Judith Roche

 
Judith Roche
 
Prayer Vigil
        for Patricia Monaghan 1946-2012
 
If we are sad beyond knowing. We meet every evening in prayer time. Hold hands with our minds. It’s a single idea but the days put on such reticence. Between pain and sleep and morphine. Between being happy when she is awake and relieved when she sleeps. When we were Pagan Mamas in Duluth many hatchet-faced women came to our reading, ready to protest us and we laughed about it later. I am 2,000 miles away. I would be in the way now. There, even he, her best beloved, could be in the way but his nearness eases her way. She is working so hard to do what she has to do. She’s finding the base, her root of truth, this red-haired girl from the bog. Maybe she dreamed the world. She searches for breadcrumbs along the trail. Holding minds in hands from New York, to Wisconsin, to the Arctic Circle, to Seattle grounds us. A cairn or two could point the way. Rock on rock. Eleven moose in one day on the Chena River, and more beaver than I could count. Are we past old stories? Is that part of the project here? She is in the process. She slips the surly bonds, this girl of the North. We hold minds in our hands. I heard about a three-masted schooner hovering just above the water for someone. “Look, look,” he said. “I’ve never seen such a big ship on these waters before.” No one else could see it but it sailed him away. Angels have come, someone for you beyond our kin. You will not be alone. The emptying of the house.