They say time heals. They’re wrong: It’s perhaps not healing so much as the numbness, the relative lack of sensation, that comes with prolonged attenuation.
It’s love that heals.
We’ve had occasion to recognize that truth anew over the last two days.
Last night, after a sudden decline in her condition, we were forced to send our eldest mare on her last journey. She is the newest Spirit Horse, and when I go outside tonight for one last time, I will see her in the stars racing westward across the sky.
Because of the lateness of the hour, the cold and the dark, we could not bury her until today; with a horse, it’s a large operation, one that takes both equipment and expertise. It all went smoothly today, and she is at rest in the shadow of a bank of wild sunflowers, a bundle of winter sage and a vaguely heart-shaped stone resting above her.
A small stray dog sits watch over her now, her self-appointed guardian as she makes her journey.
We have wept many tears over the last two days, and yet, some of them were more than tinged with happiness: She filled the last near-two decades with many wonderful memories, and this part of her spirit journey was thankfully an easy one.
Her name was Cree, and she was a brown and white paint horse, a classic Indian pony. Small, compact, sturdy and yet graceful, the colors of her coat ranging from chocolate brown to a coppery umber, patched with a shade just off white. She fought a protracted battle with founder, and, we now know, with something else that failed to manifest until yesterday, and she outlasted every single reasonable expectation by far. She was dominant, the alpha of our herd, and yet also gentle; cooperative and willing to work with us even as we worked over the years both to save her life and to extend it with a decent level of health and comfort. It has been nearly four years since she held a rider — and in a gift that is healing to my own, I was that last rider. What has helped our hearts to heal even as they break these last two days is the knowledge that we showed her daily how much we loved her.
Such thoughts this morning reminded me suddenly of a fitting work for today’s #ThrowbackThursday feature. It’s one from my own collection, a piece that Wings made for me for my birthday some five years ago. Its purpose was, in part, explicitly to heal, but it wound up healing in other ways, as well.
My autoimmune disease presents me with my own daily battles, and five years ago, I was struggling with my symptoms, and with a variety of external issues. Those external issues had turned that day into a one that had become flatly unpleasant, a day to get through, not one to celebrate.
Shortly before sunset, Wings came indoors with something in hand.
It was my gift that year: a wide copper cuff with a silken finish.
Over a period of three years or so, Wings made me a variety of copper cuffs, even though his preferred medium is silver. I wear his silver ones all the time, too, but my arthritis had flared so badly and so consistently that he created the copper ones for me in an attempt to relieve some of the pain in my wrists and hands.
This one was substantial enough to work especially well.
From the top, it’s general shape reminds me of old traditional leather wristbands, those designed as low-profile bow guards: slightly wider at the center than on the ends, but still a good inch and a half or more across even at the narrowest point. It was, if memory serves, slightly over two inches across at the widest point; it has seen much wear, and is awaiting buffing in his studio right now.
Once he had cut the copper to shape, he chose one of my favorite symbols, the Eye of Spirit, as its primary accent. He placed four at the ordinal points, like the rays of a warm copper sun, creating by their deeply-stamped relief an image in the negative space of the Four Sacred Directions. He then repeated the diamond pattern down either side of the band, four on each side of the center motif, terminating in a conjoined thunderhead image at each end, a representation both of cardinal and ordinal points combined and of the sacred space within. On the underside, he chased the entire edge in a zig-zagging pattern reminiscent of lightning, fitting for one whose traditional name translates secondarily to a variant of “Thunderbird.” Finally, he files and smoothed the edges, and gave the entire cuff a Florentine finish that glowed like the setting sun and felt like silk.
It was an example of healing, simply by virtue of its material. But its creation, the size and shape and symbolism of its manifestation, took me so utterly by surprise as to be healing in another way, as well: It instantly erased all the trials of the day, placing my focus back where it belonged — on the fact and acts of love.
The design of this cuff is one intended to summon the wisdom of the spirits. It’s imagery I find both powerful and meaningful, but on days like today, when it would be so easy to fall into the damaging grasp of sorrow, it’s a reminder instead of the healing embrace of love.
Because love heals.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
