The Healing Journey

July 11, 2023

“Oh, will you never let me be? Oh, will you never set me free?
The chains that bind us are all around us. There’s nothing left that I can see
Those little things remain that bring me happiness and pain.”
– “These Foolish Things”

There are certain places we associate with the person we lost, and they will forever be reminders of the lives we shared. At first, the association will be like reopening a wound, but later the pain may lessen slightly, and hopefully we will reach the stage in our healing when they will be reminders of the love we shared.

Years ago, in the 1960s, Don and Darlene would go to the Open Book Store in downtown Bridgeport every weekend and spend the afternoon, looking through the poetry and science fiction. It was a fraction of the size of the Barnes and Nobles that later sprouted up, but it suited their needs. They never knew what they might find in that small bookstore. Eventually, they parted and he heard she had died.

When Don found himself driving through downtown Bridgeport years later, he sensed he was near where the bookstore had been, but he couldn’t be sure until he drove a few blocks further and saw the Broad Street Steps that ascend from Broad Street to Golden Hill. Suddenly, he remembered the times they had walked down those steps, hand-in-hand, on their way to the bookstore. He still had a copy of the “Collected Poetry of Randall Jarrell” that he bought one Saturday when she was with him. Now, the steps were painted in bright pastel colors in a design that resembled a strand of DNA. Everything seemed to have changed, except what he felt for her.

He wondered where the years had gone, and he wondered even more how the grief he felt in the beginning could be awakened so easily and so powerfully by the sense of place and the sense of loss.

***

“These foolish things remind me of you.”