I Hope Your Dancing!

On a Sunday afternoon and it also being the !st day of September, I unexpectedly found myself where I least expected.  It started out as a quick trip to the store to get some wrapping paper to wrap the sock monkey which I had purchased for my grandson’s first birthday present. After buying spiderman wrapping paper and a multi pack of scotch tape, I did not feel I was ready to return  home.

I felt compelled to drive to the cemetery to see my parents which I had not been to see for almost a year. It was unusual for a summer to pass without my sister and I going out there to leave flowers and a solar light as a symbol of our love.

Driving through the familiar wrought iron gates, I suddenly found myself in a state of awe as I slowly drove the narrow paths  past thousands of hundred year old graves. I started thinking about all the lives that had been lived  and were now all brought together in one final resting place. Each of these tombstones marked a life that had been filled with laughter, kisses, hopes and dreams of the future.

My life with all of it’s highs and lows was no different than the lives that had once been lived and now all that remained was a granite stone to mark that they had once been here. With each passing grave, my problems seemed even more insignificant. What made me think I was so different? That my problems seemed more important than they really were?

I suddenly had a vision of the lost souls rising up and watching me as I passed by. They watched me not with malevolence, but with compassion and understanding. I did not feel like this was a morbid scene from a horror movie, but rather a split second glimpse into an alternate reality. 

Yes, you might be thinking I am sounding like I had temporarily been living in a la la land but I assure you, I am usually very practical and fully  grounded.

As I approached the last road which bordered the dense, northern pines, I caught sight of my parents tombstone. I pulled my car over to park along the grassy forest line and I caught sight of my first Fairy Ring.

A perfect circle of mushrooms sat magically in the middle of a grassy field , alone on a stretch of grass. I have heard about these fairy circles but had never before seen one. They say it is where the fairies dance and celebrate. I wondered, are the fairies dancing among the thousands of souls that have left their physical bodies in this final resting place? 

i took out my camera and took a few pictures of what seemed almost surreal.

I walked carefully through the three rows it took to reach my parents grave side and I stood quietly sending them my love through my thoughts and my heart. “I am okay” I said aloud, “you don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

I knelt to find almost hidden in the grass a tiny, perfectly formed little daisy growing atop of my father’s grave. I had left a daisy with him at his burial and I felt that this was symbolic to now find a tiny, perfect daisy on what had turned into a magical day. 

I picked the daisy to take with me as I said my goodbyes and left my familiar longings of wishing I could still hug them behind me.  

I drove slowly out of the quiet cemetery, I seeming to be the only visitor on this overcast fall day.  I felt humbled as I drove by the endless tombstones. 

I was privileged to be alive. I was reminded that my problems needed to be kept in perspective. Life was a gift and not to be wasted. Of course,  I already knew this, but driving through a cemetery, finding a fairy circle, and a tiny perfect daisy sure has a way of putting things into perspective.

Are you letting things get in the way of making the most of this life you were given? 

I know my mother is enjoying her dance with the fairies.

cindy Lee Lothian

September 2, 2013