"And if the darkness is to keep us apart, and if the daylight feels like it's a long way off, and if your glass heart should crack and for a second you turn back...oh no, be strong..walk on"
I took myself out of the house this afternoon for a walk to clear my head. My feet found their way to the local olive tree garden just steps away from our apartment. Peaceful and quiet with the scent of wild flowers and the olive trees themselves, it felt like the right place for me to think and be alone. Most of the trees in this garden are well over 500 years old. As I sat there feeling overwhelmed with my sorrows I thought of all that those trees have seen. The joys and the sorrows. How many people have come and sat under their leaves and breathed in their scent and found comfort, just like me? How many have walked here and sat and just let their tears flow without restraint until there were no tears left. Imagine the stories these trees could tell me if only they knew how. If only I knew how to listen. Imagine the secrets that they are guardians of.
Maybe they were speaking to me...maybe their silent sympathy was the comfort I needed. I walked among them until I came across a patch of rose bushes and I stopped to smell each different one. Then I wandered to a batch of sunlight by a very large olive tree. There I found a bench that I laid across and looked up through the leafy arms of the old olive tree to the blue sky with its scattered clouds. I watched the clouds dance past and let my mind think upon things I have been too scared to think about for the past 24 hours. Memories I was afraid to remember, certain that just the mental pictures of my dear friend and all she did for me would crush my glass heart completely. Somehow though, I found the comfort I was seeking and for a few moments the clarity I needed. We are such small pieces of a picture too large for each of us to begin to understand. Laying there among my new friends, breathing in the clean perfumed air I felt less alone in my pain. Miles and miles away from the ones I love, being unable to help them and forced to simply wait to hear, I found a measure of peace in the olive tree garden.
"Who's to say where the wind will take you, who's to say what it is will break you. I don't know which way the wind will blow.......I know that this is not goodbye"
