sick and hurting and I sit here unable to ease his suffering at all. "I will send you the cheesiest card in the whole world," I told him in my last letter. "It will be covered with kitty-cats and it will rhyme." I wanted him to laugh.
As though placed there by the cheesy card fairy, it was the first one I saw when I walked in Hallmark: a giant, tri-fold and utterly cliché spectacle of a thing with kitty-cats hanging by their paws from tree limbs. "As long as there is the smallest possibility a card or letter from me takes you away from your pain even for a second, I will continue to send them," I wrote.
I don't know what he does with my letters. I don't know if he reads them, I don't know if he smiles. What I do know is that they will continue to arrive at his door every few days. I'll continue to write, to send cards and to tell him how much he means to me and how much I want him to fight.
How blessed I have been to have once been loved by him. If love conquered all, then my love would make it all go away. My tears would heal him. My conversations with God would be heard and we could go back to the start.
Copyright © 2004-2005, Sherri Bailey
This blog may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the author.
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