Amongst the embroidery and cut glass and old craft projects and photos of the dead and the long-dead, the pain comes. Embedded in these roads and walls are the pain of loss and error. Failures flood the mind, and while the heart leaps at seeing our beloveds, the leaps share dance steps with lurches. Joy is enmeshed with sorrows.
This is family. The greatest of joys bedded beside whispered sorrows.
The brother no one has seen in a decade. The divorce that still haunts. The ghosts of past hurts and disappointments are more terrifying to face than would be if they were real ghosts.
The cup of joy and sorrow is so deep and hard to drink.
One’s heart must either enlarge, or shrink. To enter in to the joys, the sorrows must also be welcomed, or if not welcomed, processed. Acknowledged. Digested.
The one thing you must not to is ignore it, lest your heart shrink and your wisdom stagnate.
Traveling old roads makes the heart age, and ache.