CADENCE OF MY HEART

by Joyce Smith Williams

Thunder rolled, and the smell of sulphur drifted through the Yellowstone National Park. Members of the nature writing workshop were far ahead of me. I stopped to sit on a fallen log. Lunch finished, I sat watching billows of steam float upward. The rhythmic beat of the bubbling pools, called paint pots, echoed like the cadence of my heart. Concentrate? How? Thoughts roared through my head. How was I going to resolve my grief issues? Mom, the hysterical voice of my younger daughter began, Ive just had a call from the blood bank in San Francisco One by one they had slipped away. In my minds eye, I see the faces of the three stricken with AIDS. Suddenly, a tiny black spider appeared on my page and marched back and forth. The spider, no bigger than a pencil lead, left my notebook and ambled across my fingers examining each wrinkle and vein, then dropped to the ground. Minutes later, I followed a long, narrow path bordered with goldenrod and purple thistle. I brushed aside a mosquito that buzzed around my head. The clouds darkened. Did these thunderheads reach to heaven? I recalled Lukes touch on my shoulder at midnight and remembered the panic in his voice. Honey, get dressed. I need to go to the hospital. Fourteen hours later he was dead. I looked down, trying to thrust these thoughts from my mind. At my feet I spied an object a rock? No a fossil. I turned the object over with the toe of my shoe. Underneath, curled into a perfect circle, was a shiny, bronze-colored worm. I stopped to record my findings,

looked back, and he was gone. GONE! One minute he was here, the next he was gone. Just like the people I loved. I tried to blot out the words of the newscaster. An eighty-nine year old resident of an upscale nursing home was murdered Monday evening. A suspect is being ought by police. Then the picture of my kind elderly friend flashed on the TV screen. Since her stroke four months earlier, I had visited her daily, washed her gowns and delivered her mail. My friends violent death plagued me and my accumulated grief erupted like a volcano. Could I survive this latest loss? The clouds overhead continued to darken. So did my spirits. As I meditated, sunshine reappeared and I reviewed the list in my notebook the spider, towering thunderheads, smelly paint pots. Thoughts pelted me like stinging hail and pain racked my body. The path now circled a gigantic bubbling pond leading me to a more isolated area. Again, I sat on a log. A chattering squirrel brought me back to consciousness. How long had I been here? Had I been dreaming? An inaudible voice said, Look behind you. Half awake, I turned. In a cove beside the path, sunlight streamed into a crystal cave. The slow drip, drip, drip of mineral-laden water had formed stalagmites which resembled the pipes of a meticulously crafted organ. From my seat on the log, I saw a cathedral built one drop at a time. My sad heart fluttered then filled with gratitude.

Gazing at this glorious sight, I knew this cathedral was no accident. It had been prepared for me. God had not forsaken me. He had waited patiently for me. One moment at a time, I would heal. CADENCE The rhythmic beat of the bubbling paint pots echoed the cadence of my heart as it sang, MY GOD, MY GOD, HOW GREAT THOU ART!