Everything.....

This week the news cycle was full of stories about a Connecticut woman, Sandra Herold, and her chimp, Travis. Travis nearly fatally mauled Ms Herold's good friend. The police eventually had to shoot Travis, killing him. Ms. Herold made a comment following Travis's death. I can't seem to get it off my mind. She said...He was my everything....

Her everything.

The simple fact that her "everything" was a chimpanzee notwithstanding, I thought about her life. A life such that she made her "everything" hinge on one single individual, albeit a chimp, but one single individual nonetheless.

Can a person really be everything in life?

I wondered if one person could so greatly impact me that I would make that complete and total emotional investment. I wondered if one person, at the exclusion of all others, could mean so much that they would in fact be my everything. I wondered, when all was said and done, if it was reasonable, I wondered if it was prudent and I wondered if it was perhaps essential.

Perhaps having someone be my everything meant that this is the one person who understood me, loved me, accepted me and delighted in me. Perhaps this person would impact me so deeply that for all time I would be changed. Perhaps I would be better for having known them, wiser for having allowed them access in so complete a manner and stronger for having such a combined force at my side.

Perhaps having one person be my everything is truly the secret to having it all.

I still think it was a shame Ms Herold looked to Travis to be her everything. She deserved more in this life than a chimpanzee.

She deserved everything. As do I. As do we all.

Indeed.

Who Loves Ya Baby!

Telly Savalas coined the phrase "Who Loves Ya Baby" on the 1973 hit TV series Kojak. The phrase was rhetorical in nature as it was used by the character. I like to think of that phrase in a literal sense. Who loves you?

We give a lot of thought to the object of our own affections, the ones we love. We think in terms of how we feel about the person, how much they mean to us and sometimes we wonder what we would ever do without them. We love them and our time is spent lost in wonderful sweet memories encapsulated in these moments. We simply think about how much it is we love them.

But what of those who love us? How often do we give a passing thought to what it's like for that person who loves us? What is it really like for them to love us?

We don't often realize our impact on another. We don't realize what our words mean, what our touch can evoke. We don't always recognize our importance to someone in a visceral sense, we can't feel it, can't feel the depth of emotion they have inside borne of love for us. We don't see them pause and break into a smile because they've thought about us, recalled something we said, remembered the last shared embrace, last shared kiss. We don't hear them sigh when they miss us. We don't hear that sharp intake of breath when they find us. We don't know when they whisper I love you's before they fall asleep. We don't feel how their heart pounds with delight or aches with worry for us.

Perhaps we should. Perhaps to truly appreciate the weight and measure of another's love for us we should think about their expressions and offerings as the remarkable gestures they are. Perhaps we should think about all of those things that occur out of our line of sight. Perhaps the next time we hear them say "I love You" we should pause and imagine all that lies behind those three words. Imagine the scope of their emotional investment, imagine the enormity of their risk taken. Image the breadth of feeling that follows those three little words from their lips to our hearts.

Imagine what it took for them to offer all of that to us. Offer all of that.

Indeed.

Shades of Gray.....

I am not a big fan of Country Music, but I am a fan of a good songwriter no matter what their chosen genre. The words to a song, a good song, rise up and away from the melody and embed themselves inside me. They stay with me only to be pulled out, and examined over and over, until I settle on what the writer said and how it spoke to me.

It seems every time I tune to a radio station lately I hear a song called, "In Color" by Jamey Johnson. The song was co written by Johnson, along with James Otto and Lee Thomas Miller.

The song carries a simple message that becomes apparent quickly. It's not the message that gets me, but the power behind it. The song has a grandfather showing some photographs of key moments in his life. In order to explain the significance, weight and importance of the moment captured in the photo he says, "you should have seen it in color".

Isn't that exactly how life's moments are? We try to capture life's moments on film for posterity...but what we really have is a piece if paper with an image on it. An image in shades of gray. An image that doesn't come near to defining that moment. That doesn't come near to expressing the myriad of emotion present within. The real importance, the life, in a photograph is the memory attached to it. Only the individuals who lived that moment truly understand what took place. The photo captured the image but the individual captured the memory. They look at the photo later...and they see it in color. The color that lives in the memory.

I looked at some old photos not long ago, wanting to scan them and share with a friend who didn't know me when I was young. I had photos of my childhood, me in the dorm at college, my wedding. Photos of me with my children, with my parents, with my husband. Photos, now that I think about them, really don't tell my story at all. The photos show images, happy faces, pleasant poses, fun times. What they do not show is what was going on inside me at the time, They do not show what I was feeling, what was behind the smile. They don't show that I cut my knee and tried to look happy on my grandmother's porch. They don't show the sadness I swallowed, and capped by a smile, the day I left college and came home. They don't show the struggle, from the day before, surging between my husband and me. They don't show the worry I had inside for the child standing next to me. They don't show the near tragedy brewing inside me just four days before becoming critically ill. They show happy, smiling faces, but you should have seen them in color.

The song's refrain, so beautifully crafted goes....

A picture's worth a thousand words
but you cant see what those shades of gray keep covered.
You should have seen it in color.

I'm leaving the photos unscanned. I'd rather tell the story than show the picture. A story told in my words. A story told in color.

Indeed.