Melancholy Lady

I was afraid that splitting my scalp during a potentially disastrous fall would make me more hesitant about living an adventurous life, but so far so good. Although I am being extra careful because of the Frankensteinian staples in my head, I still go exploring when the weather allows, which isn’t often. (I have seen more rain this past week than in all the years I lived in the desert.)

I’d heard that Mitchell River runs through St. Ansgar where I am staying for a couple of weeks, so I set out to look for the water. I peeked through trees, climbed over a fence, tramped across a grassy field, wandered down a rain-soaked road to catch glimpses of the river.

Though it wasn’t much as adventures go, it did satisfy my wanderlust for the day, and I did get a good look at the river.

I still have about ten days left here in St. Ansgar (I am babysitting the Blue Belle Inn while the owners are gallivanting around Scotland), but already I am looking forward to heading on down the road. I get melancholy if I stay in one place too long, remembering that I once had someone to settle down with, once had someone who cared about the trivialities of my life — once had someone to tell all the things that aren’t worth telling. Now I am alone and feeling not quite real.

Life is strange. It really shouldn’t matter after all these years that he is gone, but it does. One great irony about love is that while all the songs, poems, stories reinforce the idea that love is what makes life worth living, when you lose that love, people expect you to suddenly not care. It’s okay for them to still bask in the light of their own loves, but not okay for us bereft to lament the darkness.

See? I told you being in one place too long makes me melancholy. But in the end, it’s all part of this great adventure we call life.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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