Even in pain, bliss

Driving, mountain ranges slip past, the ocean at my back. Pain. The stretch of highway from Hope to Merritt makes my hands tremble, my stomach wretch. I don’t even notice when I merge with Hwy 1 outside Kamloops, and I’m in Revelstoke, crossing the stout Columbia, before I’m certain that I’m heading in the correct direction. You can’t go home again.

I come back to Canmore with such a tangle of emotions that I can scarcely breathe.

I drive all day with my heart litterly aching. It feels as though steel bands surround me, crushing me.

It’s not just the return, after two years, to Canmore. It’s so much more than that.

But driving into the Bow Valley last night was the most painful thing I’ve done.

The Valley was my home for nearly fourteen years. For nearly ten of those, Kathleen and I were together. Our first son, Rio, was born in Canmore. Now, a year after Kat and I have separated, coming back to this place, leaves me feeling the loss of so much of what we had, dreamed of having, wished we could have had, but in the end, couldn’t find in one another.

Its not that I want Kat back. I don’t even want those dreams back. What Kat and I have now is so much better. But we sometimes become addicted to the past, and though I’ve done a lot to kick that compulsion, I can’t help but fall into that hole.

Canmore holds too many knotted emotions, both past and present, and after 11pm, having completed my first undertaking, heart wrenching, I pick up beer and drive east, determined to skip town to sleep that night away from this place. Rio and Silas are in town, have been with Kat and Andy for the last eight days. I feel so close to them, but a million galaxies seem to stand between us. I long for them. And the ache of the day’s drive still pieces my heart with an icy tine, compounding the distance.

Before I make the highway again, a voice rises in me so dire that after I scream, I fear I may have done permanent damage to my vocal cords. And then comes a sound so awful, so terrible, that I frighten myself with it.

The tremors pass and I find a place to sleep for the night, curled in my sleeping bag in the back of my Impreza.

The morning comes. I eat. Even the old trouble with money returns now that I’m back hemmed between these valley’s walls and I have to sort out a cash flow problem with my bank over the phone before I can retrieve my kids.

I can’t contain my tears when they embrace me. Rio puts his hands on my face and Silas climbs over me, his face aglow. They are the love of my life.

Letting go of my children was the one thing I said I couldn’t do when Kat and I separated, and now I’ve done it, although only for short spells.

We beat it out of town and hit the Calgary Zoo and spend the day. Its magic being back with the boys, so much so that my other anguish fades to a dull ache for periods of a hour at a time. At one point it bubbles back to the surface (after watching a male and female lion playfully bite each others ears: I’m a sucker for romance) and I find myself leaking tears while fixing a snack for Rio. I tell him that my heart is aching. He looks into my reddened eyes and says “I will sing you a love song.” He sings:

I love you so much
I love you as big as the sky
I wanna make your heart heal all up
I wanna give you a great big hug
And then, I wanna give you a big kiss

It’s the most beautiful song anybody has ever sung me. We write the lyrics down and sing them to each other.

It’s not the only love song that has been given to me in the last few days.

Friends Jason Mogus and Laura McKenzie, whose wedding I will be spinning tunes at later in August, have selected One Step Closer to You, from Michael Franti’s album Yell Fire as their first dance, so I’ve been listening to it a lot in the last few days. Dancing with Silas to it tonight I felt the power of these words:

I let go of my broken heart
I let go to an open heart
I let go of my broken dreams
I let go to the mystery
I believe in the miracle
I believe in the spiritual
I believe in n the one above
I believe in the one I love

Tears again, and this time its Silas who wraps his two-year-old arms around me, with such vigor that you’d think that the boy knew exactly what the man was feeling.

He and I dance in the hotel room we’ve rented in Calgary, and I feel the bands of steel loosen.

Even in pain, there is bliss. I experience that sacred moment of connection, and I know that I don’t have to hold onto this. I can let it go. That I can dream of the love whose face I know, and who I want in my life, but who I can’t become attached to. I can let it go. I can believe in the miracle. I can believe in the spiritual. I can trust this terrifying moment of free fall and know that I’ll soon be on solid ground again.

I can believe in the one above: love, the energy of the universe that makes all things possible.

And I can believe in the ones I love: A boy who wants to heal his father’s heart all up, and a son who hugs his dad so tightly that it would undo the bonds that braced his heart.

Even in pain, bliss. I can let pain go. I can let pain go.