Second Star To The Right

This weekend's Harry Potter marathon reminded me how much I love the idea of magic, of witches and wizards and spells and potions and all manner of winged creatures living in enchanted forests and immortality.  No matter your age, imagination is a precious and glorious gift.  I remember when Wendy asked Peter where he lived ~ Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning, he answered and I closed my eyes and saw myself hand in hand with the original Lost Boy, on a direct flight to Never Never Land.  Fanciful as it may be, this is how I like to think about life's journey and especially how I like to think about death.  The shell we've worn for however many years wears out but surely our souls travel somewhere - and why not to Never Never Land?  Why not to a childhood we miss or never had, to a place where we never have to grow up, where there are pirates and pixies and slow moving, mostly harmless crocodiles, a land where we all remember how to fly.

It's been my experience that we poor, frail humans - nothing more than carbon units as any good trekkie knows - can get used to anything in time, even the reality of our short lives and the uncertainty of the next step.  With all due respect to my atheist friends, I can't embrace nothingness - I may not know if God is God or nature or the remnants of the human spirit - but I have to believe that there is a force at work here and that it carries over.  Despite my cynicism and rage and occasional despair, despite the fact it often acts contrary to my wishes, I can't not believe.

It's hard to sit in a beautiful old church on a warm September afternoon and say goodbye to a good friend.  At the end of the service, his ashes are reverently carried to the small rose garden and buried with friends and family looking on.  There's thunder in the air and we pray for rain and redemption in the same breath.  Then we gather at the little house where there's enough food to feed several armies and there's story telling and tears and laughter and of course, music.  People come and go all the afternoon and into the evening and in time their faces begin to blur.  This is part of how we grieve and accustom ourselves to the changes death brings and the newly dug holes in our lives.  We learn to walk around the pitfalls and memory becomes a comfort and a heartache simultaneously.

Friends and families do their best and depart.  Life resumes where we left off and the stars come out.

Second star to the right and straight on til morning, I remind myself, like Hogwarts or Heaven or Never Never Land or Rainbow Bridge.

All the world is made of faith and trust and pixie dust ~ JM Barrie