Dying to Live

 Every time there is a major life transition it feels like a piece of me is dying, that I am in mourning for what I am leaving behind or have lost.  Yet if I didn’t change, and allow the people around me to change would I be fully living?

Anniversary trip

Carl and I just spent the weekend at Maruia River Resort.  We had this trip planned in June for our 24th anniversary, but on that day we were in Utah for my father’s funeral.  This is 2 months later, but now I am leaving in less than 10 days for London and knew that the time had to be now.  

Is this the last time

Everything we did I would wonder if this is the last time I would do it?  Is this the last time I will be able to stay at this beautiful resort?  See this river? Wake up with my husband beside me, warm and comforting without the pressure of hurrying, while in New Zealand?  Sometimes Carl would comment, I can’t believe that I am not going to see you for 3 months, that is so long. I would just say, ‘let’s not talk about that.’  

I get on a plane next week to fly to London Heathrow airport, to begin the next step in the journey of returning to school.  We have lived in New Zealand for the past 3 years and explored so many parts of this incredible country.  But it always feels like there is more to see and do. We have found the places that we love, and want to do them over and over.  

Fairy Land

On the way home from the weekend we stopped at Johnson’s creek next to the Matakitaki river (we love that river, partly because it has such a great name) to do a hike.  The trail up feels like you are in a fairy forest, with moss hanging off the trees, patches of soft lichen under foot, and a river with natural rock waterfalls running beside.  I kept wishing there was a way to bottle up the moment, and all of the senses that were so alive in nature, then slowly drip them back out in the streets of London, where I won’t have the green forest.  I wondered if I would ever physically set foot on that trail again, would I  get to go down the river one more time?  I walked the last part of the trail barefoot, if you know me then you realise what a big change this is- I would never have gone barefoot outside.  But I have changed, and New Zealand feels safe, clean, comfortable.

The Unknown

As we were ending the hike I said, ‘why do I feel like I am dying?  I am only moving to London to go to school for 10 months.’  ‘Why do I already miss what I have right this minute.’  Partly I believe it is the unknown of the future.  Will I live in New Zealand again?  I don’t know for sure.  Will I like school and be able to succeed?  I hope so.  Will my family ever all be together again to run these rivers that we now love?  I really just don’t know.  

Poem

As we got back in the car to drive home Carl shared this poem with me from a podcast he had been listening to.

Lead by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

What do you think it means he asked me? 

I think it means that only when we have heard the long, sweet and savoring cry of the loon will we know how sacred it is. And if you have not heard that you better hurry to make it happen. I have heard the long, sweet and savouring cry of this land, its birds, its people.  They have all become iridescent and beautiful to me. I am glad that we made it to these shores and fully lived in this land.

Leaving is breaking my heart, but if I had not heard and loved then I would not have that piece of me to break open.  In the breaking open and leaving my heart open I will find more to love and never want to leave again.  I just hope to never live in a way that my heart closes but lives fully to the rest of the world.