The Long-Feathered Reed Grass danced in the gusty November wind along the Connecticut shores.
The best way to describe the feel of the weather was Halloween in how it conjured my imagination.
I walked for miles toward a place I know, not from memories, but from some heart place that forms a deeper connection.
The wild reeds were fading to a golden shimmer, covered by cozy blankets of cumulous clouds.
I was born here, but we moved before memory took root. My dad had served in this small town as a priest before he packed up my mom and five siblings and moved to Nashville. He tragically died the following year in a car crash.
As I walked under the shadow of a seagull, I realized what I cannot remember, I can imagine—like how soft the underside of a gull might feel.
I felt I might lift off in a flight of fanciful dreams in the strong, coastal gusts.
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I was longing for root memory that might connect me to my innocence before my footprints in these sands were washed away. This was the place where my longing was born—I didn't need a memory of it. I could feel it.
I began to feel drops of rain, and the pristine boardwalk turned into a cracked sidewalk—overgrown and sprouting thistles. Heading to the church where I was baptized, I crossed railroad tracks and walked alongside a riverbank overgrown brush and trash.
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When I found the small church where my sweet dad had pastored, it was locked up without a soul in sight. The windows were dark, so peaking inside the sanctuary didn't offer a wisp of memory.
There was a brick sidewalk alongside the church, and some of the bricks had names on them. I walked along the path until I reached the back of the church, then turned right where another ten feet of bricks were laid. At the very end, there it was—the memorial to my father.
A single brick at the backside of the church. He was here. I was here. This is where I came from.
Love lives deeper than memory, beyond feelings, and holds the ties that will bind us beyond death and sorrow.
Whatever it is that you think you remember, whatever things you worry you will forget, know that love is the memory of God.
Love does not worry about what you believe or know.
Love is the anchor that can send your heart soaring by seeing the name of a loved one carved fifty-five years ago on a humble brick.
-- Becca Stevens