MY SISTER'S PUZZLE

 

"Eagle of Promise" by James A. Meger (SunsOut Inc) 

It was the Saturday after the Tuesday that my sister died.  My husband and I made our first trek out to the farm to connect with the family.  I found myself venturing into my sister's prayer room.  It was originally my older nephew's bedroom.  My sister converted it to her sanctuary a few years after his death.  

There is a desk by a window that overlooks her back yard.  There was a serenity found just to sit and look out the window.  I wondered how many times my sister stared out that window.  I wondered if she found the peace I was finding in that moment.  

I looked around her prayer room and saw a small library that she had built.  Those must have been her special books.  I saw one book that I had given to my brother-in-law a few years back and wondered if she had read it.  I had never heard back from anyone if that book was read or if it meant anything.  I just saw it in her prayer room and had to rest with the mystery.  

Something else grabbed my eye as I perused her library.  There was one lone puzzle sitting on the top of her books.  It looked strange to be there, as the puzzle collection was downstairs in the living room.  Something seemed special about that puzzle, but I couldn't ask her why.  All that was present with me in that room was my memory of her, and maybe some residual energy and breath from her times up here.  She came to this room to find her peace.  Maybe this puzzle was a picture of that search.  

There was no sun to be seen in the picture.  Just a possibility of sun to come.  A beautiful rainbow arched across the picture against a mountain back drop.  She loved the mountains.  It was still dark, so the storm may have passed, but left behind a dreariness only broken into by a lone rainbow.  And there was the eagle.  It wasn't stationed on the dead tree in the foreground, like a depressed soul not able to leave the darkness.  No, that eagle had lifted off.  With its wings spread, it wasn't waiting for the sun to appear, it needed to fly, it wanted to fly.  Maybe the beauty and colours of the rainbow invited it to soar, even in the darkness.  

I took the puzzle home with the intent to finish it and have it displayed at the funeral.  But that didn't happen.  That puzzle took me a month to finish.  I think there is poetry in that.  Grief takes time.  Now I have finished the puzzle and am wondering what to do with it.  I wonder if bringing it back to my sister in her prayer room will be the most fitting place for it.  

I wish I had memories of us puzzling together.  I don't.  I only have a future that won't include those times together that I longed for.  Now I will keep puzzling and find my own peace among the pieces that I assemble.  

October 2, 2023

I remembered there was a picture of my sister puzzling with her son and her mother-in-law, but I didn't know what puzzle they were working on.  A closer look made me aware that it was indeed "The Eagle of Promise" puzzle.  I was overwhelmed with emotion at the idea that these three would be in the picture with that puzzle.  These three all died within six and a half years of each other.  This is the picture of the darkness of our family.  But somehow, someone caught them all on camera working on this puzzle.  How precious is that.  I miss them all so much.