Raise a white flag if you love me; a black flag if you don't

I sat in my father's footprints Sunday morning, with my hands in the moist soil of the flowerbeds in front of my parents' house. He liked those beds filled with flowers of the season. On Friday morning, I had looked a the Vincas and Begonias that had grown tall and leggy over the summer and decided to do something about them. On Sunday morning I planted pansies. The little brown dog slumbered in a select patch of sunlight while I dug and planted. I felt close to my father, felt him with me. For an hour, my morning was peaceful and sweet. It felt good and steady to have my hands in the soil, and my heart with my father.

When I went inside the house, I reached for my phone. A message waited for me, one with tone of voice that flipped my stomach upside down and gave me a dark and cold feeling. It was just a minute or two after I returned the call and left a message that he called back. He was cold, distant, spoke very few but direct words. Words so direct they went straight from my ear and into my heart, where they exploded and the bleeding began.

Just like that.

I learned pretty early in life that love can be painful, that while love is a tremendous joy, in loving we are vulnerable to heartache. And that is where I am now, heartache. In rapid time I went from the mysterious and wonderful experience of love living on, the awareness that I can keep my father in the present and live out loud the love I have for him, to that very same heart being ripped open, torn of hope, forced to feel the light and life fade on itself. Broken.

And yet it beats on, the love alive. Amazing thing, the heart.

I could have done without the sadness of yesterday, and I could do without it today for that matter. And tomorrow. And so on. I could have done without that phone call and all the questioning and doubt it leaves behind for me to sort out alone. But maybe, just maybe, I was not alone when my heart broke. Maybe through the time spent with my father near me in heart and spirit, he was somehow with me when I received the phone call that changed everything, again. Maybe I wasn't alone when I hung up the phone. And maybe it's him reminding me that whatever pain goes with loving, for a brief spell I lived it again and loved a certain someone again, and for that, I would not have changed a thing. Save the outcome.