The latest iPhone update has brought with it a new feature. It sifts through my 80,000 or so images and chooses one to pop onto the corner of my screen. Along with it is a short selection of unrelated images. Today it is a drink at a restaurant in Honolulu, along with an orchid, out of bloom, showing the epiphytic root like structures that are actually fungal fibers formed in the rainforest. There is also this.
The Arches Trail at Point Reyes National Seashore in earlier times terminated in this bit of land jutting out to the ocean. A precipitous trail led to a rocky beach below. It was a sea arch. One day it collapsed. There was a woman standing upon it who went down with it, and did not survive.
I used to walk this trail fairly often, always with a companion. My friend Susan and I would stroll along, leaving our troubles by the winding stream over which trees grew. Ferns grew upon the trees. We were easy friends, or so I thought.
Robert and I bicycled and walked the trail together a few times. It was a special treat, always touched by the memory of the first time we were there, when suddenly the woodsy trail opened to the azure sea.
On this day my daughter accompanied me. This was before cell phones had cameras, so I took this picture with my bulky 35mm Nikon. The photo was stored online, and manually brought over to my phone collection where it languished until the update brought it forward.
The update has brought photos of my daughters to my screen every day. I have no images of Susan. The Sea Arch, my daughters, Susan, have all reconfigured into forms of absence.
The first couple of days I tried to figure out how to manage the images my phone brought up. Some absences are more bearable than others. I did not want to be reminded of the girls’ dislike of me. That is what floated to the surface of my mind- “but they have chosen not to be a part of my life”. How hurtful.
There is nonetheless a truth in the images. My phone update insists these are people who matter in my days, not only in my life.
There was a time I could not have children. Physically, it was not possible. The yearning I felt when I saw other mothers with their babies was sharp. These days, every day brings images of grown up children posted by their proud and loving parents. One yesterday said “I am the luckiest.”
As we age, more and more of my contemporaries sing the farewell songs to their parents. And to their own life partners. It is never the same story. What thread runs through it is the pain of loss.
At the heart of everything is gratitude. This heartbreaking path brings that more than anything. It is like the line from the movie “we will always have Paris.” There is more, about the colors of clothing, Ilsa’s and the soldiers. Reminders of the ephemeral nature of all things, the durability of love. I am grateful for the richness of life. I am grateful for the gifts it has brought me, some more lasting than others. To each their time.
In real time, none of us can see this again. The sea arch collapsed. Yet here it is, here she is, my wanderer. We will always have that day, that place. These changes are outside our abilities to control. Along with gratitude, acceptance. We are seldom the causal factors in matters of loss. Almost never could we have done something to make the loss not happen.
The writers of fables did best at capturing the workings of fate. Three old ladies sit at their tasks. One combs the fibers out, one spins, one cuts. There you have a life.
