The Healing Path

The weather is warm today, as I start out on my walk along the Willamette River. I'm trying to get back into a routine of walking, of breathing fresh air, to help keep my mood up. It's been just over six months since my partner passed away, and I've found myself frequently avoiding walking along this river path. In our town, the river is graced by bike paths on both sides that take you through wetland ponds, tall trees, small neighborhoods and more. It is just a block from where my partner, Ishaq, and I lived and loved together for ten and half years. Where he would go for his nightly bike rides, and where we would jump into the river and float down the rapids on hot days.

The path is full of memories. Here is the fence where, in late summer, we picked blackberries. Here is the stretch of rapids where our canoe tipped over, trapping me underneath and nearly drowning me. Here's the grassy meadow where almost every summer day, we lay in the sun and played in the water.

This is the river where Ishaq's kids would come and go rafting with him each summer. Where we first walked in the snow together, the February we became a couple, watching the ducks waddle up through the cold white covering, quacking loudly at us, annoyed that we came without any food for them. The river where he took students from his Sunday class on Sufism to swim, the last class he taught, the Sunday before he died.

I did walk here a few times after he passed away. I remember seeing friends, who offered their condolences, or their thoughts, or just a touch of the hand and an understanding smile if I didn't appear to be conversational. I remember wondering the first time I walked there, where Ishaq was now. Was he part of the river, the trees, the clouds? Each step brought another memory, bittersweet as memories often are. Ospreys circled above, just as they had circled over me in the backyard the day I divided his ashes in the garden. Some for me, some for family, some for friends and students.

There have been other paths since then that have left their mark on my memory and my soul. The week after Ishaq died, his oldest son was to be married in California, at a lovely place called Sea Ranch. We stayed at a house overlooking the ocean, me and his dad and sisters and step moms. I walked every day along the path that ran above the ocean. One day I looked to see a whole flock of pelicans - ten or fifteen - flying by, looking like refugees from prehistoric times. Another day I walked the path down to the sea, to put some of his ashes in the ocean.

Back home, I walked the paths along this same river that runs by our house, but farther south, sitting on the rocks and writing in my journal. It was there I found the rock shaped like a heart, but with one corner broken, just when I was feeling at one of my lowest, most devastated points. As if my beloved Ishaq had sent me a broken heart from nature to keep and help heal my own heart.

And there is the path down to the rocky beach on the Mckenzie River, next to the pool of water where he laughed and played and then went unconscious, a massive heart attack ending his life in an instant. I went to this place two days after his Celebration of Life, building a stone cairn on the beach, placing flowers from his memorial around it, singing and crying and missing him, while in awe of the beautiful place his spirit had chosen for his departure from the earthly planes.

Now, six months later, I walk north on the path by the Willamette River, "our" path, up past where it skirts a shopping mall, and turns to cut through the ponds. It feels good to walk. I've sat at home, depressed, for too much of this winter. Parts of the ponds are muddy, the water not up to its higher summer level. I walk farther, and am gifted with the sight of two large water birds, each commandeering their own log - an egret, and a blue heron. They sit quietly in the morning sunlight, occasionally glancing down at the water to see if there is anything to eat. And a little further on, something new - four cormorants, one holding its wings outstretched to dry. Another egret swoops in from the north; the air around me is filled with a cacophony of birdsong.

These walks in nature are a healing path in themselves that take me away from the daily chores and worries and sadness of an empty house. I stand, breathing in the beauty of the surroundings. I feel that the future may actually hold something for me, that there is a reason to keep walking here by the river, to keep singing, writing, playing music. I feel Ishaq in the wind, sighing. I hear his voice in the geese that fly over, laughing. I feel at peace.

I breathe in the beauty deeply, and turn to walk back home.