We Are One Another

There are graces that come with loss.

We remember things we’ve always known. That this whole enterprise is a gift. That we ought to slow down, breathe, feel each tomato as we pluck it from the vine, look once more at the clouds unraveling over the mountain. That we ought right now to reach out to that friend we haven’t in too long a time. That we must—we simply must!—look those we love in the face right now today and say, I love you. My goodness but I love you!

And, too, loss connects us and reconnects us. Back in eastern Montana, back for my mother’s burial, I felt truly home. Good folks gathered us up and said welcome, said we’re so sorry, said we loved her too.

That weekend back, I stayed, along with my wife and children, out at the cabin I lived in when I worked in the Bull Mountains, way out on the Fireridge Ranch. We watched one evening the sun go down and lightning play across the eastern plains. My teenage daughter stood beside me. “It’s no wonder,” she said, lifting her arms, “you’re a writer. There’s so much room to imagine here.”

Loss is an essential fact of life. We will lose everything we hold dear, everyone we hold dear. One of the projects of this whole enterprise, then, is how we decide to deal with this knowledge.

I’ve decided to tell stories.

Most of the old, good stories are sad stories. Which is as it should be, I think. Those are very much the kind of stories I’m trying to tell. Stories that, despite the sadness and struggle, make lots of room for any one of us—stories that say welcome home, that say we’re sorry, that say we love you.

Stories that remind us of that simple, astonishing fact: we are human beings, we are more alike one another than not.

A few weeks after the funeral, I had the great good fortune to come back to eastern Montana, this time for a reading at Rocky Mountain College, a trip to see the good folks at Beartooth Books, a few glorious days up the East Rosebud Creek Canyon for an event with River Arts & Books, and then back to Billings for the High Plains Book Awards, where The Entire Sky took home the award for fiction. Thank you, Montana.

My son and I dug up the potato crop yesterday evening. We’re eating the last of our summer tomatoes. I hope the changing season finds you gathering and imagining.

Stay in touch.