Rose. last morning.

 

I’ve gotten several thousand messages since announcing Rose’s death, and I will take time to go over them. Two stood out yesterday. One was from my friend Paula Josa-Jones, the writer and equine choreographer. “Rose In A Storm” was the first book of yours that I read, Jon, and it was life changing,” she wrote. “You and Rose, it seems, share a devotion and steadiness of purpose that is a deep and beautiful inspiration to me.” There were so many other messages of sympathy and understanding. Thank you, thank you.

A second  message also caught my eye, was from Margaret, in North Dakota. It said, “Jon, I am so sorry about the death of Rose. I know you will be grieving her loss for the rest of your life and will never fully get over it, and  I feel so badly for you.”

Paula was correct, I think. This was our connection, Rose and me, although I never before thought of myself as being much like her. She was always a lot steadier than I was, and that was her service to me. But we did share devotion, and this week has reaffirmed my purpose.

Grieving is personal, individual and everyone has the right to experience it in their own way. Nobody grieves in my way, and I don’t grieve in the manner of anyone else. These two messages reminded me that there is a difference between sympathy and pity, between empathy and projection. Rose and I had very different purposes, but we converged over one of them: we both were steady in our determination to live our life in purpose and affirmation. I have no need of pity, or use for it, and I wanted to write Margaret, gently, and tell her that her message is not my story, or Rose’s. We ought take care not to mix our story in with the stories of other people. Stories are sacred to me, and we each own our own and get to tell it – the Creative Spark, a divine thing to me.  I have lost other things, and other people, more precious than dear Rose. For me, grief is an episode, not a life.

So Margaret, thanks but I will not grieve for Rose for the rest of my life, or anything close to it, and while I hope I always remember Rose, I will consider it a profound failing in my life  if I have not moved on to love other animals, other people, and to experience devotion and steadiness of purpose in many other  and new ways.

Grief is not how my story goes or ends, and it is not the story of Rose, or of Rose and me. All around me I see life, love, beauty and purpose. There are people and animals and light and beauty  waiting for my love and attention, my eye, heart and camera. They will get it. Paula has said it perhaps better than me, and well. Rose and I, we lived our lives every day, to the end, not in grief and remorse. Grief is, in its own way, the most powerful affirmation of love and life. May it be my epitaph as well.