IT'S ALL OVER by Judy Benatar

I bit into a crisp, sweet cherry and walked out into the woods with the dogs, grateful anew for the sanctuary of that park-like piece of ground, the comfort of its ancient boulders and perpetual spring that never freezes in winter and is never less than full, even in times of drought.

Henry found this place - our old, modest, sturdy house that dates back to 1905. It would only be later, when we began to truly appreciate where we were, that we bought the extra land behind the house to keep it safe and protect our privacy - even then not fully comprehending that we had assumed guardianship for what many Native Americans (and two coincidental visiting Chinese masters of chi) would immediately recognize as sacred space.

For me, that recognition would come much later, when things went dark, and I felt like my essence was about to dissolve, sensed my very cells vibrating with the effort to remain coherent and connected, and it really did seem that all was over. Only then would I learn about the sanctity of that space. It healed me, at first outside of my conscious awareness; then, with glimmers here and there and more willing participation.

Now, almost a decade beyond that trauma, that pile of evil ashes, I look back at that time and what has transpired since then - and in spite of the grime and guts of events I would have said I would never survive if I’d seen them coming, I find that the mystery has deepened and grown more compelling – and now I’m not sure I believe that all is ever over. There are endings, for sure, pain, loss, death - but there is also change and transformation, even at those times when I am narrowed and dulled and blind to the shifts in the wind and the rearrangement in atoms.

Henry got up out of a sick bed, with a fever of 102, to find this place. He called me where I was working in the Manhattan and said, “I’m going to find a motel and get some sleep. Do you think you can drive up and meet me here? – I think it’s pretty special.”

In November of 1976, we moved in and sat on a comfortable, dilapidated sofa the previous owner had left behind, watching the stars through the sliding glass doors, while we, in turn, were watched by at least a dozen voyeuristic raccoons, drawn by new activity in the vacant house. There were two or three masked faces pressed against every window and door in the long, empty room.

Our daughter, Anna, was born in October of the following year. I felt her moving inside me, as I climbed along a path my woodsman neighbor, Bob, had mowed through his soft, mountain meadow. When she was old enough to laugh with delight, he took her for rides on his tractor, holding her safe against his faded work clothes with one calloused hand, while the other steered the machine, his gaze closer and more of this earth than haunted by the faraway look he usually wore when resting on the hoe he used every day to keep the ditches clear in our long, shared driveway.

It was a gift, a blessing, to know him, tough, grizzled, irreverent, often foul-mouthed, eagle-eyed, and humbled by the wisdom he had gathered through his pores in the passing of seventy-odd years. He got out of his truck in a blizzard, where we’d been stuck for an hour on a steep incline, lay on his back in the snow and ice, and hooked up the ill-fitting chains on our car to work well enough to get us up the mountain to our house, next door to his through some trees. He brushed aside our thanks, but came in for a whiskey, before heading home. He might well have saved our lives that day, since traffic on the mountain is sparse, even in better weather. As he left to head home, Bob tipped his hat to me and said to Henry, who had been fumbling at the fireplace to make him feel welcome, “Next time I might stop by and show you how to make a fuckin’ fire. You sure won’t get one started the way you’re goin.’ Ain’t easy moving from the city to the sticks.”

Bob died before Anna reached three, leaving me bereft and struggling to explain to a toddler what that meant. I didn’t know.

We would go through more deaths in our lives on the mountain, each of them a blow, and then Anna and I would watch Henry tumble into an inner hell that would eventually threaten even our physical safety. Towards the end of that time, I had to ask him to leave the house. The three of us loved each other, but in the long run, it wasn’t enough to buoy or distract him from the pit that swallowed him up. When he died, that was one of the times when I thought it must be all over, but I was still in a place, where I was mistaking the part for the whole. I think that’s a common thing to do, part of the human condition.

Each time I venture into the woods, the whole is there to consider in the comfort of those huge stones, the oak that resembles a sea fan, the small green frog that stares up at me from a spring that is always full and never freezes. It will be my birthday in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll sit out there with this bittersweet ache and act like I belong, even though it’s clear I’m just passing through.

AUTHOR BIO:
Judy Benetar was a practicing psychiatrist for many years, specializing in the treatment of traumatic abuse. She now lives with three dogs and a cat on a windswept mountain, does Tai Chi, and enjoys the wildlife, the weeds and all shifts in the weather.