Left Alone

It is a beautiful cloudy day here at the lake today. I like to come here to think. My earliest memories are of coming here when many of the trees and plants were either still seeds or saplings. Now sixty years later, I enjoy coming here more and more as I have walked and personally interacted with just about every form of life that has existed at this lake in the last six decades - my lake.

I refer to this as my lake because ever since childhood I have watched and looked after this place. When my family left me behind, and I could barely walk, was when I began to realize that this was my home and family. And not just my home or my family but my refuge and solitude. In short, my center of being.

When this place became my family I began to change. I changed unconsciously, unknowingly. I no longer heard sad sounds on the wind anymore. Was I sad when my family left me behind? I was very sad for the constant companionship but never seemed connected to them in a way as they were to each other. However, at such a young age, I did not understand really what was happening.

The night before it happened, I remembered feeling oddly bemused with my life as if what was the point of it. Am sure the people I lived with, that is how I now refer to them as, believed that I would never be connected to them in the way they wanted me to be. It was their way or no way. I guess that, in a way, I was on the path to no way, if that is a path. So they decided to make the choice for me and abandoned me here. I have not to this day felt any grudge or ill will against them as they did what they felt was right for all of us.

Believe it or not, that first morning alone was not the toughest. It was around the tenth day that I began to see the real changes. You know that slow patient feeling of watching a flower slowly grow to then one day bloom and you feel as if you have been given the greatest gift - the vision of all things slowly coming to be? It was a lot like that. I puzzled and wrestled with all my small knowledge I had to understand but it wasn't enough until that tenth or so day that the pieces fell into place finally. I was different than everyone else.

As I gazed out over this lake sixty years ago, the last departing suns' rays suddenly hit my face bathing it in warmth, light, and knowledge for several seconds. Then the rays vanished and with it all the warmth and light of three setting suns. But not the knowledge. Not the counsel that was just imparted into my meek, hungry mind. That did not depart. It stayed to preserve me, bring realization, and evolution to my life.

Now I sit on my favorite stump, one of the hundreds of trees that I have watched grow and die here, contemplating and observing while a strange shape approaches. The figure is broken and bent over but seems familiar to me in its' movements but not enough to evoke an emotion or reaction. As the shape of the figure becomes sharper, her actions begin sparking long, retired memories into triggered images in my mind. I say her because it is an old weary woman that approaches me. I cock my head to one side and take a breath because it is the first person I have seen since I was first left here alone.

The woman comes closer slowly and cautiously, her face wrinkled and sad. She stops several arm lengths away and stares into my eyes. I do not speak because I never learned how. I simply look into the eyes of someone I now recognize. It was my...sister? The term comes uncertain and faint to my thoughts but is still distinctly there. I only have the sketchiest of memories regarding this cloaked figure before me. I do not know if my feelings are good or simply not there anymore. I feel numb to this person.

Ever so gently, the old woman shuffles carefully closer still seemingly unsure of the reception that she is expecting. Then an odd feeling begins to emerge from my eyes and muscles around my skull. They begin squeezing and tightening as the woman is now within arm's reach. The woman's mouth is opening and closing in strange motions. I sense that she is trying to communicate with me. She now stops as she realizes that I can not hear her. I see her eyes dart to either side of my smooth head and her iris open wide as she understands why. I still do not open my mouth to speak because I never have. Instead I simply lean slightly forward still gazing into the now familiar eyes of the only remaining family members left, who have been gone these sixty years.

Then without realizing it, I stood up and carefully put my arms around the others' shoulders in a reflexive action that has been the first contact of this sort I can now remember. Then, as quick as it happened, both of us were sitting on the stump that now has become our stump. We are not holding hands but enjoying the nearness of remembrance and of what lies ahead.

I feel oddly more whole than I have ever felt before. Not that I was missing a part of me during my solitude, just simply that now I have more than before. It just makes sense that even after being gone for so long, with no grudges, guilt, or shame, a piece of what I had before has reattached itself into the soft part of my heart that can now grow again.