Do I carry an iceberg within? she thought to herself as soon as she gained consciousness after the night-sleep. The overwhelming sense of love while holding the hands of her girlfriend and boyfriend, herself in the middle; she felt vulnerable and open as if she was a child. The force behind the five tears that rolled down her cheeks the previous evening was telling of something. She just wasn’t sure what exactly.
Her memory took her years back to various glimpses looking for answers: The faceless man who wore a black collar with the telling white rectangle in front. His meaningless message and explanation. Finding her through the Interpol- the sense of drama, disbelief, surreal ness. She felt as if not only her clothes were stripped away but her skin as well. So goddamn exposed! Her pain, despair, loss of everything. It must have been anger that kept her on her feet another minute – she leapt towards the man dressed in black: I live on the other side of the world, you don’t know me, you don’t know him, how do you know this, how do you know this is true, it can’t be true…
Her brother told her years later how her wailing had met him before he entered the house – how he felt the world turn on itself when he saw her curled up, the never to be expected words from their mother about his brother in law offered as an explanation. The shockwave threw him back outside on the front step.
She remembers her father in a glimpse – the so so frail man, left speechless only a couple of years before. He sat in a chair in the far corner of the house – he looked like a little bird, was he shivering? -she asked her memory.
She remembered this moment of seeing her father; the shift from falling, falling… to instantly feeling out the need of her surroundings – her deepest programming? – this moment the needs of her father. She worried she might scare him with the rawness and mercilessness of her pain. Did he understand what had happened?
This morning she wonders if she herself understands what has happened over all these years. She wonders if there is a pool of tears that hasn’t been emptied yet. For the first time since, her heart is not only open in principle, but also actually germinating with love. She wonders if this newfound sense of coming home, the blanket of goodness – is there another stage to her grief she never found described in the books? Is there a stage that involves letting go even further? Not of him, the sense of his ever present presence. But letting herself go yet a bit more.
Her graceful acceptance has been a genuine shell that has kept her firmly on her feet all along. For this she feels an immense gratitude. The possibility that there is another pool of tears at the end of letting go doesn’t worry her. She trusts him, the man with the grey eyes and vast and generous soul, in his understanding of all of her. That he would want her to, and support her in letting go of what has probably kept her upright within: The need to carry it all alone. Perhaps there isn’t an iceberg within her, merely an eight-year-old deep frozen ice sickle, now about to melt?
