Only another mile.

I watch each foot rise and fall, rise and fall, thankfully losing myself in the rhythm of my own steps. I think of what is on the other side of the mountain and I remember how she loved the smell of lilies in the valley there.

Lilly.

She always knew it would be the perfect name for our own flower. Our Lilly who blossomed into the spitting image of her mother. So long ago now but the memory of her laughingly telling me

“she’ll be just like me, and like those beautiful flowers that take such a commitment to    enjoy, if the people she meets put in the effort to climb her mountain of personality             they will find how amazingly beautiful and full of life she is…”

is so fresh it feels as though it were only a moment ago. It brings me peace and joy to remember the way she thought of things like that.

This place always brought such a feeling to her as well. She said it was a part of her,

This tucked away little mountain range she had been coming to since she was a child. Nothing about this particular mountain has seemed small today. Although the closer I get to the top the more I can feel her presence again. I actually feel strength and my tired soul doesn’t seem so alone. One foot in front of the other. Again, and again until it is no longer hard ground in front of my face but the light of the sun, seemingly at eye level. Far below is her heaven on earth, the place my angel belongs. The wind at my back tells me I’ve made it halfway, and I can still go further.

Before she brought me here, she told me many times reaching the top of this mountain felt like God’s little encouraging reward. She’d say climbing up the mountain, all you would want to do is stop and rest; to just take a momentary breather and continue when you had your full strength back. All that would change though when she’d reach where I am standing now. As she stood at this peak, she’d tell me, the excitement of seeing the sun and feeling the winds twirling through her hair would always give her such a boost that she never needed to stop and rest.

Through all the times I’ve made this journey with her over the years I always told her the “boost” she spoke of was just her own incredibly lively spirit re-connecting with this land that was truly her spiritual home, and re-filling her well with its energy. Even to think of it now doesn’t feel like anything I would have ever said if I hadn’t both heard her describe it, and seen it happen so many times. I always felt at ease with nature, but in all my life I never met anyone more in touch with the land. Today is different though. It must be her pushing me onward, but I too now do not want to rest…not yet. I must continue my trek down to the valley. Rise and fall, rise and fall.

Nature had a stronger hold on this face of the mountain, from the fully bloomed trees I now walk through on down to the field of lilies in the valley below. I touch each trunk within arm’s reach as I come down the mountain, as she always did. She said trees hold onto memories better than we do and connecting with them allowed us to travel to times in our lives we thought we had forgotten. She was right and feeling the bark under my fingers I remember the first time she brought me here. She said her father had discovered this place and brought her here as a child to show her what he called “the only thing as beautiful as she was” he had ever seen. She had told me many times already how she and her father would come here every fall and spring together, but as far as I knew, that was the first time she had come here with anyone besides him.

As we climbed this mountain that first time, she said sharing this place was like sharing part of herself, that she needed to know I was someone she could fully trust before bringing me here. Even acknowledging what he was telling me I still didn’t fully understand how much this place meant to her until at long last we reached the valley on the other side. The valley I am quickly approaching. The closer I get though to the valley floor, the slower I want to travel. She feels so much stronger the further down I go, and I want to embrace what feels like her coming to welcome me in. To greet me at the gates of her private sanctuary.

Walking through the now more sparsely spread trees, I can’t help but recall her telling me how the first time she came here she didn’t initially see any flowers, just a sprawling grassy field. She had walked half the length of it before finding a single lilly taking in the sun’s rays out in the open. I could hardly believe that as upon my own initial viewing, the entire field was covered as far as I could see in lilies. She said years ago her father had gotten sick I between their trips here, and when his condition turned for the worse she promised him she would continue to come scale the mountain and visit the valley he had shared with her. At his funeral she decided in his honor she would take seeds with her on the next trip and plant as many lilies as she could in the field. She said she hoped to bring her father’s life back into the valley again.

If bringing life to this valley is what she intended, the vast landscape of swaying white flowers I saw that first visit was proof her goal had been more than accomplished. Over the years between her father’s passing and my life changing first visit here, she had brought more and more seeds with her every time she hiked up and over this mountain. What she created here was as much a tribute to her father as it was her first child, long before our own Lilly was born. This is where she belongs. Why should I make her wait any longer?

The scent she loved her whole life fills my nostrils; no matter how many times I come here it still smells fresh like the new life she envisioned. And now the new life she deserves. In the center of the valley I finally take a knee to rest; I am at the end of my journey. I remove and open my pack to retrieve its most precious contents, the dust of her life and final seeds she has to lay into this sacred ground. My heart is pounding, and hands tremble now.

“Please forgive me for not being more steady.” Damn.

We spoke every day for fifty-four years but that is the first request I’ve asked of you in the months since you were carried away. The first words I have spoken to you at all.

“I hope you forgive me for that as well.”

Three words that were on our lips so many thousands of times over these years. They haven’t been given the volume they deserve this last six months. I need to stand again, I can’t do this on the ground.

As I rise to my feet I am not sure what is swaying more, the flowers or me. I look down at the ceramic container in my still shaking hands and feel the wind rush at my back. This is what I came to do. I open it and watch as you are swept away again. You drift off yet I feel you so strongly still. My heart no longer pounds.

“Is this the peace you feel?”

I’m on my knees again.

“I love you. I pray you can hear me.”

I’ll just lay here to rest for a while, it has been such a long journey and I am already so close to the ground.

“Would it be alright…if I stayed with you?”