I opened my eyes and there before me was the end of my life.  There were no flashes of scenes past or things that could be.  I did not envision my children or a moment with my lover.  It was a blinding light that erased everything as if it had never been; erased doubt; erased longing; erased desire.  I thought then that I would soon be walking with God with my very next step.

Those instants are so easy to fantasize, romanticize.  Giving it all up for the ones you love, to protect the world, for the moral right.  This is why war continues, because we all have that longing for the meaning that such sacrifice can ascribe our lives that peace cannot.  I think everyone deep down longs for that one defining moment where they can immortalize their souls forever with a single act.  An act that would bring people to their knees, bring tears to their eyes, lay silence like blankets upon their hearts just at the mere thought of it.

I was no different.  And the life that I lead now taught me my error.  I thought I would die a glorious death that would forever immortalize my mortal soul in a world of angels and demons with powers I could never fathom.  It is shameful to admit, but I gave up everything in that moment not for the ones I loved or for any noble inclination of virtue.  I gave up everything for vanity.

How ironic, then, that I gained it all back and fled from it.

I stayed as long as I possibly could.  Every day was like a twisting coil building tension.  Every doctor’s visit, every parent-teacher conference, every load of laundry… A little over twenty years, it was no wonder when the taut line was struck how the wire recoiled--cracked.  Ever since that day, my father had nicknamed me his wild angel.  I fled from that too.

I know I hurt them, hurt them all, but I didn’t know what else I could do.  I had no other choice, you see, I had to leave.  I couldn’t stay there any longer.  After that day I was not who I had been, I was someone else.  They say that when an individual experiences a loss, that individual often has trouble maintaining friendships formed before that loss and tends to shift into new friendships formed afterward.  It’s too hard, you see, to look into those faces, those eyes, and tell them over and over again that you’re just not the same anymore.

Ambiguous losses are those that lack clarity.  They cannot be defined or explained; there is no reason that can be attributed to them, and it is this uncertainty that creates a space between ourselves and others that often cannot be bridged.

Reconciliation to most means atoning for a wrong or making things right with someone.  There is an implied hierarchy of right and wrong, moral and immoral, or my personal distaste: should.  In Theology, Reconciliation describes a change in the relationship between man and God.  This change recognizes the capacity  and the inevitability of acceptance in nature, in ourselves.  I believe that God exists within our innermost feelings: in our wrath and our love, in our hurt and our healing, and that to be closer to this we must first submerge ourselves in it.