Witness: She wasn't supposed to know what was going on. How did she then? From over here where I stood she was like a little miracle: how she shone! In that last year when we foolishly thought we could dance the doom away she was like our last light. What were we supposed to do?
I think we wanted to protect her, but it turns out she was protecting us. I guess it's like not telling your children about how the beloved family pet died, wanting as an ignorant adult to keep their innocence intact a little longer because you so deeply miss your own. But kids know these things instinctively. They, we, are born knowing death. That's what we forget in our upward push against the universe: we grow, we forget our childhood passions and all the pains, all the little deaths and deep losses, missing toys and frustrated longings, too-long waits and all the shame heaped upon us by a controlling world. How often a young child wants to fold into nothingness and disappear! And we forget the ancestors who created us, from whose bones and dust we’re fed. Children know death: it's the pain of attachment in this 3D world they don't fully comprehend.
I think we wanted to protect her, but it turns out she was protecting us. I guess it's like not telling your children about how the beloved family pet died, wanting as an ignorant adult to keep their innocence intact a little longer because you so deeply miss your own. But kids know these things instinctively. They, we, are born knowing death. That's what we forget in our upward push against the universe: we grow, we forget our childhood passions and all the pains, all the little deaths and deep losses, missing toys and frustrated longings, too-long waits and all the shame heaped upon us by a controlling world. How often a young child wants to fold into nothingness and disappear! And we forget the ancestors who created us, from whose bones and dust we’re fed. Children know death: it's the pain of attachment in this 3D world they don't fully comprehend.
I don't know... I suppose we thought we were protecting her like that. We thought that knowing the full weight of the evil in this world would crush her. So we never asked too much of her, we formed protective circles around her, we gasped when she pushed dangerously close to the edges of darkness in this world. We were keeping her light burning, that's what we though! And I'm sure we did have a positive effect, over all, tending to her and to her little fire, rousing the glow in her susceptible heart gently with soft breathes and compliments. We hardly touched her form for fear we’d scare her, or at least that’s the excuse we gave ourselves for never invading the aura of brightness that enveloped her. But she knew the whole time! She knew! She knew more than we did, and it turns out it wasn’t our guardianship that kept the fire burning. It was her…all her! It was her light, gathered from the sun, which fed our hearts and which kept us ever so slightly blinded so that we, with our degrees and theories, never knew the whole truth. She was, simply, the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen.
© Maria Alva Roff July 2011
